November Thoughts

The Old & the New

Thanksgiving is here and December is almost upon us! Arjun turned age 3 in September and last weekend was a milkman for his first annual school function. He was also going to sing ‘isty bitsy spider’, but became a statue instead, riveted to the stage without any sound. Anxious parents watched nervously and encouraged him afterwards on his good preformance!

The advent season has almost begun and if you are like my US family then you will have recovered the tree from the box in the basement after Thanksgiving festivities have expired. Maybe you have contemplated buying a real Norway Pine from one from one of the lots that will sprung up around the cities (I won't even comment on ambitious people who cut down their own trees). The old, old, story about a little baby newly born to Joseph & Mary will be told countless times through sermon, song, play and program.

Old Forms & New Content for Christmas

The Christmas tree is a beautiful symbol of our Christian heritage that we inherited from our Germanic and other European ancesters. Many of us forget that Decemeber 25th held quite a differn’t meaning in Jesus’ time and for a few hundred years after his death and resurrection as the church of Jesus Christ grew and expanded via the grassroots of society. Decemeber 25th was the day of the famed Saturnalia, a bacceleian feast of lust and human sacrifice, celebrated as Sol Invinctus as well, signifiying the Roman emporer as the Invincible Sun. Tender young fir trees were cut down for the winter solstice and placed in the house, along with holly, wreaths, candles and presents, to signify the passing of the long cold winter and the new fertility that the Teutonic sunrise goddess Easter would bring the following spring.

How amazing it is that in just a few hundred years all vestiges of these pagan rites would be eclipsed andredeemed in worship to Jesus Christ! The old forms remained with new content infused within them, expressing the culture and diversity of ancient Europe as it left behind the worship of gods and goddesses, groaning it’s way into medieval Europe.

The local peoples enjoyed the festivities of giving gifts and the smell of a fresh Spruce or Norway Pine filling the house, now symbolic of the aroma of Christ that permeated the family of Christians that believed God Himself incarnated and took advent as a small baby, born in Bethlahem a small Palestinian province of the Roman Empire to a poor Jew of King David’s lineage. What a beautiful history of redemption that has carried on from the creation of the Hebrew nation which became a blessing to the Roman one who became a blessing to us today!

Old Forms & New Content for Hindus

I begin to wonder about the Hindu people and their love for vibrant and meaningful festivals, meaning the spiritual 'forms' that they are used to. They have a deep devotion to gods and goddesses, so similar to the Romans two millennia ago. Will it be a European Norway Pine tree that speaks meaning to them or a plant that they view as sacred such as the Hindu tulsi plant (holy basil) or something completely different? Will they have a grassroots movement that will sweep through their homes and villages that include redemptive analogies filled with the aroma of Christ this Christmas, meaning the new 'content'?

Problably not until the Good News of Jesus Christ incarnates among them from within their culture and traditions.

until it happens...

shanti (peace)