I had taken a group of children from church to see the Lion King. The movie had only just started and the song the Circle of Life comes on and Mufasa is explaining to Simba that they eat the gazelles and someday when they are of the earth, the gazelles will eat them in blades of the grass. And the music strikes up, swells with wonder and yes, you guessed I was a sobbing heap.
Why did you cry in the movie? One our kids asked me. Because it was so… beautiful.
In a Disney movie, I saw Eucharist and Resurrection.
C.S. Lewis once wrote, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
One of the finest spiritual practices of our faith is often over-looked—it is very lens through which we view our universe: the church calendar! Our calendar is both earthy and cosmic, sensual and mystical. It points us to Christ who is at the heart of our universe.
The holidays, the seasons, the ways that days are spaced out with symbolic numbers that point to a bigger reality. The church calendar in and of itself is a brilliant spiritual practice that parades us through seasons that reflect the deepest depths of our existence. WE constantly come face to face with the reality that we are creatures of the earth connected to earth and connected to the divine.
Advent and we wait in darkness. Waiting is hard. We practice Advent in the church because life is full of waiting. Easter and we see new life and resurrection. We practice Easter because life is filled with the possibility of living beyond s our woundedness and living in spite of death. We practice Easter forgiveness so that we are not held hostage by the bonds of our personal history.
Every church season points us back to our deepest human realities while brilliantly marching us through the days on the calendar perfectly configured with symbology and numbers that represent bigger realities. Our lives and very existence are bound to earth and to the cosmic Christ who is at the center of our universe.
12 Days of Christmas. 12 is the number in Jewish thinking that represents government. 12 Apostles. 12 Days of Christmas pointing us to incarnation and of course Jesus himself our Lord who is wonderful counselor, Prince of Peace.
Here we are once again observing Candlemas a few days late but none the less 40 days from Christmas. 40 days is everywhere in our faith—40 years in the wilderness, 40 days of fasting in the desert, 40 days of rain. A Rabbi friend of mine likes to say that the number 40 represents… a really long time.
We are 40 days into the darkest season of the year.
Candlemas celebrates that dramatic shift of light. Candlemas long before Ground Hog’s Day held predictions of weather and looking ahead to warmer days or shuddering at the prospect of more winter:
If Candlemas Day be fair and bright, winter will take another flight;
If Candlemas Day be foul and rain, winter is gone won’t come again.
After the darkness of winter, the old candles were spent and the new ones for the year were blessed. As the light grew, we remembered the light of the world being recognized by those whose lives were close to ending. Simeon and Anna had waited in darkness. Of course, this is the day we celebrate the light being recognized because our bodies are responding and recognizing light that is growing in our hemisphere. This is part of our celebration of the cosmic Christ.
I love the way our calendar points us to back to the deepest depths of our creature bound existence that is inextricably tied to the earth.
Talk about circle of life-- soon beloved, we will be invited to bring our palm branches from the spring of last year—symbols of Christ’s victory to be burned up and turned into ashes. The branches of victory become the ashes that mark our mortality.
One of my favorite traditions of Ash Wednesday beloved is to take those ashes for the beginning of Lent and to mix them with Chrism—the oil used in our baptism. It makes a wonderfully fragrant MESS that once again point us back to our deepest connection and reality: our life of living and dying is forever bound up in Christ through our baptism. The solidarity of Christ follows us all the way to death. Just as we are bound to earth and light, through baptism beloved we are bound to Christ the Light of the world.
I long to celebrate that calendar with exuberance-- to make those symbols and rituals sing the story of our existence. Bless candles at Candlemas and give thanks for surviving darkness as we see light, palm branch bonfires at Shrove Tuesday to make ashes, 40 days of desert fasting followed by the 50 days of Easter which is the season of perfection. Easter and the number 50 represent new life in forgiveness which is our perfection, but I’ll save that number and symbol for another day.
These trips around the sun through these seasons, our deep-rooted connectedness to the cosmic Christ whose throne is the universe, that’s the Christianity I want to celebrate and make known. Church that forgets the earth and her calendar is paltry, watered down and not worth celebrating-- empty.
Let’s use every bit of our calendar and symbols to celebrate this gorgeous existence that we have. Let’s lustfully bless candles and burn ashes and all the rest.
CS Lewis was right--
“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”
Amen.