November 14, 2010
John 1:1-5
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
Colossians 1:15-20
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
I don’t’ know if you are aware of this, but for a lot of years Bruce Smith, our music and youth director, has had a crusade. He has wanted to rename our church. And he has reasons for that. You see, Calvin Presbyterian Church wasn’t always called Calvin Presbyterian Church. Until February 22, 1959, our name was Harmony-Zelienople Presbyterian Church. In the late 1950s two Presbyterian denominations merged, one that our church was a part of, and another that Park Presbyterian Church was part of. The Presbytery didn’t think that it was right for our church to have the name “Harmony-Zelienople” in it, so it told the church to rename itself. According to Bruce and others, our name wasn’t chosen by the congregation, but by the presbytery. So in February of 1959, we were renamed Calvin Presbyterian Church.
I don’t know how much energy I have for taking up the fight to rename our church, but if I have a vote in the issue, I would rename us Celtic Presbyterian Church. Why? Because I think that the name “Celtic” really describes not only my approach to Christian faith, but also the approach that I know most of our members and staff have. Just speaking personally, I’ve found it interesting that over the years I’ve been thoroughly Celtic in my Christianity, but I only came to realize the fact in the past few months. For years I’ve filled my home, my office, and even adorned myself with Celtic symbols, and listened to a ton of Celtic music, but I’ve never known why the Celtic approach to faith and life have been so important to me. And it’s not just me. Look around Calvin Church. We have Celtic symbols everywhere, from the cross at the front of our church, to our church logo, to the Celtic crosses adoring the walls of our sanctuary, to the pictures of Celtic crosses from Ireland and Scotland that you can find in our office hallway and conference room. So much of who and what we are is Celtic. A lot may have to do with the fact that Presbyterians have a Scottish, and thus Celtic heritage, but more has to do with our perspective on Christian faith.
I’m not alone in having a love of all things Celtic. Many of us do, without even knowing it. For example, look at how prevalent Celtic symbols are in jewelry. Many people love Celtic crosses and knotworks (the intertwined threads that you see in so much of jewelry). Celtic art, with its flourishes intertwined with scenes of nature, if very popular. Many love Celtic music. In fact, where would PBS be without Celtic Woman, Celtic Thunder, the Celtic Tenors, Riverdance, and more. There’s even a worldwide love of Celtic brews such as Guinness, Harp, Irish Whiskey, and Scotch.
What it is about the Celtic way that has captured so many people? I’ve wondered what it was that captured me. It’s only been in the past few months that I finally figured it out. I figured it out because I’ve been studying Celtic faith and spirituality for the past six months.
So what is Celtic Christianity? It is a theology and spirituality that formed in the British Isles out of their love of nature. The Celtic people have always had a love of nature, and have always had a sense of their being something spiritual about nature. They had a deep connection with nature before Christianity came to Ireland and Scotland, and that love made its way into their understanding of Christianity. The Celtic Christians believed very much in being scriptural—in basing their faith in the Bible—but they also believed that God could be discovered through nature. They believed that Scripture taught our minds about God, but the nature taught our hearts to see God. They believed that we can experience God in the stories of the Bible, but also in a beautiful sunset, the wind blowing over grains of wheat, and in the rain that makes everything grow.
As a result of this love of nature, and of sensing God’s presence in nature, they gravitated toward Bible passages that also expressed God’s presence in nature. For example, the passages that we read for today talk of Jesus as being the actual power of Creation, and how everything came into being in and through him. They recognized the love of nature in Jesus as he went off into the wilderness for forty days and nights, being led by the Holy Spirit. They recognized the love of nature in many of Jesus’ parables, where he used sowing seeds, sheep, fish, and other aspects of nature to describe the ways of God. They saw Christ’s love of nature in the fact that when he needed to be with the Father he went off to a lonely place to pray, and on the night he was arrested he went into a garden to pray. They also really emphasized John’s gospel, which is the one that most connects God with nature. You see, in John’s gospel Jesus uses phrases such as “I am the vine and you are the branches,” as well as making use of images from shepherding and fishing. And John also emphasizes how Christ is God’s incarnation in the world.
By the way, the Celts aren’t the only ones in Christianity to emphasize how nature reveals God’s presence. St. Francis also had a love of nature, living most of his adult life in the woods and fields. The Rhineland mystics of Germany used nature images to express their love of God, as did the great Christian mystic Meister Eckhardt. The Desert Fathers and Mothers of the fourth and fifth centuries lived in the deserts of Egypt, doing so in order to more fully experience God, which they found difficult in the cities.
The Celts did not believe that nature was God, nor that we should worship nature. Instead, they recognized that God created all of nature, and that God’s presence could be experienced through our connection with nature. You can see their awareness of God in nature through their prayers, such as this famous prayer, attributed to St. Patrick, called St. Patrick’s Breastplate:
We arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
You can also discover this love of nature reflected in Celtic symbols. Do you know what the circle in the Celtic cross stands for? Often it is said that it stands for the Holy Spirit, or the fact that God is the alpha and the omega, or that with God there is not beginning or no end. But the most simple meaning is that the Celtic cross integrated the sign of the circle, which for the Celts stood for the sun, which they believed was the root of all life. The Celtic cross has a symbol of nature in it. Also, listen to Celtic music and hymns, and see how nature is reflected in it. For example, listen to the words of “Morning Has Broken,” “When Morning Gilds the Skies,” “Let All Things Now Living,” and “Be Thou My Vision.” All of them reflect the fact that while God isn’t nature, God can be sensed and embraced through nature.
The fact is that the Celtic way of faith has had a hard time of it in Christianity. Much of Christian faith developed in urban areas, rather than in rural areas (even though much of Jesus’ teachings took place in rural, rather than urban, areas). Because much of Christian thought throughout the centuries developed in urban areas, where people often have a distrust and fear of nature, the Celtic way has sometimes been seen as a threat. You can see how this threat created a rift in Christianity in the battles between two Christians of history—one infamous and one famous. Back in the fifth century there was a battle for the soul of Christianity between an urban and a Celtic faith. These were the battles between Pelagius and Augustine, and Augustine won. Since then the writings of Pelagius have mostly been lost. And a heresy was attributed to Pelagius, called pelagianism, which is the doctrine that we must work our way into heaven through good deeds. I agree that this perspective is a heresy, and that it goes completely against Christ’s teachings. But there is a lingering question of whether Pelagius ever really taught this belief. The only witness we have to this is Augustine. The writings we do have from Pelagius say no such thing, and in fact seem to suggest that Pelagius believed that our salvation was only due to grace.
Pelagius was originally from northern Britain. His father, it is believed, had been a Druid priest, which is a faith that worships nature. So you can see how love of nature came into Pelagius’ beliefs. Pelagius taught a theology that emphasized God’s grace and goodness in the world. He taught that we should emphasize God’s goodness in the world because God created everything and declared it good, including humans. He believed that sin was a power in the world, and that it was a darkness that could dominate God’s goodness in us, but that it does not have the power to overcome it. For Pelagius, the focus of faith should be on following Christ so that grace can grow and sin be diminished. But the starting point was always grace, not sin. Ultimately, for Pelagius the key is that we are created in the image of God, so it’s that image in us that should be emphasized, not sin.
Augustine had a very different point of view, one that reflects his background. He was born of a Christian mother and a pagan father, and early on Augustine followed the path of his father. He eventually became a Manichean, which was a popular faith throughout the Roman Empire. The Manichean faith believed that there was a division in life between good and evil, the spiritual and the material, and heaven and earth. It taught that we live in a thoroughly corrupt world, and that only heaven was good. All of us are corrupt since we live in the world. The only redemption came if we could learn secrets that raised our minds and spirits toward divinity, even if we remain in corrupt bodies.
Augustine eventually left that Manichean faith to become Christian, and he rose to become a very powerful bishop in the early church (a church that had become powerful since its being declared the faith of the Empire seventy years earlier). He may have become a Christian, but he brought with him a Manichean theology. He still saw divisions between good and evil everywhere, and he is the one who most emphasized the Fall of Humanity because of Original Sin. He believed that while God declared all of life good, our sin caused a fall that made us and the world totally depraved and sinful. For Augustine, there is absolutely nothing good about us except God’s grace within us. For him, sin has the power to completely overwhelm us and drive us away from God. He believed that coming to Christ could overcome our sin, but that sin was the power of the material world. He even went so far to say that it was because of sin that there is death in the world, both human and animal (and perhaps even in plants). Our original sin brought death into the world.
Augustine saw Pelagius’ beliefs as a threat. Throughout his adult life he waged a battle against Pelagius, brining him up on charges of heresy. There were many trials against Pelagius, and in almost every case Pelagius was declared holy and admirable by different popes. Late in life Augustine got his way, and Pelagius was declared a heretic, as was pelagianism. And if Pelagius taught that our good deeds save us, I agree with Augustine. But, as I said before, we have no writings from Pelagius that state this anywhere. Instead, what we do have shows the writings of a man who was very much rooted in the gospels, especially John’s gospel. Ironically, throughout his life, Augustine even declared his admiration for Pelagius, calling him a holy man.
Even though Augustine’s theology and understanding of the Gospel won in Rome, it never quite got stamped out in Britain, Ireland, and Scotland. You can see the power of the Celtic faith first in the world of St. Patrick. St. Patrick was an Angle (the root word of English) who was captured as a teen to become a slave of the pre-Christian Celts for nine years. Patrick lived out in nature for nine years, and was heavily influenced by the Celtic vision of life. After he escaped, he became a priest, and brought Christianity to the Celts, a Christianity that was already thoroughly Celtic. After he died, some disciples of his movement, in the 500s, went to Scotland and converted it to a Celtic Christianity. The leader of that group was an Irishman named St. Columba. One of St. Columba’s Scottish disciples, St. Aidan, took this Celtic form of Christianity into northern England, bringing Christianity back to England, where it had been abandoned once the Roman army left, and the Saxons began invading England. So an Englishman converted Ireland, an Irishman converted Scotland, and a Scot reconverted England.
You can see the influence of Celtic faith still in the British Isles. You can see it in the British love of gardens and nature, of the many parks you find in the large cities of Scotland, Ireland, and England. And you see the influence in the writings of many great British writers, including C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. The Augustinian vision of Christianity has been very powerful, influencing great Christians such as Luther, Calvin, and others, but they have not stamped out the alternative vision that the Celtic way of faith presents, a way that I know I ascribe to.
As an ending to this sermon, I want you to do something to emulate the way we ended this sermon in worship. We ended this sermon with a slideshow of nature, accompanied by a beautiful rendition of “Be Thou My Vision,” sung by guest musicians, Sandi and Jerry Rectenwald. Obviously I can’t recreate that in writing, but I can give you an assignment. Today, take a walk out in nature. Look at the skies, look at the trees, look at the grass. I don’t care what season you are in. Look around, and see if you can sense God’s presence. If you can, you’ll know that you are Celtic.
Amen.
