Preaching your way through Pagan Festivals...

I think more churches are rethinking the 'expository only' approach to preaching. By this I mean: the attitude some churches have that they are equipping the saints to think biblically if they just grind on through Romans in the morning and Isaiah in the evenings, rather than sometimes starting with the heads-up from the culture around you and then responding from the Scriptures.

Here I am throwing a bit of brick in the fowlhouse, but I hope it may be of some use:

How about if your church has a smaller, more informal evening service, or an adult Sunday school class, making good use of the festivals and special days during the year to teach on some key themes? (One could easily sprinkle a few of these in each year, rather than do them all in one year):

These dates could equally be used in the preparation of intercessory prayer, or be a prompt for cultural engagement in a church newsletter.

Jan 15th- eve of Martin Luther King Day. Huge issues raised here about racial harmony. A study of black people in the Bible also makes for a fascinating topical sermon.

Jan 22 Sanctity of Life Sunday (that's easier done in USA than UK, because we don't have that Sunday set aside)

Feb 5 Lantern Festival (Chinese). Admittedly, I don't know what issues arise from this key Chinese festival. 

March- 

Wed 8 March- International Women's Day. Opportunity to encourage healthy complementarianism...

Newroz. This Iranian-Kurdish-Afghan festival draws on the redemption story of Kawa slaying the tyrant Zahhak. Signposts Christ. Use Zechariah's song in Luke 1.

March-April Ramadan. In 2023 this will be a test of loyalties for Iranic peoples. Will Nowruz feasting trump Ramadan fasting? 

Apr (often) Passover. Jews will be found all over the globe. No points for finding out if this can lead to a Bible Study!

Sat 22 April (2023) Earth Day. We need great discernment here: we should not worship Gaia, but we should steward God's creation.

Jun - Feast of Sacrifice. Muslims commemorating Abraham's sacrifice. Again, straight into the OT.

October Diwali- this is a festival of light. How about preaching an in-depth biblical theology of light? 

November- Remembrance Sunday. Teach a biblical theology of war and peace. Psalm 46, and the swords to ploughshares hope of Isaiah/Micah.

Dec- Advent. How about preaching this properly as a reminder of the coming of our Lord in judgment, so as to counter the sentimental 'gentle Jesus'?

Christmas- this goes without saying, although few Christians are aware of what the Scriptures of our Muslim friends say about Jesus' birth and childhood. A careful study of the rival accounts is an opportunity to teach the doctrine of the full humanity of Christ. He did not speak from the cradle, and neither was he born under a palm tree. That is a shrouding of the poverty into which Christ was born...and he did that in order to make us rich eternally through his death and resurrection.

Further Reading:

I am grateful for the heads-up about Diwali from the helpful article Planting Multiethnic & Transcultural Churches by Reid Monaghan

Applying anti-Pharisee texts to the Majority Faith

Big Point: Following in the footsteps of Jesus' challenge to the Pharisees means we must be eager to show that though some may keep the Five Pillars, we all fall woefully short of the Ten Commandments.

Jesus is criticised: “Why do your disciples break the tradition of the elders? They don’t wash their hands before they eat!” Matt 15:2

Jesus' reply in summary: "you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition." v6.

Yes, I'm referring to the faith that most people in our context adhere to. And increasingly, M people make up a significant chunk of our cities in the UK.

And yet few sermons in mainstream evangelical churches in the West take time to critique their worldview, even though there are often BMBs in our congregations.

A friend asked me how you might preach on the Pharisees as regards this other faith. At one level, it's good to point out how washing is very common in this religion (see also the Hindu practice of washing in the Ganges), and M people will often be quite aware of how people can be outwardly clean but inwardly impure. Just read up on wudu and ghusl on Wikipedia and you'll see how much care is taken to wash the body before worship. Westerners will find it extraordinary how external these regulations are. Note a detail like this: 'flatulence' (breaking wind) invalidates ritual cleansing.

Three Kurdish proverbs will illustrate how popular lore loves to expose hypocrisy, making good use of rhyme & irreverent wordplay:

1. xiyar e; ji tîtkî diyar e - 'it's a cucumber; it will be apparent by its stalk'. Cf Jesus:  'a tree will be known by its fruit'
2. serve qat e, binve pat e: 'a suit on the outside, rags underneath'
3. serve qazî, binve qaz: 'Islamic judge on the outside, goose on the inside' (I've only heard this from one Kurd, so it's less well-known)

One big point that I think needs to be made is that the Majority Faith has done a massive substitution, namely they have placed the Five Pillars in the place of the Ten Commandments. Now I'm not saying that the Pillars are regarded as functionally equivalent to the Decalogue, but that the law of Moses has been obscured from people's sight in this religion. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition you are expected to know the Ten Commandments and they have been, for example in the Anglican tradition, painted on the church walls and read out as a way to bring the congregation to a place of penitence before sins are confessed and forgiveness is pronounced. The Five Pillars make ritual very central to their piety; only almsgiving is what we would call moral law, and then that is the formal aspect of giving not the 'going the extra mile', pouring yourself out in service of others sort of giving.  

I honestly can say that after two decades of ministering to Muslims, I have never met someone who knew what the Ten Commandments were. No doubt those well educated in world religions would know them. But the Decalogue just doesn't seem to figure in their catechising. Please correct me in the comments below if you have examples of where the Decalogue is included in their teaching.

Now it is true that the commandments against idolatry sound like what many imams inveigh against. But commandment 3- using Yahweh's name in vain - does not seem much known and even this year I have seen two Muslim shopkeepers very irritated by Muslims who use God's name to get a discount ("you're a Muslim, aren't you?" said the Nigerian to the Iranian Kurd tailor, pushing hard for a discount; also, the Alevi kebab man in the Midlands who was narked at his Sunni colleague who bunked off at midday on Friday because Sunnis attend prayers. 'Is there even a mosque in Rugby?' I asked the Alevi. "Oh I don't know, he said. But they just leave me to do all the work")

The command against murder amongst extremists gets weakened by the 'but they're infidels' excuse.

Further to this there is the problem of the Tenth Commandment. I really think there is a cultural impact from the neglect/ignorance of this commandment. Greed is just not stigmatised in the way it is in cultures influenced by Christianity. External religious practice gets to cover over the love of money and a host of evils that flow from it.