A shift in focus from the natural to the supernatural will have taken place when some questioning human minds – the forerunners of today’s philosophers and scientists – began to speculate about the world around them. What if beyond the visible world there lies a second unseen realm? What if events in our ‘natural’ world are controlled by unseen gods and spirits in this other ‘supernatural’ world? In that case, any adequate response to nature – any adequate act of worship, of religious practice – would need to take account of, and indeed to be directed towards, these unseen forces.
Looked at in this way, a development from a natural to a supernatural focus for worship and other religious activity is quite understandable and rational. But it does not have to be permanent.
Over the generations, human minds have not stopped speculating, and now the wheel has come full cycle. Today’s philosophers and scientists – the descendants of those first human thinkers who dreamed up the supernatural – are turning the question round and asking with increasing cogency: What if, after all, the natural world is all there is? What if there are no unseen gods and spirits exercising control from some other supernatural world? Where does that leave worship and religion?
The short answer is: back where they started.
With or without an alleged supernatural realm, it is beyond dispute that the catastrophic effects of what we call ‘natural disasters’ still outreach all human efforts to control them. And the entirely natural daily, monthly and annual cycles and seasons still exercise their fascination and reassuring influence over us. The need to acknowledge this, and to use all our resources to resist destructive nature and to celebrate and protect benign nature, is still the driving motive for Christian humanists engaged in the ceaseless round of worship.
Even so, the question remains: has worship over the years become so inextricably bound up with the idea of communicating with some external ‘higher’ being, that to engage in it on any other terms is not possible? It is now some 25 years since I followed Don Cupitt in ‘taking leave of God’ as traditionally understood, and in that time I have never ceased to be a regular worshipper and communicant in the mainstream Church of England. So I can affirm personally that it is possible to worship consistently and meaningfully, using nothing but the authorised services of the established church, without believing that there is an unseen God ‘out there’ consciously responding to my words and actions.
How can these things be? In a nutshell, being a Christian is for me a matter of aligning my own life to the values associated with Jesus Christ and his followers. This is achieved by joining with fellow Christians and consciously associating with the pattern of holy living set out in the scriptures and prayers and other writings of the church.
Worship is the way of making that association real, and keeping in daily contact with the foundation texts of our religion and with other people following the same path. By way of illustration, consider how we use just one basic dimension of worship that has already been mentioned, the times and the seasons.
Worshipping Naturally Anthony Freeman says worshipping is perfectly natural, even if we don’t believe in a supernatural realm.
The annual cycle
The bible itself tells us something of the process by which our current Christian year grew from the pattern of agricultural festivals existing in pre-Israelite Canaan. There appear originally to have been three major festivals: the first-fruits of the barley harvest in spring; the completion of the wheat harvest in early summer; and the harvesting of the vines and olives at the end of the summer. These agricultural feasts were linked to the fertility of the land and could not be swept aside; yet while they remained in place they were a potent source of temptation to the incoming tribes to abandon their own God in favour of the Baals and other gods of the indigenous Canaanite religion.
The compromise devised by Israel’s religious leaders was to retain the festivals but historicise them, associating each of them with a key event in the life of Moses and of Israel’s forty years in the wilderness. • The spring harvest became the double commemoration of Passover and Unleavened Bread, when the exodus from Egypt was celebrated. • The wheat harvest was known in the Old Testament as the Feast of Weeks, because it took place a week of weeks (7 x 7 = 49 days) after Passover, but it is more familiar to us by its Greek name Pentecost, the 49 days having been rounded up to 50. Pentecost was historicised as a memorial of the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. • And the grape harvest was transformed into Tabernacles, when the whole period of 40 years dwelling in temporary shelters was commemorated by building shelters or tabernacles of branches – as it still is by Jews to this day.
This was the Jewish calendar, enhanced by a number of other holy days and celebrations associated with the Babylonian exile and its aftermath, inherited by the first Christians. What they did was to repeat the process of El Greco, Pentecost, Prado, Madrid historicising, which had first taken place a thousand years before, by replacing the key events in the life of Moses and the Israelites by comparable ones in the life of Jesus and the Church.
Thus the Passover was reborn as Easter, the feast of the resurrection, and Pentecost became Whitsun, the feast of the Holy Spirit. Tabernacles left no direct mark, but its place as the third major feast was taken by Christmas, drawing not on Jewish antecedents but on the pagan winter festival of northern Europe. This in itself is a good example of the adaptability of worship and its associated times and seasons to changing circumstances.
For our present purposes, the most significant thing is not the details, but the clear evidence of how one central aspect of worship – the marking off of sacred time – had its origins in the rhythms of the natural world, and then displayed a history of re-inventing itself to meet the needs of changes in religious understanding. We can also note that earlier layers in the life of each festal season continue to show through, especially in the music.
Many Church of England services this Easter included both the carol ‘Now the green blade riseth’, recalling the feast’s agricultural origins, and any number of hymns made reference to the Jewish Passover and the ‘Red Sea waters’.
The daily cycle
At dawn (prime) we celebrate the new day, our own daily resurrection from sleep, and commit ourselves to ‘do justly, love mercy and walk humbly’ during the daylight hours. At the start of the working day (third hour: terce) we recall the account of the Holy Spirit poured on the apostles with the gift of tongues, and resolve to be guided by our Lord’s example ‘in all we think or speak or do’. At mid-day (sixth hour: sext), with the sun at its zenith, we rejoice in its light and warmth, and in the love shown on the cross, and reaffirm our intention to live in the light and love of Christ. In the afternoon (ninth hour: none) we remember our Lord’s death, and resolve to persevere to the end of our own earthly pilgrimage. And as darkness falls (compline) we echo the words of the disciples at Emmaus, ‘Abide with us,’ and seek relaxation and peace at the close of the day.
This is just one example of how a centuriesold pattern can be incorporated into our own daily routine. It offers a way of identifying ourselves with our natural and religious environments and so of being sustained by them.
Nothing here requires us to force ourselves into beliefs we do not hold. We can read the words of scripture or recite ancient prayers and draw strength from them, just as we might from any other poetry and inspired literature, without worrying about how they might be ‘true’. My own belief is that they become true, they become ‘real’, in the positive effect they have on our own lives day by day and year by year as we use them in worship.
Anthony Freeman is honorary assistant priest at St Paul’s, Chichester.