Jesus lived every one of these festivals. And so did the early Christians, but with a new understanding of them. The Jewish calendar was a portrait of Jesus! This had been hidden in the calendar all along! This was the momentum toward which it had always moved, and it told his story as well as that of the nation’s. And now, because Jesus was the head of the body, it was their story as well: slavery, life-blood, miraculous rescue, freedom. They had been freed from the slavery of Satan, through the voluntary life-blood of the Paschal lamb. They had been miraculously rescued from sin and death, and they now lived by his Spirit as the firstfruits of a new creation. 

So it is not surprising that the early Christians (many of them Jewish) continued to celebrate these Jewish festivals, to keep the story alive and to celebrate what had happened (and continued to be happening) to them. Now, if they were keeping the Jewish festivals in the “old way,” as Paul said, with further limitations and scrupulosity, then this would not be the true Jesus narrative. But we see Paul re-interpreting the Jewish process of making bread in this new light (1 Cor 5:7), as well as taking the old rituals and welcoming new Christians into their new interpretation (1 Cor 7:19, Rom 2:29). 

In its infancy, before the writing of the Gospels and the spread of the epistles, the early church continued to reflect on the Jesus story through the Old Testament Scriptures as its guide to understanding the Christ event. Through mining the Old Testament, a theology emerged that told the Jesus story according to the keys and treasures hidden therein. This is what the apostles did. And in the following generations, so did Melito in Sardis, and Irenaeus as a missionary to France, and Ignatius as he was put in chains and dragged across Asia Minor to Rome for execution. These ancient Hebrew Scriptures with their national feasts and festivals were the key to the early church’s burgeoning theology of Jesus, and to understanding themselves.

We have firm evidence that John the disciple stayed in Jerusalem after Jesus’ ascension, continued celebrating Passover with the Jews, and taught his disciples the inner meaning of the Passover. They kept the Jewish calendar and gloried in all the new ways their Lord was revealed to them through the feasts. When Rome crushed Jerusalem, the exiled Jewish believers took these celebrations with their new understanding around the Roman Empire.

Controversy over the Paschal celebration within the early church resulted from a conflict in calendar. Other Christians celebrated the Paschal mystery on Sunday (the ‘Lord’s Day’), while John and his disciples, fresh from Jerusalem, had been celebrating it on the exact day of Passover (the 14th day of the lunar month) with all the Jews. (They were dubbed the ‘Fourteeners,’ not exactly a term of endearment.) Eventually, the Bishop of Rome became involved and decided to excommunicate all the ‘Fourteeners.’ Aside from unwillingness to live with differences, the most important thing to note here is that the impulse to celebrate, remember, and keep alive the Jesus story not just in hearts but in a calendar was present from the start. The issue seemed important enough to lead to excommunications and division.

As the Christian church matured in its ongoing reflections on Jesus Christ (and therefore upon itself as the body of Christ), festivals of ‘incorporation’ into Christ erupted spontaneously all over the known world. We find Christians in Syria celebrating baptisms in an annual festival, for which long preparations were necessary. The same occurred in North Africa, but on a different date. Italy, Gaul (France), Turkey – everywhere the local church grew, it undertook the celebration of this incredible mystery of becoming part of Christ. These celebrations helped new believers not only prepare to become his body, but also receive his body at the Lord’s table. No one was allowed to the Lord’s table who had not been baptized. This extended beyond converts to the entire church as they structured their own annual calendar around receiving these new members who, in a mysterious way, were now part of each other because they were part of Christ. This corporate preparatory journey varied from place to place, but its Jewish roots are apparent: fasting, prayer, repentance, Scripture, and generosity to the poor. And like the Old Testament festivals, the corporate journey gave birth to the ‘Christian calendar’ – a calendar of festivals of incorporation into Christ.

Before Constantine, the Christian festivals were unregulated and uncoordinated, and their practice reflected local custom and spirituality. The emphasis in North Africa and the West tended to be upon baptism as death and resurrection, or ‘tomb spirituality,’ grounded firmly in Paul’s teachings on baptism. Baptisms in the East, conversely, tended to reflect language of rebirth, or ‘womb spirituality,’ grounded firmly in Jesus’ words to Nicodemus, ‘you must be born again,’ as well as Jesus’ own baptism. The ‘tomb spirituality’ of baptisms in the West eventually found a home around the Paschal weekend of Easter, and the multiple and uncoordinated weeks of preparation became an agreed-upon forty-day time. Athanasius, as bishop in the fourth century, took it upon himself to send an annual letter to all his churches, announcing the day of Easter and the commencement of the preparation season – Lent. The ‘womb spirituality’ of the Eastern churches clustered around January, while the celebration of Christ’s own nativity and baptism centered on Epiphany. These churches also undertook a season of preparation together, which eventually became Advent in the early Middle Ages.

Lent is the long-established way to remember and celebrate our own baptisms. For forty days we walk alongside Jesus as he himself dwelt upon the word just given to him in his baptism from the Father, ‘You are my beloved Son.’ This word gave him strength to resist the devil, as Jesus retorted, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ We too have been given this word in our baptisms. We too are given forty days to feast upon this word, and to repent of all things that compromise our hearing and living into this central reality of who we are in Christ. Fasting might help us, as it did Jesus, to refocus our attention on this central word. Fasting from other words (even our ‘Christian work’ and its call upon our life) might also help us focus on this one most central thing. For those of us in any position of leadership as Christians – scholars, professors, teachers – it is an ongoing temptation to mistake our second identity (our vocation) for our first identity (as beloved in Christ). But if we do this, we are doing the devil’s work, even in the midst of our Christian work.

True Lenten spirituality is not self-flagellation but ridding ourselves of all things that compromise our baptismal identity. This Lent, let us turn to him and have our disordered loves exposed, that we might receive the love of the Father for us, in Christ afresh. The Lenten desert does not exist to expose us, but to heal us.

By Dr. Julie Canlis
Dr. Canlis is liturgical director for Trinity Church, Wenatchee, and an adjunct faculty member at Whitworth University. Her current research focuses on liturgical calendars. She has also previously published two books: A Theology of the Ordinary and Calvin’s Ladder.