Nothing New Under the Sun[rise Service]

Sunrise services are a common tradition among many.

Let's just take a quick moment to look at the only "Sunrise Service" recorded in scripture and why there is a tradition of something like this in Christianity today.

While there is practically no mention of any of the religious holidays or practices celebrated by Christians today in scripture, this one does actually appear. It's just not how you think.

The passage that we are going to examine is Ezekiel chapter 8. For those who haven't read it or who are not familiar with it: God gives Ezekiel a vision of what the hearts and actions of the people of Israel show about their worship of God. It is a condemnation of both what they do and what they are thinking, and lists a growing (both in number and severity) collection of sins. The entire passage is very interesting, but I'm just going to pull out the relevant statement to this time of year.

From verse 5 to verse 17 is a list of the sins taking place in Israel.
At each step along the way Ezekiel is told that what he would see next would be even more abominable than what came before. It starts with an "image of jealousy" within Jerusalem, moves onward to some of the leaders of the people secretly offering sacrifice to idols, and then it gets worse to have the women of the nation engaged in the ritual worship of the pagan deity Tammuz (Click here for a description of Tammuz and the noted worship).
So, we've gone through all of those obvious sins, and now we've come to the last in the list, the one God calls more hated in His sight than any before.

^{Eze 8:15-17a
15} Then said he unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? turn thee yet again, and thou shalt see greater abominations than these.
¹⁶ And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east.
¹⁷ Then he said unto me, Hast thou seen this, O son of man? Is it a light thing to the house of Judah that they commit the abominations which they commit here?

Here we have the one description in scripture of a "Sunrise Service."
Now, of course someone is going to say to me, "how do you know it's sunrise?" That's easy. When is the sun positioned in the East? When it is rising. Additionally, the act of worshiping the sun as it is rising is a well-documented pagan practice.

And I also know that someone will say that these things are not the same and shouldn't be compared.
But let's ask ourselves why Christians even have something called a "Sunrise Service."
The tradition of doing this is derived from the Catholic and Orthodox "Easter Vigil," but was modified into something that didn't include the hours long liturgy. The point of doing it at sunrise is to commemorate Christ "rising with the sun" as many view the tale of Easter.

There's problems with that narrative though.
First, it is a slightly modified version of the Catholic practice. A simple look at the Catholic practices associated with Easter will show the multitude of Pagan elements appropriated for the Christian festival in order to help convert Pagans. Most of the emblems associated with Easter are derived from these sources. Bunnies and eggs are incredibly well-documented fertility symbols (and still accepted and used by Protestants and Baptists). The Catholic practice of "hot crossed buns" is further condemned in scripture (Jer 7:18) as being nothing more than the appropriation of the worship of the "Queen of Heaven" (a name they have stolen to give to Mary). The adoption of a practice that mirrors sun worship is very obvious here. So, why would anyone want to copy this?
The bigger problem for this is that the only reason someone might want to make such a service would be to fit the idea that Christ "rose with the sun," but that's just not scriptural (no matter how many people think it).

Jesus was risen before the sun ever came up. The Gospels are explicit on this. Some may be confused by the ordering of the verses in Mt 28, since it mentions the women coming to the tomb about the time of the dawn before it mentions the stone rolling away, but when looked at carefully, you can see that when they arrived the angel said He was already gone. Mark 16:2 states that they came at the time of the rising of the sun and He was already gone. Further, Jn 20:1 says that it was still dark as they got there (so, as the dawn was beginning) and He was gone.
So, scripture itself proves that Jesus did not "rise with the sun," and so the practice of claiming to emulate it by the timing of service has no biblical merit.

Most people ignore the blatant pagan roots of practices associated with Easter. They would say that "we mean something different by them" and that therefore their intention makes the act itself clean. This is little more than an argument that the ends justify the means. The exact same people who use this argument would be repulsed by it being used in other circumstances, and applying it consistently across areas other than this would lead to atrocity. Others like to take the argument from silence and say that since the things involved in these practices aren't condemned explicitly, they can be allowed. That argument also doesn't hold water scripturally, but we can deal with that another time.
The end result of this though is that many Christians, indeed; churches themselves, are planning for a religious service that is patterned after something explicitly condemned in scripture. Neither the argument of intention nor the argument from silence can whitewash something God has made clear is abominable in His sight.

This tradition, just like most traditions, is never questioned. No one examines the merits of it and sees if it fits with the word of God. Whether it be because it is something that is assumed to be "Christian" because so many do it, the happy memories associated with the great emotion of the event, the support of all the godly and wise people that also take part in it, or any other factor; all that matters is what God says about His worship.
No "tradition" should be held above approach. If it can't be proven from the word of God, then it is suspect at best.

If nothing else, it is my desire that Christians would look at the traditions that they hold to (or the new ones that so many are adopting as more and more are adding in additional Catholic days and rites - like Maundy Thursday, Palm Sunday, and the like) and look at the word of God. If you can verify something by the weight of the word of God, then it is good and proper, if not, it has no place in the worship of God.

For more points on the problems with the Easter narrative click here.