Learning From The Green Man

On a recent walk in the park Dave stumbled upon this excellently crafted sculpture. There was no plaque to say what it was an who carved it but he immediately thought of the Green Man.

The image of the Green Man is a bit of a mystery, for it is found all over the world. The usual form the image takes is a face surrounded by leaves. Some people believe that the Green Man represents new birth in the spring. Recently, Wicans have taken him on board as the Horned God, but that is likely to be a modern construct. Because of this interpretation a few eyebrows are raised amongst our Christian friends when they see a face surrounded by ivy peering out from the side of one of our apple trees. We would not be surprised if some did not think of us as being closet pagans. Our answer is that to us the Green Man is a type of Christ. He is the one though whom God made the world (Collosians 1:16). He is the one who sustains it by his power (Hebrews 1:3) Looking on the Green Man reminds us that whatever humans do to nature and the environmet, ultimately Christ is in control. When we see the Green Man we see the Christ of nature.

Of course, Green Man images adorn our medieval churches. On our pilgrimage around old churches Dave is usually off on a Green Man hunt. Some are high up in stone, some low down on misericordes, some inside and some outside. Vary rarely is he disappointed.

The theory is that early on the Church in the British Isles realised that rather than attacking pagan practice it should seek ways of integrating it into its own teaching and worship whilst at the same time being true to its own teaching. This integration came in the form of appropriating sacred places and imagery giving the early evangelist a starting point for their mission.

It may be argued that the Church today finds itself in a similar position. The need, therefore, is to identify things in modern society that can prove useful in getting the message of Gospel across to all those who seldom see the inside of a church. That will require a lot of soul searching and a lot of openness on the part of Christians, just as it did with our Christian forebears. There has to be a willingness to change. Can we do it? Well it has been done before. We need to learn the lesson of the Green Man.


See: Mike Harding, The Mystery of the Green Man