Many Protestant churches adopted the basic church year
calendar of the Catholic Church. It does not seem to mean that it has been a
transition that has sunk its roots well. I like the idea that church does not
even need to follow the secular calendar as it worship the God of all time.
Taken as a whole, the church year is a narrative that follows the course of
Jesus Christ and the church, from beginning to end, from expectation, to birth,
to death, and the movement of the resurrected life. It cycles through year
after year, an emblem of remembrance of milestone events for the church. If one
attends to the readings daily, a three year set of readings allows the Old
Testament to be heard in its entirety, and the New Testament to be read in its
entirety every single year.
We start the church year with a season of dual focus:
Advent. We await the advent, the second arrival of Jesus Christ as the sign
that God’s plans will finally be fulfilled. At the same time, we honor the
arrival of Jesus as a baby in Bethlehem .
It is a complex religious theme: all ending signal new beginnings. So, the
readings point to the dawn of the new age in Christ and its culmination one day
in the future. Older churches hold to the tradition of the Bible, read fully,
that has suffering and hope in a new future are two sides of the same coin. Apocalyptic
readings in Scripture are usually poised within this tension and rarely end on
a note of despair but hope. This marks a cleavage point in America where
newer churches. They tend to try to read
end time material as a timetable started by John Nelson Darby in 1829. They
tend to emphasize a sense that a perceived downhill slide in the world will
push an end, and that God will choose to rescue a few people from cataclysm.
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One of our problems is a collision with the secular
calendar. This year, I have heard Christmas music in stores since Halloween. In
the church calendar, Christmas is a short season that starts at Christmas and
extends in the 12 days of Christmas to Epiphany on January 6. Are we being
grinches if we insist no Christmas music until Christmas? We split the
difference at First Presbyterian and introduce some Christmas song as we near
the date.
A liturgical tempest in a teacup is the color of Advent
candles. The tradition is purple in the Catholic Church, but a number of
Protestant churches have switched for blue. In part, I would guess that purple
is a penitential color and 2 penitential seasons seems excessive to some.
Variety may be at play. The fun comes in assigning symbolic value to the color.
Some see blue as the color of creation itself, sea and sky, or the deep color
of the sky before dawn, so it fits Advent expectancy and waiting. Some see blue
as the color of hope and grace.
I appreciate that Advent becomes a home ritual. Advent
calendars mark the days until Christmas. Advent wreaths appear in some homes as
well as in churches. Some folks read special devotional material every day of
Advent as part of their personal spiritual discipline. (Of course, one can buy
a whiskey Advent calendar). My plea would be that we can use Advent time,
corporately and privately, as a time of spiritual reflection and preparation. If
that time of preparation helps us to consider the passage of time and the
remarkable assertion Christians make about the Incarnation of God’s own 2,000
years ago in Bethlehem, then it is a season well-served.
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