(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Happy New Year, Seasons 1”, originally shared on December 4, 2021. It was the 169th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
Happy New Year! That’s right. We began a new
Church Year last Sunday. We started a New Year five weeks before the New Year.
How does that work? Why doesn’t the Church have
the same year as everybody else? Do I need to buy another calendar? Today we’re
going to find out.
We celebrated Thanksgiving Day last week, so Happy Thanksgiving! It’s
everybody’s favorite holiday because there is so little that is expected of us
except to provide a meal, focus on the people we share it with, to give God
thanks, to have an attitude of gratitude, and to express our thanksgiving with
thanks living. But we’re not going to talk about that today. We’re going to
celebrate last Sunday’s New Year’s Day!
Last Sunday, the Church began a new year. Not the hats and horns kind. A
new Church Year, AKA a new liturgical year.
“Liturgical” refers to the way we do our worship. All churches are
liturgical if they have an “order of worship”. Typically, these include formal
acts of engagement with God including such things as repentance, confession and
forgiveness, readings from the Bible, a sermon, remembrance, prayer, praise,
and thanksgiving.
Most churches include these elements within the same structure that
Jesus used in the synagogue where he grew up at Nazareth: gathering, word, and
sending. The Christian Church that followed Jesus’ death, resurrection, and
ascension into heaven added Holy Communion or, “meal”. Otherwise, it is the same.
When Jesus began his public ministry, the first thing he did was to
teach in the synagogues of his home region of Galilee. When he came to his
hometown, we see the electrifying “word” portion of his contribution to the
synagogue’s worship service, that begins with Luke 4:14-20,
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up,
he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to
read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was
given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s
favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the
attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on
him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this
scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The portion of Acts that describes the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of
the Church, ends with this description of the response of 3,000 people from all
over the world who were baptized on that single day, in Acts 2:42,
42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching
and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Even Paul’s description of the spiritually exuberant early days of the
Church in Paul’s instructions for worship, end with these words, in 1
Corinthians 14:40,
40 but all things should be done decently and in order.
In the pre-Christian Greek world “liturgy” meant a religious service
offered by a rich patron. In the Christian world, it became the work of the
people. Worship is directed toward God. So, Soren Kierkegaard, the 19 century
Danish philosopher and theologian, once observed that the question to ask
oneself after a liturgical worship service is not, “What did I get out of
that?”, but “How did I do?”
Liturgical worship is not about us. It’s about God and about life with
God.
The liturgical calendar is structured to help us live that life.
I saw a picture of a liturgical colander a while ago. It was a colander
built with the colors of the liturgical seasons. Do you know what a colander
is? It strains out what you don’t want and leaves what you need.
The liturgical calendar not only measures time, but it also concentrates
it and infuses it with meaning.
Worship in the Christian Church has themes and colors and cycles and
seasons, and if you worship regularly, you’re used to seeing things change
throughout the year, including the colors that, like leaves on trees, signal
the seasons. The fabric paraments that decorate the altar, pulpit, reading desk
and other places, and the stoles worn by pastors are made with the colors of
each season.
The liturgical year is divided into two parts: the time of Christ and
the time of the Church.
The first half has two cycles: No, not a bicycle and not a motorcycle.
The kind that is a complete set of things.
These two cycles are the Christmas Cycle and the Easter Cycle.
Each cycle is divided into three seasons:
a season to prepare for the main
event,
a season for the event, and
a season to reflect on what the
event means.
The Christmas Cycle begins with Advent. It’s the season of preparation.
Christmas Day is fixed at December 25th and Advent starts four
Sundays before Christmas Day. This year, that’s November 28th, last
Sunday. It’s the beginning of a new liturgical year.
Advent means “coming”. What’s coming? Christmas.
Many churches place an Advent wreath in their worship space with four
candles, each with a significance related to the coming Christmas season, such
as Prophecy, Bethlehem, Shepherds, and Angels, and they light them to count the
Sundays to Christmas. Some people do the same at their dinner tables and they light
the candle/s appropriate for the week in Advent at the main meal.
Many homes post an advent calendar counting the days to Christmas.
Sometimes these have a small gift or a piece of chocolate behind each day’s
window.
The color for Advent is blue. It’s a royal color and a color for hope.
People hoped for the birth of a deliverer for about 1,000 years, and then Jesus
was born. Christians believe that Jesus will return to judge the living and the
dead in his second advent, or “coming”.
We prepare to celebrate both during Advent, the season of preparation.
Then comes Christmas Day, the birth of Jesus as both fully God and fully
human being, and a brief Christmas Season, a celebration of the event itself.
Jesus is born and we celebrate the fact that God keeps God’s promises, even if
it seems to us to take a very long time. Christmas-eve is technically in
Advent, but it can be thought of as a part of Christmas because, in liturgical
time, the day begins at what we would call sundown the day before something.
The color changes to white to express the purity of Jesus, and the bands
of cloth with which he was wrapped and placed in a feeding trough when he was
born. The “Christ Candle” is lit as a sign that the light has overcome the
darkness.
The Christmas Season lasts 12 days (as in the song “The Twelve Days of
Christmas”, i.e. “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…”) Fun
fact: if you want to buy each of the gifts in that song, it’s going to cost you
$41,205.58 this year.
Christmas ends on Christmas Day for most of the world. By New Year’s
Day, the lights are down, and the tree has been either put into storage or into
the recycling bin. Christians celebrate Christmas for 12 days, until January 6th.
January 6th is the Day of The Epiphany, the first day of the
Epiphany season (or, the Time after The Epiphany), the season that reflects on
the meaning of the event itself. “Epiphany” means in-breaking. It focuses on
what it means that Jesus, the light of the world, has entered the world.
Have you ever seen a cartoon where a character has some problem to
solve? They think and think and think and then suddenly, what appears over
their head? A light bulb! That’s an epiphany.
The color of the Epiphany season is green for new life and the evergreen
promise of the Christ Child.
The liturgical colander reminds us to let our living relationship with
the one true living God, our faith, feed us. And to strain out all the evil
that this past year has brought.
The liturgical calendar reminds us that time is a creation of God, it is
in God’s hands, and that it has meaning that has been made known to us in Jesus
Christ. This year, the year 2021/2022, I am especially thankful for that.
Today, we took a journey through the Christmas Cycle. Next time, we’re
going to explore the mysteries of the Easter Cycle and celebrate a
birthday!
I’m happy that God has brought us to another year of worship and service
as we await the already but not yet Reign of God.
Happy New Year!
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