170 Happy New Year, Seasons 2

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Happy New Year, Seasons 2”, originally shared on December 6, 2021. It was the 170^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We celebrated a new year last time. No, not the stay-up-until-midnight kind. A new Church Year, AKA a new liturgical year. We discovered why the Church celebrates a new year five weeks before everyone else.

   We took a journey on a cycle last time, no not the kind you ride, the Christmas Cycle. Today, we’re going to explore the mysteries of the Easter Cycle and celebrate a birthday!

   Happy St. Nicholas Day! Today is a day in the Church Year calendar when we remember Nicholas Bishop of Myra, who died around the year 342. Called St. Nicholas by some Christians, he is the origin of Santa Clause. In many cultural traditions, children put out their shoes the night before December 6^th, and wake up to find candy and small gifts in them. Sort of a foretaste of the Christmas feast to come.

   Last time we learned that almost all Christians have some kind of “liturgical” worship.

   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.

   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, the time of Christ is made up of two cycles: 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 itself, and

a season to reflect on what the event means.

   Last time, we looked at the Christmas Cycle. For example, Advent prepares us for Christmas, and Epiphany helps us reflect on what Christmas means, and each season has its own color reflecting the mood and meaning of the season. Today, we’re going to look at the Easter Cycle and we’ll celebrate the Birthday of the Church.

   The Easter Cycle begins with Lent, its season of preparation. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday and continues for the 40 days (excluding Sundays, which are like little Easters) until Easter Sunday. Lent is a somber season, focused on the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. It is a time of preparation, through acts of self-denial or additional acts of service, that prepare us for Holy Week and Easter, the torture and death of Jesus on the cross for the sins of all humanity and his resurrection, his taking his life back again on Easter.

   The color of Lent is purple. Purple is a color associated with royalty, largely because the dye used to make it was so expensive. Soldiers put a purple robe on Jesus during his torture and humiliation before his crucifixion, to mock him as the obviously pathetic “king of the Jews” that he appeared to them to be.

   Lent comes to its peak during Holy Week. Holy Week begins with Palm/Passion Sunday, and the color is red as a reference to the blood that Jesus shed in his torture and crucifixion.

   Easter Sunday (The Resurrection of Our Lord) is anticipated with The Three Days that come before it: Maundy Thursday (Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, the beginning of Holy Communion, and the giving of a new commandment: to love one another as Jesus had loved them), Good Friday (the crucifixion of Jesus; bad for Jesus but good for the world), and Holy Saturday (the final preparations for Easter, and the bridge to Easter Day). This is the climax of the liturgical year and Easter Day is the great celebration. Good Friday is the main event. Easter is the event that validates it. But it is necessary to validate it.

   Paul writes, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-26, in a passage that ends with a verse that will be familiar to Harry Potter fans,

Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, ² through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.

³ For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, ⁴ and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. ⁹ For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰ But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. ¹¹ Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.

¹² Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; ¹⁴ and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. ¹⁵ We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. ¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

²⁰ But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. ²¹ For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; ²² for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. ²³ But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. ²⁴ Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 

   The Easter Season follows to reflect on the meaning and implications of the death and resurrection of Jesus for our lives, now and forever. It ends on the Day of Pentecost, Greek for 50, that commemorates 50 days (7 Sundays) from Easter. It was 50 days from the Jewish first fruits festival in which the Holy Spirit was given to the church in fulfillment of Jesus promise in Luke’s book of Acts, the first chapter, verses 4-5.

   After summarizing Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances, Luke writes,

⁴ While staying with them, he ordered them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father. “This,” he said, “is what you have heard from me; ⁵ for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”

   This is the birthday of the Church. The color of the Easter season is white for the purity of Jesus, the victory that washed away our sin, and the clothes that were left behind after Jesus’ resurrection, except for the last Sunday of Easter, Pentecost Sunday, which is red for the tongues of fire that appeared over each apostle’s head as they spoke to the crowds.

   The second half, approximately, of the liturgical year starts with the time after the Day of Pentecost.

   The Time of Pentecost follows, sometimes marked as the Sundays after Pentecost, and technically not a season. Sometimes it’s called the Time of the Church as a time to reflect on what it means to be the Church.

   The color for this time is green for growth.

   And that, with a few odd holidays and festivals here and there throughout the liturgical year, takes us back to Advent and the beginning of a new Church Year. The liturgical year is a full-year cycle that fills life not only with days, but with meaning.

   Approximately half of the liturgical year is the Christmas and Easter cycles, and half of the liturgical year is the time after the Day of Pentecost.

   In fact, I think that one could take a macro view and see the whole year as a single Cycle with the Christmas cycle as the preparation for Easter as the main event and the Time after Pentecost as the time to reflect on what the death and resurrection of Jesus means for us.

   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.

   And, I’m happy that God has brought us to another year of worship and service as we await the perfection of the already but not yet Reign of God.

   Happy New Year!