Lessons in the Liturgy: Part 3–It helps mark time until Christ returns

The liturgical calendar and the liturgy that flows from it helps Christians to mark time until Christ returns. They are a way to make sure that God’s arrow-down forgiveness of sins service happens on every Lord’s Day; partially, because they tap into an element of our human nature: time and the keeping of time.

Humans look back, look around, and look ahead. We are “timeful creatures,” according to Stanley Hauerwas. Everything we do is bound up in time: civil calendars, fiscal years, academic semesters, sports seasons, birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, etc. And with those times come rituals. One pastor I know likes to point out the vast amount of liturgical ritual surrounding sport, in America and abroad. The standing and sitting. The cheering. The music. The right thing done at the right time. We are not without a natural sense of time and ritual.

Even time itself is divinely ordained. God established our seven day week as he created the universe and everything in it with that refrain, “the first day…the second day…the third day, etc.” He established days and weeks and months and years on day four.

This is who we are. And having a Christian Church year, a liturgical calendar, seasons of Christ, constantly connects us to the most important time there is: God’s time. The liturgical calendar helps make 2014 (or 2015, 2016, etc.) A.D. truly Anno Domini – the year of the Lord. For then, the Christmas season is more than about deals and the Easter season more than about bunnies and eggs and Thanksgiving more than about Black Friday and Epiphany more than about the Super Bowl.

This calendar of days and seasons in the Church does more than mark time; it makes Christians because it proclaims Christ. It schools worshipers, teaching them about Jesus: his coming (Advent), his life (Epiphany, Lent), his suffering and death (Holy Week), his resurrection (Easter), the sending of his Spirit to give birth to the Church and preserve his Church (Pentecost and its season), his coming again to judge the living and the dead (End Times, Advent).

Think again of Jesus’ words at the first communion, “Do this in remembrance of me.” And then Paul passing on to the Corinthians what he received from Christ, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26).  “Until he comes.” Every Lord’s Day, every observance of the Sacrament, every preaching of the Word prepares us for that, reminds us of that, helps us get through the terrible crosses and burdens and sorrows that try to divert us from fixing our eyes on that: “Until he comes!”

We need this to fight the other calendars vying to eliminate Christ from our lives: the Halloweens and Black Fridays and Christmases in July, Christmas sales and parties, Valentine’s Day, Easter bunnies, Mother’s Day, back to school sales, etc. So much of this, innocuous as it may be, shapes us in such dramatically terrible ways. We need a pedagogue, a guide, a teacher. The Christian Calendar, with its liturgical celebrations, with its days and seasons, its rituals and gestures, its appointed lessons and hymns helps do this counter-cultural teaching, because it takes us away from us and towards Christ, Christ for me, Christ returning for me! “Until he comes!”

And we need this, for as St. Augustine said, “My heart is restless, until it rests in you.” And the Liturgical Calendar and liturgical worship can help center Christians and rest them upon Christ. And not just by the clever use of symbols or behavioral training. It is so much different from a pep rally or a sporting event where the crowd cries out “Defense!” when the electronic screen shows them a “D” and a picket fence. It is no mere Pavlovian exercise where we drool when the bell rings.

For if it’s only symbol seen and done on Sunday, why keep going once you’ve deciphered it? And if it’s just behavioral training, how is that any different than brain-washing? But the Word fills those symbols, rituals, and gestures (here I am not talking about Baptism and Communion, for they are no mere symbols, rituals, or gestures, they are God’s tools and instruments communicating to us forgiveness and eternal life; here I mean those liturgical elements that surround the preaching of the Word and administering of the Sacraments). Those symbols proclaim the Word, they bring to mind and remind you of the Word you have heard, the Word you have been washed in, and the Word you have fed upon in the Sacrament. The vestments, the motions, the gestures, the altars stripped, the banners removed and returned. They communicate Christ (and if they don’t they must go!). And the Spirit creates new behaviors, he begins this work in you, he moves you “to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil. 2:13).

And more, it’s not just symbolic ritual and gesture, which we could take or leave according to time and place, but there is the powerful Word of God, present in the reading of the Word, the singing of the Word, the preaching of the Word, and the visible Word at Font and Altar. This Word, which the liturgical calendar and liturgical service inundates people with, is powerful, living and active, Hebrews says, is able to give us a new birth, Peter says. And so that Word forms you. Shapes you. Molds you. It gives you birth and rebirth as you are shown your disorder (sin) and God’s order (new life in Christ!), as you are reminded of “what the first Adam did to us” and what “the second Adam does for us” (Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Time, pgs. 106-107).

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Again, as the Spirit says in Scripture and as the Lutheran Church concurs, the use of this calendar and these rites and rituals we call liturgy do not justify you. Your church’s worship may look different than mine. It can look different from mine. You might sing different hymns and use different rites and wear different vestments and clothes. Nor is it merely a matter of doing what the church has “always done.”

And yet, at the same time, recognize that these days and seasons, these ritual gestures and ceremonies, these rites and orders that have been added to the simple preaching of the Word and administration of the Sacraments, have stood the test of time. They have been used on every continent by every culture for centuries and millennia. They work, not because of any magical property, but because they too proclaim the Word, and as Paul says, “Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).

These calendars and rites have carried God’s Law and Gospel through the darkest ages of the Church, preserving faith in the most works-righteous atmospheres. In other words, they do the job. The job that the Church is supposed to do:

“I resolved to know nothing while I was with you, except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).

“Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified” (Gal. 3:1).

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David.  This is my gospel” (2 Timothy 2:8).

“He must become greater; I must become less” (John 3:30).

“Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:21, KJV).