Looking Up – Jesus, King of Our Calendar
Dear Hope Church,
As we come to a new year, many of our thoughts turn away from the feasting and malaise of the weird stretch between Christmas and New Years and toward our goals for 2025. One of the main ingredients needed as we formulate those goals and resolutions is time management. How much time should we spend on professional goals? Or hobbies? Or social engagements? Dare I say church? Where can we cut things out to free up time and how much margin will we have to take on new things? Almost five years ago, a global pandemic forced many of us to drop most of our time-consuming commitments. However you feel about that dark period, one thing we could all agree on was that once we were freed from these commitments it became clear just how busy we all were. And yet here we are again, heading into 2025 at a breakneck pace with no signs of slowing down.
Last month I wrote about practicing Advent as an antidote for the hectic pace of the holiday season. I argued that we didn’t need another practice to add into our already over-crowded schedules, but we needed a reorientation to the season, a reordering of our priorities. All our attention and energy seemed to be focused in one way, and we needed to shift it in order to save our minds and souls from burning out. This is not just the case during December – it’s true all the time. For thousands of years, Christians have used the church calendar to reorient themselves away from the conforming demands of the world and towards the freedom offered in living a cruciform life, or a life centrally marked by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Many of these practices (such as Lent and Holy Week) can be dated back to the first and second centuries, and the idea as a whole is modelled after God’s commandments for worship to Israel detailed in Exodus and Leviticus. God’s people have always found benefit in ordering their worshipping life around rhythms of fasting and feasting that rehearse the story of redemption year after year so that it seeps into our souls and forms us into the kind of people who live for a kingdom not of this world.
The church year follows two cycles and begins with Advent. The first cycle, the cycle of light, takes us through Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphany. We will enter Epiphany on January 6 and spend time reflecting on the revelation of the incarnate Christ to the world until we reach Ash Wednesday and Lent. Ash Wednesday kicks off the cycle of life, spanning Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost. In this period, we remember the ministry of Christ leading up to his crucifixion, his resurrection, and the sending of his Spirit to dwell in his people and guide his church. Pentecost lasts until Christ the King Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent when we begin the year anew.
As we trace the life of Christ and his church throughout the year, we do several things. First, we announce that Jesus is King of our time, our calendar, our schedule. And if Jesus is King of our time, the school year is not, financial quarters are not, the football season is not. Second, we live as people of the resurrection who are not burdened by the demands of death. Because death is not the end, because we await a kingdom where peace will reign forever, we can be generous with our time and our lives. We don’t have to squeeze every productive ounce out of every day to maximize our lives at the expense of sabbath and community. Third, we allow ourselves to be formed by the life of Christ, by the wisdom of his church and of the saints who have come before us as we step into a story greater than ourselves. We begin to see life in the body of Christ not as a story about us, but where we can fit our little lives into the greater story of God’s mission.
Blessings to all as we begin a New Year together by living out this story!
Wilson