Understanding the Church Calendar: Fence or Ladder? 4.7.2022

    Free Church protestants of mine and similar tribes do not commonly follow the Church year. Consequently, there are many otherwise common practices we must re-invent every year. While our approach enforces one level of discipline there is much to learn from the liturgical tradition which stretches back nearly 1900 years. 

    Let’s begin this discussion by talking about literacy. In the “west” we enjoy the privilege of near-universal literacy. This impacts the way you and I preach and the way we engage in other direct forms of teaching and pastoral ministry. It is not infrequent for us to address an issue raised by a member of our Church, an attendee, or a seeker by encouraging them to “look up such and such a scripture.” And then discuss it with us. For much of Christian history, and even today in vast portions of the world, this was not and is not possible. Let’s historicize a bit. If this hypothetical exchange took place 1000 years ago in most Christian regions of the time our interlocutor is more than likely illiterate. He may have natural talent and have what we would call a high IQ, but unless he was a part of the aristocracy he likely could not read. Also, being a peasant, he could no more own a Bible than he could a unicorn. The rich could barely afford them, much less the peasant class. 

    To live when we do, where we do is a privilege and privileges have responsibilities. In the past, the Church could not extend the privileges of universal education or provide Bibles for the illiterate masses, but it could act responsibly so that the faithful knew the basics of their faith. 

    

    The Church used two basic tools to help the faithful know and understand their faith. The calendar and the lectionary. Today we will talk about the former and reserve the lectionary for another essay. 

    As I mentioned at the start, we free-church protestants don’t typically follow the historic Church calendar. We do dabble in it, however, inasmuch we celebrate Christmas and Easter according to the Western Church Calendar. 

    For most of human history, most people were illiterate and illtemporate (I may be coining that phrase in this essay). This is to say that they not only could not read or write, but they largely could also not locate themselves chronologically. With no mechanical way to keep the time they regulated their lives by the rise and setting of the sun and the coming and going of the seasons.  The peasant classes in society have always been dependent on some aristocratic or priestly class to tell us the time. Early in its history, because so much of the gospel story hinges on when something occurred, as well as where, and what occurred, the Church formalized means for Christians everywhere to locate themselves in relation to the world through the Word of God and sacred worship. 

    So, for a great many Christians, Advent gives way to Christmas. Christmas yields to Epiphany. Epiphany leads us to Lent. Lent prepares us to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection at Easter. Easter puts the coming of Pentecost into context. Pentecost shifts into a few months of ordinary time, bringing us around once again to Advent. 

    When this temporal structure was combined with regular lectionary readings on both a daily and weekly basis the Church provided a means for the poor and illiterate to know and understand the faith to the best of their natural ability. This combination of sacred calendar and sacred word helped locate the pilgrim community in time and space.  If our hypothetical, pious peasant was able to attend regular weekly worship, he participated in a worship environment impregnated with scripture. If he was able to join in daily worship, he benefited even more. If he had a particularly attentive parson, he might even hear quality expositions of scripture. 

    It is true that this system was far from perfect. It relied on clergy who may or may not have really cared or who were inattentive to the readings. For most, the readings would have been in Latin. However, if you listened to the Bible read in Latin for 15-20 years you likely understood much of what was read. This system of “Word and World” still undergirds the worship of Billions of Christians of various stripes to this very day.

    My tribe doesn’t really participate in this historic structuring of sacred time and space. It is not how we “do Church.” I am where I am and minister as I do because I agree with our doctrine, practice, and churchmanship. I can, however, learn from others, and recognize their strengths. Where others draw strength from practices developed over two millennia many of us, far too many of us, for all intents and purposes reinvent the wheel every Sunday of every week of every year. We determine our own way of setting aside time through the regular reading of the Scriptures. We create denominational or congregational traditions to recreate boundary markers we associate with the doctrinally suspect. We recreate institutions that were functional and Biblical because we reject ancillary details which do not affect spiritual or doctrinal faithfulness. And we do so this very selectively.  As I noted before, we don’t suggest alternative dates for Christmas or Easter. And virtually every one of us worships on the Lord’s Day.  We just ignore, marginalize, or reconceptualize everything else. Rather than use the proven tools of shared Christian history we commit acts of liturgical piracy and waste time and energy reduplicating structures that work and pretending that our pretense is innovation. 

    

    Like all the “modern” tools we discussed last month the Church Calendar and historic lectionaries are tools. Tools that can help us leverage our time, talent, and treasure to do the best job of ministry that we can. You may not use any of these tools in the pulpit but that does not mean that you, the preacher, should not benefit from them. 

    The entire concept of regular, daily, planned reading is the very definition and heart of Christian liturgy and has been for 2000 years. We don't call it that but that is what it is. You can pretend that you invented it, but you are wrong. Christians have been doing this for centuries. Virtually every "read the Bible through in a year" plan begins with or began with one lectionary plan or another. YouVersion has deluded us into thinking that our very own, personal, “new reading plan” is some kind of a revolution. Nope. 

    Many of the practices left abandoned by the Reformation and later by my own Restoration movement were discarded because they were perceived to be fences. Fences that limited our ability to be authentic in expressing our faith, or which prevented us from being entirely Biblical in our outlook. The result far too often is that our outlook becomes provincial and our authenticity nothing more than shallow, narrow, and mossy. Rather than considering something as prosaic as the Church calendar as a fence perhaps we should start to see it as a ladder that helps us to climb out of the shallows and beyond those mossy narrows of our own self-limiting traditions.