Understanding the Church Calendar: Scripture at the Heart of Time. 4.21.2022

    The liturgical year is organized around daily readings from scripture for community “devotion” and weekly readings from scripture to organize Sunday communal worship. In the Restoration movement, we do not use the words “catholic” or “catholicity” nearly enough. These terms speak to the universal intent of Christ. 

 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:20–21 ESV)

    Despite the doctrinal and organizational differences between denominations, it is essential for us to embrace the catholicity (universality) of the Church as the present, visible Kingdom of God. Jesus expects us to be unified around His word. In verse 20 above He refers to the Church throughout the ages which was created by the proclamation of the Gospel and the pursuit of mission which began with those frightened disciples who overheard this prayer. 

    A determined, unified reading of the Bible is not a panacea. The global Christian community pausing to find daily refreshment in a programmed reading of the Bible will not fix all our problems. Generations of theological and organizational nitpicking will not just disappear because of a shared attention to the collective reading of scripture. It is, however, a good place to start.

Regardless of views of history, varieties of calendaring systems, or mechanical conceptions of time. Christians all over the world have organized their days, weeks, months, and years according to the regular reading of the Bible. Measuring time this way predates both the modern calendar and the modern chronograph. You may not be able to time baking a cake this way— “Oh, this recipe calls for me to read aloud the book of Daniel!”—but it has historically been a pretty good way to organize a life. 

Regular reading of Scripture orients us not to the daily vicissitudes of life but to the higher calling of God in Christ Jesus. We will certainly keep time and maintain our daily schedules but slipping beyond the mundane regularly helps to keep our lives in eternal as well as temporal perspective. 

A final note. Clocks and calendars are mechanical control devices. They were designed to give the certainty of fixed control in specific environments. Chronographs were created to allow mariners the ability to coordinate observable celestial phenomena with distance and time to more accurately understand where they were at, an important preliminary to understanding where you are going. Calendars allowed the coordinated activity of individuals in time and distance. It is theoretically possible to be wholly detached from other human beings in time and space. Both calendars and clocks allow us to determine whether this existential detachment is worthwhile. 

Before the invention of these mechanical representations of time existence was ordered around those events or behaviors that were of central importance. For example, farmers plant in spring. They don’t have to know that it is April to know the changing of the seasons. Sleep when it’s dark. Again, this does not require anything beyond simple observation.

Regular, lectionary structured reading of Scripture proceeds as follows:

1. When you get up, read this.

2. When it gets dark, read this one.

3. After you’ve read six iterations, gather and read that.

To those of us who have lived our entire lives by the spinning of the clock or the flipping of the calendar ordering our life around scripture helps us to sacralize time itself and live obediently to Paul’s mandate to redeem the time.