WHAT IS THE CHURCH YEAR? PART ONE
Photo courtesy of the author.
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a two-part series expanding our Christianity 101 offerings with a discussion of the church year. Check back on Friday to read the second part!
"What is the church year?"
The church year (sometimes called the liturgical year) is how Christians mark time from year to year. Like a regular calendar year, the church year has distinct seasons and special days. Most of the main seasons and holidays revolve around specific events in Jesus’s earthly life. For example, well-known days like Christmas and Easter are celebrations of significant events in Jesus's life: respectively, his birth and God raising Him from the dead. Some days and seasons, however, aren’t directly connected to an event in Jesus’s earthly life, but to the story of God’s saving work with humanity that stretches back to the beginning of time. The longest season, for example, is Ordinary Time (or Season After Pentecost), which invites Christians to focus on how the Holy Spirit, given by Jesus, grows us into Christlikeness. From start to finish, the liturgical year tells Jesus’s story--with particular emphasis on his life, death, resurrection--and invites Christians to hear, inhabit, and respond to that story. (See below for a list of the major seasons and what they're about.)
A person's planner or calendar indicates what events and activities they care about. What major life events are worth celebrating? What breaks or vacations are worth planning for? Similarly, the liturgical year is how Christians, individually and communally, remember and observe the events that matter most for our faith, indeed, for our lives! But it's more than a daily planner, marking things we need to do. The church year is a devotional calendar that Christians follow to order their lives around Jesus Christ's own life.
"Is there a biblical precedent for observing the church year?"
The New Testament does not prescribe or outline the church year. Nevertheless, the earliest Christians belonged to Jewish communities. So, like many things in the Christian life, the church year's roots are in Jewish spirituality.
In the Old Testament, God instructs Israel to memorialize specific actions by "reenacting" them year after year. For instance, when God is about to set Israel free from Egypt, God sets the date of liberation to be the beginning of the new year (Exodus 12:1-2, 14-20). For Israel, their new year is not based primarily on the movement of the sun, moon, stars, or natural seasons. Instead, Israel's new year begins when they celebrate God liberating them from their oppression in Egypt. Each new year they remember God's act of setting Israel free with the Festival of Unleavened Bread and the day of Passover. Throughout the Old Testament, we learn that the Jewish people had many special days and events throughout the year, commemorating their relationship with God.
The church's practice of keeping a liturgical year based on Christ's saving actions flows from this biblical tradition. As the Jewish liturgical year follows the plot of Israel's story with God, the Christian church's year memorializes the story of Christ. It's important to note that these are not two different stories. As theologian Robert Jenson puts it, "God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt.” (1) The church year flows out of the Jewish year, not as a replacement to God's story with Israel, but as a continuation of that story.
"How were the dates and traditions of the church year established?"
The history of the church year is not an easy one to trace. It seems that the church year's basic structure was in place quite early, maybe even by the second century. But uncovering the reasons behind even the most critical holy days or certain beloved traditions can be frustratingly difficult, if not impossible.
Let's take Christmas Day as an example. The New Testament does not give us a specific date upon which Jesus was born. Historians disagree about whether data from the New Testament (like shepherds tending their flocks at night) confirm or reject a winter birth. And the events described surrounding Jesus's birth are not specific enough to deduce a date from them.
So, how did we end up celebrating Christ's birth on December 25th? Was it chosen to supplant (or accommodate) a popular pagan religious celebration that happened around the same time? Was it decided because it is just after the winter solstice when the light starts to overthrow the darkness, symbolizing Christ's own overthrow of darkness? Or was it chosen because December 25th is nine months after March 25th, a date that the early church associated with the world's creation, Christ's conception, and Christ's crucifixion? All these theories have been suggested by historians and theologians; all of them have been disputed.
Anyone who wrestles with the question of "how" the church year developed must start by recalling that the church year is first and foremost a tool for discipleship. The church year was not created primarily as a tool of historical record keeping. And, especially before Christianity's dominance in the Roman Empire in the fourth century, it's unlikely that the main aim of setting holy days was to displace the dominant religious customs. It's probably safest to assume the dates were primarily adopted because they were consistent with prevalent theological traditions and aided in Christians in becoming more like Christ.
"How does the church year aid in discipleship?"
Paul writes to Christians in Rome, saying, "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Romans 12:1-2). Here, "this world" is Paul's codeword for those creatures (human and spiritual powers alike) who are living under the power of sin – that is, rebellion against God's loving will and purposes. Conforming to the "pattern of this world" means adopting its habits, ways of thinking, and rhythms. Paul tells the Christian community not to conform to that pattern, which implies that there is another pattern more fitting for Christians.
What is the other pattern? It is Jesus Christ, especially the pattern of his life, death, and resurrection. In baptism, Christians are baptized into Christ's death and raised into Christ's new life (Romans 6). We are supposed to be "conformed" to the "image of God's Son" (Romans 8:29). Christ intends to dwell in us, and we are invited to dwell in him. By dwelling in Christ, we give Christ freedom to shape, renew, and transform us according to his own likeness. Christ patterns our life in more than one way. His teaching patterns our way of thinking, his actions pattern our behaviors, and his death and resurrection patterns our hope for the present and the future.
The church year is one way Christians try to allow Christ to pattern their own lives. The rhythm of Christ's story becomes our annual rhythm. Like people prepare for and respond to the changing seasons, the church prepares for and responds to Christ’s story. Christ's story becomes the guiding story of our daily devotion and weekly worship.
Particularly formative is the way the church year confronts us with disciplines we'd rather neglect. Advent comes round, and we hear John the Baptist calling us to prepare the way for Christ to come. We hear him once again and know that we must confess and turn from our sins, even if we do not want to. Lent shows up, and Jesus invites us to join him in the wilderness, fasting and experiencing hunger for forty days even when we’d rather keep living in comfort. These disciplines can and often do fall by the wayside because they’re difficult and discomforting. The liturgical year, however, challenges us to root our spiritual practices in a biblical rhythm, reminding us throughout the year that fully welcoming Jesus into our own lives involves even self-denying disciplines like regular confession and fasting.
Perhaps the best way the church calendar aids discipleship is that it shifts our understanding of time itself. As Maxwell E. Johnson writes, "The liturgical year, through feast and fast, through festival and preparation, celebrates the presence of the already crucified and risen Christ among us 'now!' as we remember what he did 'once and for all' (Hebrews 10:10) and as we await his coming again.” (2) The church year aids in discipleship by helping the church see that each minute, each day, each week, each month, and each year is a time when Christ is with us. People commonly use economic terms for talking about time. We spend, save, or buy time. Time feels mostly like a resource that we use to get what we want out of life. The church year helps us reimagine time. No longer is time a resource necessary for doing something, it’s the gracious gift of God within which we encounter Jesus Christ, the one through whom all things were made in the beginning and in whom all things will be made complete in the end.
