The Christian Year: A Guide for Worship and Preaching - Softcover

Wallace, Robin Knowles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1426703007 ISBN 13: 9781426703003

Publisher: Abingdon Press, 2011

Synopsis

In this concise guide, Dr. Knowles Wallace gives practical worship and preaching suggestions for each season of the Christian year as it relates to the Revised Common Lectionary. She describes the unique features and colors of each season as well as its historical overview, theological grounding, and significance for faith formation. The Christian Year gives ways to draw upon the gifts of existing congregations while seeking to expand their witness and faith formation.

The author walks the reader through each season, beginning with Advent, followed by Christmas, Epiphany, Ordinary Time in Light of Epiphany, Lent, Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday, Easter through Pentecost, and Ordinary Time as People of the Resurrection, giving sample services with suitable lectionary readings, hymns, prayers, and spatial and visual suggestions for each season in either traditional or contemporary worship styles.

About this title

About the Author

Robin Knowles Wallace is Professor of Worship and Music in the Taylor Chair at Methodist Theological School in Ohio. She is the author of Communion Services and Things They Never Tell You Before You Say Yes : The Nonmusical Tasks of the Church Musician, also published by Abingdon Press.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Christian Year

A Guide for Worship and Preaching

By Robin Knowles Wallace

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2011 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4267-0300-3

Contents

Acknowledgments, 
Chapter 1: The Christian Year in Broad Strokes, 
Chapter 2: The Paschal Cycle: The Triduum, Easter-Great Fifty Days-Pentecost, Lent, 
Chapter 3: The Incarnation Cycle: The Twelve Days of Christmas and Epiphany, Advent, 
Chapter 4: God's Time in the Green Season, 
Chapter 5: Additional Ideas, 

CHAPTER 1

The Christian Year in Broad Strokes

God's Time: Keeping Our Perspective

For Christians, worship puts us into God's time—past, present, and future—in which, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we encounter Jesus Christ and learn to live in the present "between memory and hope" (phrase from Thomas J. Talley, "History and Eschatology in the Primitive Pascha," in Between Memory and Hope [BMH] [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 2000], 109). As we re-present the Christian story in worship each week, we hope for God's future that has been promised through scripture. Practicing the Christian or liturgical year proclaims the "acceptable year of our God," reminding us that it is God's vision and rule that are paramount, not human calendars. As the church moves through the spiral that is the Christian year, we celebrate promises made and kept by God and hopes given to us by the God of mercy, truth, justice, and love. We tell the story of the God of our weary years and silent tears, who has brought us through another day. We tell of creation, of flawed human beings who were called into greatness, and of ordinary people who under God's guidance became a holy nation, a royal priesthood.

Some theological-liturgical words that describe God's time:

Anamnesis (from Greek)—remembrance of the past that re-presents; for example, in remembering Jesus in communion we recognize his presence with us now; in preaching the gospel we proclaim the reign of Christ not simply in the first century but also now.

Prolepsis (from Greek)—the breaking of God's future into the present day, "the kingdom of God is among you" (Luke 17:21b).

Presence—the ability given by God through the Holy Spirit so that we might experience God in the current moment that holds together past and future, living in the "already-not yet."

The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL), keyed to the liturgical year and developed by the Consultation on Common Texts (CCT) (http://www.com montexts.org/rcl/index.html), unifies denominations and congregations through a common pattern of biblical proclamation, incorporating a wide variety of scriptures. The North American ecumenical CCT adapted and revised the Roman Catholic Lectionary for Mass, 1969 (after Vatican II, 1962–1965); the Common Lectionary was approved on a trial basis in 1983 and the RCL was published in 1992. The RCL is used throughout this book.

How the Christian Year Developed

Robert F. Taft, S.J., reminds us that there is no ideal model of the Christian calendar, but that it is the task of each generation to build up the body of Christ for love and service of God and neighbor ("The Liturgical Year" in BMH, 23). The liturgical year is not described in scripture, but grew out of Jewish roots and was shaped by various political, psychological, theological, and geographical factors as the church developed.

Sunday

Each Sunday celebrates the mystery of creation, resurrection, and new life in the Spirit. Sunday has been called "the Lord's day," the day that belongs to God and over which God rules, and "the eighth day," the day of God's new creation (Epistle of Barnabas, Alexandria, written A.D. 70–100). Each Sunday is the heart of the liturgical year, an opportunity to encounter the risen Christ in worship (Mark Searle, "Sunday: The Heart of the Liturgical Year," chapter 2 in BMH). To the Jewish concept of Sabbath (and ensuing issues of Saturday versus Sunday as Sabbath keeping), and the Christian emphasis on Sunday as the day of resurrection, Searle adds that Sunday is theologically and experientially a time of life after death: we have confronted Christ's death through our baptism and survived it to become people of the resurrection (69). Therefore, we no longer see people and creation through the lens of their usefulness to us, but through God's vision of their intrinsic worth. Therefore, we attend worship not because of duty or its merit for us, but because we are part of the body of Christ that is a joy and delight (see also the third-century Syrian Didascalia, translation found in Lucien Deiss, Springtime of the Liturgy [Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1979], 176–177).

The Beginning of Seasons and Holy Days Other than Every Sunday

At the end of the third century, the Christian church had three primary holy days: Pascha, Pentecost, and Epiphany. By the end of the fourth century, each of these had separated into distinct days. Pascha, an ancient word that refers both to the passion of Christ and his passage from death to life at the resurrection (Patrick Regan, O.S.B., "The Three Days and the Forty Days" in BMH, 126), was separated into eight days of observances, including Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Holy or Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day. Pentecost separated into Ascension and Pentecost, on the fortieth and fiftieth days after Easter, respectively. Epiphany separated into Christmas (Dec. 25), Circumcision or Holy Name (Jan. 1), Epiphany (Jan. 6), and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple (Feb. 2) (James F. White, Introduction to Christian Worship, 3rd ed. [Nashville: Abingdon, 2000], 57, diagram 5).

The Paschal Cycle: Death and Resurrection

The Pascha, which evolved into Easter and Holy Week observances, began in the early church with commemoration of the passion and suffering of Jesus, the fast connected with the crucifixion and the time in the tomb, and observance through the night (Thomas J. Talley, "History and Eschatology in the Primitive Pascha" in BMH, 102). Remember that Sunday/Resurrection is the church's first celebration. Christians in Asia Minor and throughout the early church followed a practice, believed to reach back to the apostle John, of celebrating Easter on whatever day of the week worked in conjunction with the Jewish Passover on the Hebrew calendar dates beginning on Nisan 14, giving them the name Quartodecimans. The Quartodecimans celebrated a vigil, feasting and reading from the Hebrew Scriptures in the evening, and then after midnight proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ and celebrated Eucharist, all a source of today's practice of the Easter Vigil. The Quartodecimans were the most important of the groups of people around controversies in the first millennium of the church for setting the date for Easter. Recent scholarship suggests that rather than being a deviation, the Quartodeciman practice was the original practice of the primitive community, after the weekly Sunday observance (Thomas J. Talley, "Liturgical Time in the Ancient Church" in BMH, 26). Therefore, the earliest festival we know of in the church is this unified celebration of Christ's death and resurrection at the Easter Vigil or Pascha.

Controversy still exists today about the date for Easter, because of different computations for setting the date for Easter between the Western (Roman Catholic and Protestant) and Eastern (Orthodox) churches. Augustine (354–430, bishop, northern Africa) lived during the time when the Pascha/Easter Vigil became multiple observances. His phrase for what we now call the Triduum (pronounced tri/-du-um) was "the three most holy days," the period from Holy Thursday evening, using the Hebrew accounting of "day" beginning with evening (cf. Gen. 1:5b), up to the evening of Easter. Thus the "three" are Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday, with the evening of Holy/Maundy Thursday included. Patrick Regan suggests that this means that Easter, or the Pascha, begins with Thursday's communion service, that Good Friday has "as much to do with Jesus' glory as with his suffering," and that the Easter Vigil has as much to do with Jesus' death as with his resurrection (BMH, 139); in God's time in our worship we should seek to hold these tensions together as much as possible. Regan also notes that Easter, rather than simply being a co-opting of the name of the pagan goddess of the dawn Eostre, comes ultimately from the old Teutonic auferstehung, meaning "resurrection" (BHM, 134).

The Thursday of Holy Week has been celebrated since the early centuries of Christianity with commemoration of the Last Supper and celebration of the gift of communion, foot washing (John 13:3-17), remembrance of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane, and a ritual known as the stripping of the church (removing all paraments and coverings or removing crosses and images) in preparation for Good Friday. It is foot washing that gives this day the title "Maundy" from the word mandatum, as Jesus gives the disciples a new mandate, or commandment, "that you love one another ... as I have loved you" (John 13:34-35). Some traditions call this day Holy Thursday if they are not doing foot washing but only communion, and Maundy Thursday if they include foot washing and communion.

Good Friday draws its name from God's Friday or the Friday that became good for all humankind because of Jesus' work on the cross. Worship on this day focused on veneration of the cross, reading of the Passion from the Gospel of John, intercessory prayers, and the devotional practice of the Way of the Cross, often called Stations of the Cross. (Devotional practices can be done individually; the Way of the Cross will be discussed in chapter 5.) The works of Cyril of Jerusalem and the diary of Egeria (a Spanish nun who kept a meticulous record of her visit to the Holy Land at the end of the fourth century) recount that Good Friday in Jerusalem was spent venerating a relic of the cross at Golgotha during the morning, followed by a service of readings and hymns from noon until 3 P.M. The "Three Hours" service, which is common in many areas today, draws in part from this experience that was revived in the seventeenth century by priests in Peru, who based their service on the seven last words of Jesus from the cross. Laurence Hull Stookey (Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church [Nashville: Abingdon, 1996]) and others suggest that this multigospel approach takes away from the integrity of each gospel-teller, and they suggest instead the traditional reading of the passion story from the Gospel of John (see chapter 2 in this book for cautions about the passion story in John's Gospel). One tension regarding this practice for local churches may be the many cantatas arranged around the seven words. Better alternatives would be to intersperse the reading of a single gospel's passion story with hymns and spirituals about the cross from the perspective of that gospel.

Friday night into Saturday morning is the time that some traditions name as Jesus' descent to the dead in order that they might also know salvation, thus Holy Saturday is marked in the church by quiet and fasting. Some churches are open this day for prayer.

After the mid-fourth century in the West the Easter Vigil regularly included candidates who would be baptized or celebrate their first communion as the rooster crowed; there are references to baptisms on this day as early as the second century. The service itself was fourfold: the lighting of the Paschal candle, service of the Word, baptism, and communion; the Eastern Church followed the order of Word, light, baptism, and communion. Readings for the service of the Word varied throughout history; the oldest recording of readings at the Vigil is a fifth-century Armenian lectionary, where the first three readings are the creation story, the binding of Isaac, and the Passover narrative. Through the centuries, the Vigil lost importance as the church began to baptize at other times of the year, often within forty or even eight days of birth. The increasing frequency of taking communion only on Easter filled Holy Saturday with confessions and the Vigil moved from the middle of the night to evening then afternoon, then not at all by the end of the medieval period and the beginning of the Reformation era.

The evening hour for the Easter Vigil was restored in 1951; Vatican II made revisions to recapture this celebration for Roman Catholics. Protestant churches began following this tradition or holding sunrise services during the second half of the twentieth century. Some congregations hold the Easter Vigil during their regular Saturday evening worship time, extending it up to three hours. Others begin at 10:30 or 11:00 P.M. on Saturday, celebrating communion around midnight. Chalice Worship (ed. Colbert S. Cartwright and O. I. Cricket Harrison [St. Louis: Chalice, 1997]), the worship book of the Disciples of Christ/Christian Church, gives options beginning with the Vigil late Saturday evening, timed to baptize after midnight; a predawn service that begins in darkness and concludes in daylight; an early service of Light and Word, festive breakfast, service of baptism and/or reaffirmation of baptismal vows; then the regular Easter morning worship with celebration of the Lord's Supper.

The Great Fifty Days of Easter to Pentecost are the oldest and most joyful season of the Christian year, based on the events of Jesus' resurrection, his appearances to the disciples, Ascension, and the descent of the Holy Spirit. In the earliest centuries of the church, the emphasis was less 7 on the beginning and ending days and more on the entire fifty days of celebration (see Patrick Regan, chapter 13, "The Fifty Days and the Fiftieth Day" in BMH). Recent theologians have called this a time to "practice resurrection." This time period matches the Jewish feast of Pentecost, the fifty days from the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Feast of the First Fruits. During the Great Fifty Days the early church was encouraged, as signs of the resurrection, not to fast or to kneel during prayers. The book of Acts was read as proof of the resurrection and for its effects on the life of the growing church. From earliest times of the church the Ascension of Christ into heaven after the resurrection was celebrated either on Easter Day in the evening (Luke 24:50-53) or on the fortieth day after Easter (Acts 1:3-11), or during other points of the Great Fifty Days between Easter and Pentecost (see Stookey, Calendar, 173–174, n16). During the latter half of the fourth century, the celebration was stabilized on the fortieth day (symbolizing fullness of time or a completeness of activity) after Easter, on the Thursday between the sixth and seventh Sundays of Easter. It is often celebrated in churches on the seventh Sunday of Easter, if there are not weekday services. The primary symbolism associated with Ascension is the extinguishing of the Paschal candle, symbolizing that the risen Christ was no longer physically walking among the disciples. Some churches nowadays leave the candle lit and by the altar table until Pentecost; others move it on this day to the baptismal font.

On Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were gathered in Jerusalem and received the Holy Spirit (Acts 2). Other Jews were gathered as well for the Jewish feast of the fifty days after Passover, which in the first century came to commemorate both the offering of new grain (Lev 23:16) and the giving of the Law to Moses on Mount Sinai. During the earliest centuries of the church Pentecost referred to all the fifty days following Easter (Regan, "The Fifty Days and the Fiftieth Day" in BMH). During the times of Tertullian (ca. 160–ca. 225, African church father) and Eusebius (fourth-century bishop) there was a single day in which the ascension of Jesus and the descent of the Holy Spirit were observed; however, by the time of the Apostolic Constitution (Syria, latter half of the fourth century) Ascension was observed forty days after the resurrection and Pentecost at fifty days, following Acts 1:3. Because of the practice of baptisms on Pentecost, it is sometimes called Whitsunday, "white Sunday," for the robes worn by baptismal candidates.

In the Alexandrian tradition of the early church, after the celebration of the baptism of Jesus at Epiphany a fast began; this recalled Jesus' forty days in the wilderness and ended with baptisms. The church in Rome and North Africa had three weeks of preparation before Easter for those being baptized, and other parts of the early church also held three-week baptismal preparations at various times of the year. At the Council of Nicaea in 325, these fasts were combined into what we know as the season of Lent, an extended time of fasting, and Easter baptisms were linked with the images of Romans 6, the dying and rising of Christ. Maxwell E. Johnson argues, following Talley, that this means that the origins of Lent were not related to the Pascha itself but to baptismal practices. For Johnson, this suggests reconsideration of Lent's commonly held focus on "passion" to that of a more baptismal orientation ("Preparation for Pascha? Lent in Christian Antiquity," in BMH, 222). Throughout Christian history, Lent has varied in length because of the way the "forty days" and the ending of the fast were determined. In the West, Sundays were still little Easters and not part of the Lenten fast. In the East, both Saturday and Sunday were not fast days. All of the fasts included one meal a day, usually occurring at 3 P.M. or after, which avoided meat, fish, eggs, and dairy (what we today would call a vegan diet). The purposes of fasting were several: preparing to receive the Holy Spirit by those who would be baptized on Easter, as a discipline to make room for God, and to practice caring for the poor by giving them the money one would have spent on food. The ending of Lent was considered variously as Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, or the Saturday before Palm/Passion Sunday. As society in northern Europe and the Mediterranean became more and more Christian, there were fewer adult baptisms and the focus of Lent shifted during the medieval period from baptismal preparation to penitence for the whole congregation. Traditional Lenten practices include the use of purple vestments and kneeling for prayers (both symbolizing penitence), and the omissions of the word Alleluia, the Gloria in excelsis/ Glory to God in the highest, weddings, and the ringing of bells. In our day in the United States, Lenten disciplines might also include cutting back on watching television, playing computer games, or surfing the Internet in order to make room for God or for baptismal candidates to prepare for receiving the Holy Spirit, and to allow more time for everyone to pray more or do more kind acts for others.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Christian Year by Robin Knowles Wallace. Copyright © 2011 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Abingdon Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1426703007
• ISBN 13: 9781426703003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144