Ben Sternke

Field notes on life and mission with God after Christendom

Liturgical Calendar

Why We Celebrate the Christian Calendar

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Today is the first Sunday of Advent, which is New Year’s Day for the Church. Today is when we start telling the story again, the story of how Jesus Christ fulfilled the story of Israel in his life, death, resurrection, and ascension, and how we now live with him by the Spirit and await his final return.

Every year we tell the story again, basically because we need to immerse ourselves in it, because it is the true story of the world. It is the report of what God is doing in the world to redeem and restore all things, the proclamation of how God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.

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Follow Passion Week on Twitter

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For the past few years my friend John Chandler has been facilitating a journey through the events of Holy Week, or Passion Week (the week leading up to the crucifixion of Jesus). I would commend it to you as a great discipleship resource for meditating on some of the most intense and important events of Jesus’ life.

It starts this Sunday (April 17) with Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

To take part, you can visit the website for all the info, follow @passionweek on Twitter, and like/join the Facebook page.

A material resurrection

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Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

"Seven Stanzas for Easter" by John Updike.
(ht: Caleb Cook, via)

Christ is risen! Alleluia!

(Part of) why I like the liturgical calendar

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Michael Spencer has a post up that encapsulates most of why I like using the liturgical calendar as a basis for worship and Christian living.

I would argue (in addition to Michael's points) that how we celebrate time deeply shapes us as people, and increasingly, American holidays are shaping us as sentimental consumers, and the Christian year shapes us around the person and work of Jesus Christ. Case in point, Spencer points out that no church he was part of when he was younger ever chose Pentecost over Mother's Day. To put it baldly, we exalt the nuclear family over the Holy Spirit's work in the church, and part of the reason is that, for most evangelical Christians, Mother's Day is an obligatory holiday and Pentecost feels optional.

Here's a great quote that starts the post:

"Part of the problem is that evangelicals really don’t have
traditions. Instead, we have these fads that are built
on the strengths and talents of individual leaders. … But a real
tradition can be handed on to anyone, from generation to generation.
It’s hard to hand these evangelical fads down like that, so it seems
like we’re always starting over. It’s hard to build something that
really lasts." – Joe Carter

Read Michael's post for more good (and practical) thoughts on using the lectionary and Christian year as a basis for local church worship.