The Liturgical Calendar: A Year of Colour

Perhaps I should back up even further and explain why we observe Advent at all. Spiritual teachers of many traditions have long taught that time is cyclical, rather than linear, and the Christian year is the way we observe the passage of time. The book of Ecclesiastes, one of the older books in the Hebrew Bible, says that “nothing is new under the sun,” and our Jewish ancestors teach that there is a sense in which we experience the same things again and again in life, coming full circle as we experience events and lessons in a different way each time we encounter them.

There is a rich tradition of story-telling in Judaism, where the story of the people- particularly their bondage and exodus from Egypt, their pilgrimage in the wilderness and entry into the Promised Land- are told again and again. This sets them apart as a people, reminding them of who they are and where they’ve come from. When the story is told again, they are proclaiming, in essence, “We are the ones who came up out of Egypt; this story is an inseparable part of us,” and there is a sense in which the whole drama happens again as the story is told.

The Christian year, beginning in Advent, serves more or less the same purpose. It reminds us of who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going. It enables us to enter into the great story of our faith and become actors in the unfolding drama of God’s work in the world. We begin in Advent because the world was longing to be made new before the birth of Christ and we are reminded that we are still waiting for that newness. It forces us out of our regular routines which act like everything’s okay in the world and reminds us that our attempts to be self-made are continually falling flat on their face, just as they were last year and the year before, and the year before that.

 

My colleague and mentor Tim O’Connor explains that as we near the festival of Christmas, we “turn around and look back” to that time long ago when God came among us as a tiny baby; but as the festival comes to an end and we near Epiphany, (January 6^th), we “turn right back around” and look toward the future, when God will at last make the world whole. We carry the spirit of Christmas with us into the rest of the liturgical year, remembering that God continues to walk along with us.

The lessons that we learn in Advent- that the world is broken, that we encounter a kind of hope (week one), peace (week two), joy (week three), and love (week four) in the Christ child that changes lives and makes the broken whole- we carry into the rest of the year. Just as Passover reminds our Jewish brothers and sisters who they are and where they’ve come from, so Advent and then Christmas remind us that things are not always as they seem. In a world of Christmas shopping, we remember our need for a Saviour. In a world where despair and greed seem to run rampant, we declare that a baby who joined us some 2000 years ago changes everything.

It is fitting that Advent is the way we begin the year anew because for all the declarations that things are not okay and we need someone to come intervene, it is ultimately a declaration of hope: outrageous, unreasonable, radical, hope. In our culture in particular, I have found that hope is in desperately short supply. We may sing jingles that “wish every day could be like Christmas,” but this is among the most common times of year for suicide attempts. Ours is a season which does not deny the pain of the world but which simultaneously declares that things are not as they seem. Hope- whole, deep, abiding hope- is on the way.