“Baptists and Observing the Church Year”
By Gary Furr, Pastor

We join Christians around the world in the Western church in following the church year. It is an annual pilgrimage with the historical Jesus as we remember the story of his birth, life, death and resurrection. Each season has something to say to us.

Baptists are part of the "free church" tradition. It is a wonderful tradition, but this freedom tempts us to overreact to what is good in other traditions. Like the protestant churches, Baptists reacted against the excesses of medieval Catholicism. When we celebrate the church year (Advent, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost), it is not a lapse into medieval mumbo-jumbo. It is the reaffirmation of the heritage that belongs to us all.

The Christian calendar is organized around two major centers of Sacred Time: 1. Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany; and 2. Lent, Holy Week, and Easter, concluding at Pentecost. The rest of the year following Pentecost is known as Ordinary Time. from the word "ordinal," which simply means counted time (1st Sunday after Pentecost, etc.). Ordinary Time is used to focus on various aspects of the Faith, especially the mission of the church in the world.

The use of colors to differentiate liturgical seasons became a common practice in the Western church in about the fourth century. The colors express emotions and ideas that are associated with each of the seasons of the liturgical year.

Advent
The Advent of Our Lord is the beginning of the church year, as Christians prepare for both the birth of the Baby Jesus in Bethlehem and the second coming of Jesus as the risen Christ to rule triumphantly over life in heaven and on earth.

Advent is the period of four Sundays prior to Christmas day. It is a time of waiting. It corresponds imperfectly to the anxious anticipation of children "awaiting their rewards," as we might put it. It is imperfect because the waiting of our children is a waiting not born of desperation like that first advent. The first advent (literally "coming into the world") was the coming of Christ.

The coming of baby Jesus was not a celebration of childbirth nor of innocence and joy. His coming was the entry of light into darkness, ignorance and sin. His life was threatened even in infancy by the powers. He grew up amid people whose daily lives were suffocating under Roman tyranny and their countrymen's collusion.

In the history of the church, therefore, Advent was traditionally known as a penitiential, not a celebrative , season. It is a time of preparation and repentance, much like the message of John the Baptist who prepared the way for the coming of the Messiah. The dominant color of Advent is purple, a color typically associated with repentance and sorrow. Yet even as we prepare, there is anticipation of joy to come--the hope that burns brightly in us that life can be better for all.

During this season, our church turns its attention toward preparation for our celebration of the birth of the Lord. Hopefully we can sound a different note in a material culture that has managed to secularize our joy into commercial excess.

Christmas
It is a time for remembering Jesus' birth and the idea of the Incarnation—God becoming human. It includes the week or two after Christmas. The Sunday inbetween Christmas and Epiphany is sometimes called Christmastide.

Epiphany
We remember the wise men's visit to baby Jesus on the first Sunday of Epiphany. During the time, we also commemerate Jesus' baptism. Epiphany looks ahead to the mission of the church to the world in light of the Nativity. It is the time between Christmas and Lent. 

Ash Wednesday
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the Lenten Season. It is a time of sober reflection and repentance. We observe the Lord's Supper each year to mark Ash Wednesday, remembering Jesus' pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Cross as a call to discipleship.

The Imposition of Ashes is accompanied by the statement, “Repent and believe the gospel!” It is a reminder of the seriousness of our following of Jesus.

Lent
Lent is a time of special preparation before Easter. Lent is marked by a time of prayer and preparation to celebrate Easter. Christians today use this period of time for introspection, self- examination, and repentance.

The focus of Lent has often been on the cross, sacrifice and renunciation. In the ancient church, Lent was often a time in which those excommunicated from the church worked their way through a series of exercises to demonstrate their sorrow and repentance, leading to restoration to membership again if all went well.

Lent is marked by a time of prayer and preparation to celebrate Easter. Christians today use this period of time for introspection, self examination, and repentance.

However, Lent also was a period (40 days, to coincide with the 40 days Jesus and Moses spent in the wilderness) of testing, sifting, preparation and readiness. Candidates in the ancient church, at the end of lengthy instruction in the faith, made their final preparations during Lent for their baptism on Easter Sunday.

Baptism, as Robert Webber reminds us, is an image of "crossing over." We have been translated into a new realm by our obedience to Christ and the reception of baptism. To enter (or re-enter symbolically!) the deep waters of baptism is to follow Jesus into that exciting and life-changing spring of life.

The traditional somber reflection on our sins has its rightful place in the Lenten season.

Holy Week
Holy Week is that time when Christians all over the world remember the final week of Jesus' life. It begins with Palm Sunday when the crowds welcomed Jesus into the city where he would die five days later.

The center of Holy Week is the Cross and its pinnacle is the empty tomb on Easter morning, when Christ was raised from the dead by God. This Passion story--Jesus' life, death and resurrection--was the heart of the early church's proclamation. Small in number, facing hostility in their world, the church clung to their simple and life-changing story: No matter how messed up the world, Someone had come to make a difference. Jesus' death overpowered the darkness of sin. Jesus' resurrected life was God's defeat of the ultimate power of death.

Our church always has special events during the week. One of these is Holy Thursday, or “Maundy Thursday.” It marks the evening when Jesus took the Passover meal with his disciples and instituted what we call “communion” or the “Lord's Supper.” We always have communion on this day, and it is open to all baptized Christians. “Maundy Thursday" comes from the Latin, "Mandatum Novum" ("new commandment") for the new commandment that Jesus gave to his disciples, that we love one another, in the Upper Room, although some also think it is related to his command, "Do this in remembrance of me."

Good Friday (Black) is a service marking the crucifixion. It is a somber remembrance of Jesus' death on the cross. It is called “Good Friday,” (or 'God's Friday') because “man's bad Friday of the Crucifixion … was turned into God's Friday by the Resurrection." (Hardin, Quillian and White, The Celebration of the Gospel: A Study in Christian Worship [Abingdon Press, 1964], p. 84.)

Easter was originally called Pascha by the early church, a word derived from the Hebrew meaning "passover." "Later it became known as "Easter," from the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess, Eostre, whose festival coincided with the spring equinox." From Wetzler and Huntingdon , Seasons & Symbols: A Handbook On the Church Year (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing).

Easter is the day and season for remembering that Jesus not only died, but that he was raised from the dead.

Pentecost
Pentecost comes fifty days after Passover in the Hebrew calendar (“Pente” meaning “fifty”). It was a festival in ancient Israel when pilgrims came to the city to commemorate the wheat harvest and was connected with the giving of the Law in Jesus' day. It was also called the feast of “first fruits.” But in the Christian church it became the moment when the power of the Holy Spirit descended upon the early disciples and the church was empowered to go into the world and preach the gospel.

Pentecost is associated with the dramatic events in Acts 2 in which the miracle of hearing and understanding happened—the disciples spoke in tongues and those from all over the world who had come to Jerusalem that day understood what he was saying. Pentecost is a time that emphasizes our world-wide mission to preach the gospel and stresses the importance and presence of the Holy Spirit.

There are other days we could mark, but these are the major seasons of the church year. They enable us, every year, to walk through the story of salvation in the way we mark our time together. Rather than being shaped by the secular calendar, we seek to live the story of God's love known in Jesus Christ over and over as we seek to be good disciples.