Seasons

Posted by occwebsite
23rd Mar 2016

I did not grow up in a liturgical church. I have never pastored a liturgical church. I have some friends are very anti-liturgy. And yet, there is something important about the church year that we non-liturgical types miss out on when we ignore it.

Some aspects of the church year, evangelicals (and in my experience, most non-litugical people go by the label of “evangelical”) are quick to adopt.

We like Christmas, and so we easily add in celebrations around that season, and start to include the movement of Advent (although I think we still jump really quickly to Christmas and pass over the waiting part).

For many churches the holidays of Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Canada Day, Thanksgiving have become part of her “holy” days.

And then there is Lent and Easter. We have a weird relationship with Lent and Easter. Lent is, for many, that weird 40 days (where you don’t count Sundays and you give up something you like in order to be more spiritual). We like Easter Sunday (because we like Hot Cross Buns and Easter eggs and chocolate!) But we struggle with Good Friday. We know the Cross is important. But we don’t want to linger there. We don’t want to spend time on that type of reflection… so we hurry to the Resurrection Celebration.

And then there is Maundy Thursday – what in the world is a “Monday Thursday.” Maundy is a latin word meaning commandment. It takes us back to the Last Supper and Jesus’ words in John 13:34-35 “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

Let me encourage you to take note of these things… pause, slow down enough to hear the voice of God in the seasons of the year as we reflect on the whole story of the gospel, on the whole movement of God’s Kingdom.