Ash Wednesday

 

Today is Ash Wednesday.  It is the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent.  The day gets its name from the historic Christian practice of retaining the palm branches that adorned the church sanctuary on the previous year’s Palm Sunday.  In making ready for Ash Wednesday the church burns the palms and then the priest/pastor applies the ashes in the shape of a cross to the foreheads of those who worship on that day.  Wearing ashes is a traditional sign of penitence. 

In the Bible persons frequently wore ashes as expressions of grief or penitence (2 Samuel 13, Job 42, Jeremiah 6, Daniel 9, Hebrews 9, Matthew 11 and Luke 10 among others). 

When Christian worshipers receive the imposition of ashes in worship, the presider usually says some form of Genesis 3:19, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."  The presider will often conclude with, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.”

Because the date of Ash Wednesday depends on the timing of Easter, this observance moves around the calendar a bit.  It can fall anywhere between February 4 and March 10.

Ash Wednesday marks the commencement of the season of Lent.  These are the forty days immediately preceding Easter (excluding Sundays, which are reflections of Easter Day itself and are therefore inappropriate occasions for denial). 

Some folks erroneously teach that Lent is an extended period of “getting ready for Easter.”  Lawrence Hull Stookey reminds us that

Lent, until its final week, is a time of disciplined consideration of our life and death as transformed by our covenant with God and is closely related to the administration and reaffirmation of baptism at Easter.¹

This season is a kettle that sits on its own bottom.  It is related to – but independent of – our observance of Easter.

The liturgical color for the day (and season) is purple.  This is a solemn hue that represents penitence in the lives of Christians.

The liturgy for the day includes confession and absolution in preparation for the imposition of ashes.  Psalm 51 is a traditional expression of confession and many churches use this as part of their ritual for the day.

^{1 Lzwrence Hull Stookey, Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church}

^{(Nashville: Abingdon, 1996).}

The Confession of St. Peter

 

This is a little belated, as the Christian calendar observes the Confession of St. Peter on January 18.  Matthew, Mark and Luke each report (with varying degrees of detail) the time in which Jesus asks his disciples what the crowds are saying about him.  He then asks the disciples themselves about their opinion.  At that point Peter makes his Confession – his affirmation – of the Messiahship of Jesus.  The synoptics variously report Peter’s words as:

Matthew 16:13-20 -- “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Mark 8:27–30 -- “You are the Messiah.”
Luke 9:18–20 -- “The Messiah of God.”

It is Matthew alone who reports Jesus’ response, both in terms of revelation and in passing Kingdom responsibility along to Peter.  But for all of the synoptic writers this is clearly a watershed moment not only for Peter, but for the church as well.

 In modern times The Confession of Peter has been related to The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.  The Faith and Order Movement of the World Council of Churches and the Anglican Friars of the Atonement have each advocated a time of uniting prayer since the early 20th century.  The week has moved around the calendar a bit, but it the church now designates the week as taking place January 18 – 25.

 Peter’s profession is that of all Christians.  No matter what their views on other ideas and doctrines great and small, it is the affirmation, “(Jesus is) the Christ,” that gathers Christian believers together.

The conclusion of "Ordinary Time"

The Gospel Reading for this Sunday, the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost, comes from Mark 13:1-8:

As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!’ Then Jesus asked him, ‘Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.’

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’ Then Jesus began to say to them, ‘Beware that no one leads you astray. Many will come in my name and say, “I am he!” and they will lead many astray. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.

This passage, which the church sometimes labels “The New Testament Apocalypse,” appears in all three synoptic gospels. Its parallel is in Matthew 25 and in Luke 21. Mark’s language is the version of the story that is most familiar to us.

We do not gravitate to this passage often. It is a little scary on the one hand. It is uncertain on the other (‘Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?’). The Romans destroyed the Temple – and all of Jerusalem -- in A.D. 70. But the passage carries with it not only a sense of the end of Jerusalem, but of the end of the world. The church has appropriated the imagery of this text and applied it to the greater turmoil of the End and the Judgment and the Second Coming of Christ. It stirs up in us a lot of the emotion that can accompany consideration of such events.

But these considerations are necessary. Next Sunday is The Feast of Christ the King, or the Reign of Christ. Then, we come to the First Sunday of Advent, and we start anew our consideration of the Christian liturgical year. So, this week is the last “ordinary” Sunday in our worship cycle.

It is fitting that we end with “the end.” Imagine making our way through Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and Pentecost before ending our entire journey with the parable of the Prodigal Son. That tale is a noble one, but it doesn’t wrap up the long and emotional journey that has been ours for fifty weeks.

Jesus speaks of an end. By extension, he speaks of “The End.” Then we segue into a new season of anticipation and hope as we await the coming of Christ into human history, both in the manger of Bethlehem and in the realization of God’s long-term plan.

So, this is not merely an uncomfortable conclusion, or an awkward transition. Rather in embracing this passage we understand that God’s plan is ongoing. It is not up to us to know the times and seasons. It is up to us to endure in faith.

"For all the Saints..."

 

 

The Feast of All Saints was November 1, and we observed the occasion Sunday, November 7. Originally the church set aside an individual day – usually the day on which an individual died – as a commemoration of the life and witness of those whom the church declared “saints.” As you can imagine, the calendar soon became overrun with commemorations even when the church celebrated multiple persons on a single day. So, the church (long before there were denominations of any size) gathered all of these lives into one celebration, All Saints. These saints were almost exclusively martyrs, and the day was one of great solemnity.

The church also recognized all other faithful departed on the following day and observed the event as All Soul’s Day. In the Western Church (the congregations aligned with Rome) this early November observance remains to this day. In the Eastern Church (those congregations that recognized the leadership of the church at Constantinople, also known as the “Orthodox” Churches), the tradition sought to maintain a connection between The Resurrection of the Lord and the sanctification of believers by locating the Feast of All Saints on May 13, or alternatively, on the first Sunday after Pentecost.

Protestant churches unified All Saints and All Souls into one celebration early in their history. In order to involve more of the church family in this commemoration, many congregations held their celebrations on the Sunday following All Saints Day.

The day held great personal meaning for John Wesley. In a journal entry from November 1, 1767, Wesley calls it "a festival I truly love." On the same day in 1788, he writes, "I always find this a comfortable day." The following year he calls it "a day that I peculiarly love."

It is a day to remember and give thanks for those upon whose shoulders we stand. These include the martyrs and the great theologians of the church. But they also include Sunday School teachers and youth counselors Vacation Bible School Leaders. We owe a great debt to a lot of people without whom our faith would not hold the vibrancy that we now enjoy. 

 

 This is the great Hymn for the day:

“For All the Saints”
William W. How 

 
For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
who thee by faith before the world confessed,
thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia! 

 
Thou wast their rock, their fortress, and their might;
thou Lord, their captain in the well-fought fight;
thou in the darkness drear, their one true light.
Alleluia, Alleluia! 

 

 O may thy soldiers, faithful, true, and bold,
fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
and win with them the victor's crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia! 

 
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in thee, for all are thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
and hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia! 

 
From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,
through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,
singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost:
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Moving on

As we enter the month of November, our year-long journey with the Gospel of Mark is coming to an end. We have observed before that our church uses The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) to help order its worship life. A lectionary is a table of prescribed readings for each Sunday of the year. It normally lists an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, an epistle reading, and a lesson from one of the gospels for each week. There are many lectionaries that churches or groups within the church have used over the years. The RCL is a document that much of the modern-day church employs for worship, for study and for devotions.

The RCL contains lessons over a three-year period. The first year – Year A – begins with the first Sunday of Advent and runs through The Feast of Christ the King. This year’s gospel lessons come primarily from the Gospel of Matthew. Year B – in which we find ourselves involved currently – spends a year focusing on the book of Mark. Year C – which begins November 28 of this year – has the gospel of Luke as its focus.

The use of a lectionary brings a sense of order to the liturgical life of the church. It observes the Christian Liturgical Year and so moves through recognition of the anticipation of Jesus’ birth, the celebration of the coming itself, a time of thanksgiving for Christ’s salvation of all people, a season of penitence and self-reflection prior to observing the Passion of Jesus, fifty days of observing a festival dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ, and finally a season of concentrating not so much on the events of Jesus’ life as on his instruction to the church.  Lectionary readings that pursue these topics in an orderly fashion move us through much of what a given gospel says about the entire life and mission of Jesus.

The use of a lectionary allows for long-range planning for preachers, teachers, musicians, and for people who use the lectionary as a devotional tool. The church does not mandate lectionary use for its congregations. And there are other legitimate models for the church to utilize. But this is one approach to the addressing of scripture that has born fruit for the church over the years.

As I say, our time with Mark’s gospel is coming to a close. We have talked about Mark’s being the first gospel composition. As such it serves as source material for Matthew and Luke. Mark spends a lot of time describing the works of Jesus. There is far less dialog in this gospel than we find in the other three. Mark speaks with a great sense of urgency – the phrase “and immediately” appears fifty-two times in this short work. And all of Mark moves toward the Cross and Christ’s atoning act. There is virtually no Easter story in this book. All eyes look to the sacrifice of Jesus.

So, we soon take our leave of Mark. There is plenty to get excited about in year C and its examination of St. Luke. But it is with a little bit of regret that we turn the page on the Second Gospel for a while.

We are in a not-so-Ordinary Time

These mid-summer days are often the source of confusion in the church. I am talking about the way the church designates this time in the Christian Year.

 
The significance of time in the church
The world has a calendar that begins on January first, and that it divides into twelve months. The church reckons time in a different way. Its year begins with Advent which can fall as early as November 27 and as late as December 3. This season begins four Sundays before Christmas day and runs through December 24. The calendar progresses with the Season After Epiphany, Lent and Easter. These things are fairly cut-and-dried, though there are a couple of wrinkles that we will examine on another date.

Where did the confusion come from?
On the day after Pentecost (May 23) we entered a time that has gone by several names in recent history. The United Methodist Church (along with a few other Christian groups) made the decision in 1937 to divide its observance of the time between Pentecost and Advent into two seasons. The days from Pentecost through the end of August comprised the Season of Pentecost. The liturgical color was red, reminding us of the tongues of fire that appeared over those early Christians who were gathered together when the Holy Spirit descended on them. The church then designated the time from September 1 through the end of the season as the season of Kingdomtide. The color for the paraments, clergy stoles and other appointments was green – a color reminding the church of the eternal life promised by the gospel. This practice continued until 1992. At that time, the United Methodist Church was the only denomination still clinging to observing Kingdomtide.,

In that year, The United Methodist Church released its new United Methodist Book of Worship. In that book the church adopted the title of The Season After Pentecost for these days. For a while there was a parenthetical (United Methodist Kingdomtide) addition to some documents, but that cumbersome title soon fell by the wayside. It was a painful reminder that only our denomination clung to a label that set it apart from the rest of Christianity, rather than affirming our oneness as the Body of Christ.

So, what is “Ordinary Time?”
The church also refers to this latter portion of the year as Ordinary Time. Some people mistakenly interpret this to mean “common” or “unremarkable.” They argue that the first part of the liturgical calendar contains Advent, Christmas, Epiphany Day, the Baptism of the Lord, the Transfiguration, Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Pentecost. From that last even until the last Sunday of the year (Christ the King), we observe few festive days.

But that is not the meaning of Ordinary Time. The description refers rather to the way in which we reckon time in this season. It is a way of signifying that we designate these Sundays not with cardinal numbers (one, two, three…) but with ordinals (first, second third…). The coming Sunday, for instance is the Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost. The remaining days of the week are counted from the Sunday with which the week begins.

These assigned numbers are not absolutely constant. That is, the Sunday on or nearest August 8 is not the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost each year. The key to that puzzle comes much earlier in the year. While Christmas is always December 25 and Epiphany is always January 6, the next great observance comes with a less consistent date. The way the church counts the remainder of the year depends on the date of Easter. This gets a little involved, to be sure. Easter is related to the calendaring of the Jewish Passover. The Jewish religious year follows a lunar calendar rather than a solar one. So, Easter will occur on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox. That means that Easter comes between March 22 and April 25. So, Pentecost (fifty days later) may fall from May 10 to June 13. So, the first Sunday After Pentecost can occur any time from May 17 to June 20. Subsequent Sundays receive their ordinal according to when that first Sunday appears on the calendar.

The designated color for the season is green, again referring to new life, abundant life eternal life as the New Testament describes it. The days in the season devote much attention to the teachings of Jesus, just as the first half of the year emphasizes many of the events in the life of Christ. It is a time of digging deeper into the significance of our commitment and discipleship.

So, while our present Time is Ordinary, there is nothing commonplace about it.

Do you follow the lectionary?

These days. one of the questions that comes along when there is a pastoral change is, “Do you follow the lectionary?” The curiosity behind this comes from several concerns. Worship planners and musicians are curious because they want to do planning and embracing of lectionary texts makes it possible to look well ahead in designing the worship experience for a congregation. Sunday School teachers and other small group leaders want to know if they will be able to tie in their lesson or programming material to those things that the church addresses in Sunday worship. Sometimes office people want to know about lectionary usage because they are looking for graphics and other material that they can use in bulletins, newsletters, and church publicity pieces. If a pastor commits to using the lectionary, people with a variety of tasks can look well ahead in gathering resources for their particular concerns.

What is a lectionary?
When the church speaks of “the lectionary,” it is generally referring to The Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). That is the resource that comes to mind, and it is the default meaning when we employ the simple term “lectionary.) But, since so many of our church endeavors refer to the lectionary in one way or another, let’s try to come to a little clarity.

A “lection” (pronounced /ˈlekSHən/) is a scripture reading chosen or assigned for a particular day. So, a lectionary is a table or listing of designated readings from the Bible for a specified period of time. The lectionary usually includes readings for an entire year, but compilers may create certain lists for a particular season such as Advent or Lent. The use of lectionaries is as old as the church itself. In fact, Judaism (as well as other faiths) have used lectionaries for their worship or devotional readings prior to the emergence of Christianity.

A Christian lectionary typically offers a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm for the day, a reading from the Epistles and a gospel reading for each Sunday of the year. In addition, the lectionary may include lessons for observations that fall on days other than Sunday. Most lectionaries have readings for Ash Wednesday, the days of Holy Week and Ascension Day, for instance. There are denominations in which their own lectionary readings are requirements, while in others – such as the United Methodist Church – the use of these readings is voluntary.

In 1944 The Methodist Church issued The Book of Worship (The Methodist Publishing House, 1944) which included a on-year "Calendar and Lectionary for the Christian Year."  This listed two lessons for each Sunday and special day.  The first came from either the Old Testament or the Epistles, with the second reading being from the gospels.  The 1965 Methodist Book of Worship for Church and Home (Nashville: the Methodist Publishing House, 1965) included a one-year lectionary that contained Old Testament and Gospel readings for each Sunday and special day of the year.

In 1969, in accordance with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church published the document named Ordo Lectionum Missae, a three-year lectionary. This greatly influenced the release in 1974 of a document entitled “A Common Lectionary” by the ecumenical group the Consultation on Church Union. In 1993 the Consultation on Common texts formally issued a new version of the Common Lectionary. Prior to the official distribution of that publication The United Methodist Church included its own adaptation of the RCL in its new Book of Worship (Nashville: the United Methodist publishing House, 1992). The United Methodist version omits readings from The Apocrypha that some denominational include in their sequences. The United Methodist version also modified some texts for the sake of continuity or clarity.

How is a lectionary structured?
The RCL is set up in a three-year cycle of readings. It designates the individual years in the rotation as Years A, B, and C. The years begin in Advent. We are currently in Year B, so the readings for most of 2021 began their progression in Advent of 2020. Year C gets underway on November 28 of 2021 and moves through most of 2022. The next Years B start in Advent of 2024, 2027 and 2030.

For each Sunday and “special day” there is an Old Testament Reading, a Psalter Reading, an Epistle Reading, and a Gospel Reading. In Year A the Old Testament Readings come primarily from the primordial stories concerning the Creation and moving through the Abraham and Isaac readings. The RCL offer a reading from the Psalms as a comment on the first lesson. The Epistle readings run semi-continuously through a portion of the New Testament, but the books that it considers are not sequential. That is to say that a series of readings from Romans will not be followed by selections from First Corinthians. The Gospel readings for Year A come mostly from the Book of Matthew. The Old Testament lessons from Year B concentrate on the David and Solomon narratives. The Gospel for Year B is Mark. In Year C the Old Testament moves through the Elijah/Elisha record, and the Gospel for that year is Luke. The lectionary makes use of the Gospel of John in all three years of the cycle, particularly in the Christmas Season and in Lent.

Even over a three-year period, the RCL omits significant portions of the Bible. To include all of scripture would necessitate either significantly longer lections for each day, or the lectionary would have to run considerably longer than three years. That is why The United Methodist Church designates the readings as “suggested” rather than “mandatory.”

Why use a lectionary?
The advantages to using the RCL are several. First, it offers preachers and worship planners a tool for doing long-range planning, perhaps even over the course of the entire three years. The lectionary provides a methodical way of moving through the Bible instead of a random selection of readings for a given Sunday. The RCL provides a way for multiple planners and leaders to interact while considering the same material. Preachers, liturgists, musicians, and those who work with visuals can be about their work without constant meetings and repetitive communication.

The use of the RCL also compels preachers and others to deal with material that they might not ordinarily consider. I know that I have observed to some people that, left to my own devices and desires, I might well preach 45 Sundays of the year on the Sermon on the Mount. The complex parables or hard sayings of Jesus would be easy to overlook without the encouragement of something like the Revised Common Lectionary.

There is also a spiritual strength in knowing that sister congregations are considering the same texts on Sunday morning as we ourselves study. Then when we meet members of other lectionary-employing churches later in the week, the conversation might well turn to last Sunday’s worship, and our friends might say something like, “You know, we read the exact same thing in our congregation, and here’s what our preacher said…” The RCL allows Sunday School teachers and other group leaders to look ahead, knowing that their lessons can be connected to what will go on in the sanctuary on a given day.

So, those are some of the reasons why I embrace “the lectionary.” Let me be quick to say that it is not a perfect tool, and I diverge from time to time (though I try to let our music people know about those instances in advance). The lectionary is a marvelous tool. But I would day that it is always a servant of our worship, never our master. There are times in the life of a church or community when events and lectionary readings just don’t intersect. Part of the pastoral task is to determine when the use of the lectionary is appropriate and when overriding concerns dictate an alternative.

I would be happy to talk about these things if I have left any stone unturned.

 Peace.

_______________

Our scripture reading for Sunday, August 15 is John 6:35, 41-51.