The Rhythm of the Year
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce
on the feast of Christ the King, 22nd November 2009
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Some years ago I read the remarkable autobiographical book by Monica Baldwin entitled: I Leap over the Wall. Her story was an extraordinary one. In 1914, just before the outbreak of the First World War, she entered a very strict Roman Catholic order of nuns that was completely cut off from the outside world. Twenty-eight years later, in 1941, she finally decided that the religious life was not for her, so she was released from her vows and returned to the world from which she had withdrawn all those years earlier.
What makes her story so fascinating is the fact that the society she re-entered in 1941 was almost unrecognisable to her from the one she had left behind in 1914. Just about everything had been transformed, from the way people dressed, to the way they spoke and behaved to one another; the role of women; the volume and speed of the traffic on the roads; the whole ethos of society, absolutely everything had changed, and changed radically. For her it really was another world – which was hardly surprising given the massive social and economic transformation that resulted from two world wars, the second of which was already well underway at the time of her return to ‘ordinary’ life. And nothing had really prepared her for that.
I can’t help feeling that in my own, far less dramatic way, I myself experienced something akin to a Monica Baldwin experience in relation to the Church, when, in my twenties, I started attending services again after a break of well over a decade. The church that I had attended as a child had been a classic low-church Anglican, Prayer-Book-Matins kind of church; all rather starchy and buttoned up, and I have to say, not the most wildly exciting of experiences for an exuberant eight-year old with a very low boredom threshold. So, I must confess that at the very first opportunity that my young self was offered a chance to give up attending church altogether, I did so, with enormous relief, and a certain amount of unholy glee.
And then, about fourteen years later, as a graduate student, I found myself needing to check out this Christianity malarkey, if only to satisfy myself that it really was all nonsense. So I accompanied a newly acquired housemate to a service at the University Church of that particular city. And I have to say, I was utterly astonished at what I encountered. Because although it was still the Church of England, it was a very different place from the one that I had left, all those years before. Almost unrecognisably so.
So, what were the things that were different? Well, to start with the most obvious, there were some striking differences in the worship. Because this was a modern language liturgy, not dissimilar to the one we are using this morning. The Bible readings, too, were taken from a modern translation. And, I have to say that for all that I continue to this day to love and esteem the language and the grandeur of the Prayer Book and the King James Bible, I found that there was an immediacy about hearing these texts in a modern idiom that struck me very powerfully.
I was surprised, too, to discover that the main service on a Sunday morning was a Communion service: in my youth Holy Communion was always tucked away at 8.00 am for those whom I had been led to believe were the ‘seriously pious’. But here, the sharing of bread and wine was absolutely centre stage; at the very heart of the worshipping life of the whole Church community. And the simple imagery of that was also very striking.
The business of exchanging the Peace was also a total revelation: I found it rather startling at first – the thought that you actually had to acknowledge the existence of the people sitting round you and be nice to them, which I hadn’t known was going to be required of me. But once I had recovered from the initial shock, I have to say that I was bowled over by the sheer warmth and genuine acceptance that I received from the total strangers who were seated in the pews near me. ‘Good heavens’, I found myself thinking. ‘This is actually a community.’
And another of the things that came as a total revelation to me on my return to the Christian fold, was the discovery of the Church’s year. Let me explain. In the church in which I grew up, one Sunday was pretty much like any other, leaving aside the one or two major festivals that stood out very obviously, such as Christmas and Easter. But during my years away from the fold, the Church of England had rediscovered the importance of the different seasons of the church’s year, and indeed the rhythm of the liturgical year as a whole, and had started to mark them in a much more conscious and visible way. And that, too was a revelation to me.
The Church’s year, I discovered, begins on Advent Sunday; the first of four Sundays of preparation for the celebration of the birth of the Christ child at Christmas. Advent is the season of darkness: but not just any sort of darkness: this is the kind of darkness that comes before the dawn; so Advent is a time when we reflect on what it means to wait, hopefully and expectantly, for light to come; it is also a time when we reflect on our need of God, as we explore the reality of that darkness: a God whom we need to come to us; to heal us and to heal our broken and troubled world. That is why Advent is a penitential season, when the church is in purple, the colour of penitence. It is also why it is a season in which candles feature prominently, symbolised in our Advent wreath, which we light each Sunday during that season: candlelight is a wonderful, living, but vulnerable flame; and such is the nature of the Advent hope; a hope that is secure, but which will, at some level, always have to compete with the temptation to despair.
And then we have the joy of new birth at Christmas, as we welcome the Christ child into our world. The church then is in white and gold, the colours of celebration. The twelve days of Christmas move us into the season of Epiphany, which begins with the arrival of the three wise men at Bethlehem; it is the season when we reflect on the manifestation of Christ in our world, a Christ who came here for all of us, regardless of who and what we are.
Our celebration of Christmas and Epiphany, which lasts for forty days, ends with Candlemas, the Feast of the Presentation of the Christ child in the Temple: in which we have our first glimpse of a more sombre theme, as we see a hint of the darkness that lies ahead for Jesus, and for those who love him. And so we begin our journey towards Lent.
If Advent is the season of darkness, then Lent is the season of desert, as we are invited to travel with Jesus into the wilderness; to set aside time from the normal distractions of daily life, to look squarely at the reality of our own lives, and at what is truly written in our hearts. Which can be a hard, hard thing to do. If Advent challenges us to experience darkness so that we can better understand and appreciate our need of light, so Lent challenges us to experience desert, so we can truly understand our need of God’s salvation. And which is why Lent, which again lasts for forty days, is another penitential season when the church is in purple.
And from Lent we move into the drama of Holy Week: a week of great contrasts and extreme emotions, as we share the joy of travelling with Jesus into Jerusalem to the adulation of the crowds on Palm Sunday; then the quiet intimacy and closeness of the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday; before we begin the descent into utter despair and desolation which is Good Friday, and the arrest trial, torture and death of Jesus. After that, the stunned silence of disbelief and bereavement on Holy Saturday, before, astonishingly, remarkably, astoundingly, we discover that, against all expectations, the story did not end there. There is new life; there is new hope; there is resurrection; the final word of all is not death; it is love. And that is what we celebrate during the season of Easter.
And, forty days after the Resurrection, comes Ascension Day, on which we commemorate Christ returning to his Father in heaven to reign over all. And that is followed by his sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, when the church is in red (the colour of the Spirit). Then comes Trinity Sunday, when we are in white, and we mark the completeness of the revelation of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Then, a host of Sundays after Trinity, sometimes referred to as ‘Ordinary time’ when we reflect on the various individual incidents of Jesus’ life and ministry. Throughout these Sundays the church is in green: the colour of growth and nurture.
And dotted throughout the seasons of the Church’s year, there are a host of other special occasions that we mark: saints days are celebrations, so we are in white, unless they were martyrs as well, in which case the church is in red. And so it goes on, until we reach the final Sunday of the Church’s year, upon which we draw the whole cycle to a close, which is today, the feast of Christ the King. We are in red today because red is the colour of Kingship. Interestingly, that is why we also have red on Palm Sunday, when Christ is welcomed in triumph into Jerusalem, and proclaimed Messiah.
But what is the purpose of this long and complex journey through the year, with its changing seasons and colours, and moods? Well, if you think about it for a moment, if we travel through the Christian year in its entirety, we are taken through every major experience and reality of human life: joy, celebration, despair, desolation, guilt, expectation, isolation, hopefulness, liberation, exaltation – the whole range of human emotions is there, as we relive the Christian story.
Now, of course, at the risk of stating the glaringly obvious, there will be times when what we happen to be experiencing at a personal level in our daily lives, is completely out of step with where we are in the Church’s year: tsunamis can happen on Boxing Day, in the midst of our Christmas celebrations, just as the birth of a much longed-for child can happen in the middle of Lent. But that is not actually the point.
The point is that because the journey of the Christian year is a journey with a structure, it provides us with the means to interpret such powerful experiences, past and present, when they do occur for us, and to do so in safety (if I can express it like that). And, more than that, it is a journey that we travel together, as a community. So that we know that when we do find ourselves living through such events and experiences in our own lives, we do not do so alone.
The prospect of entering a dark place can be a fearful thing – until we realise that we can in fact go there in safety, secure in the knowledge that we have companions; and confident that the darkness will not overwhelm us; because in time the light will dawn. We know it will.
But where does this journey, the journey of the Church’s year, actually lead? For me the significance of the feast of Christ the King, with which we draw to a close the Church’s year today, is that it ends on a high point, leaving us with a vision of the Kingdom of God. Which is no ordinary Kingdom, just as Christ is no ordinary King.
But what does the Kingdom of God look like? That Kingdom that is promised to us, through Christ? Well, it is hard to try and capture it in words without it sounding trite. So perhaps I can leave you with an image. Think for a moment of the person you find, or have found, the most difficult person in the whole of your life; the person you have most hated, or despised, or resented, however justifiably.
And now imagine for a moment, the arms of that person reaching out to you in sorrow, and love, and genuine, heart-felt compassion. Can you receive that gesture? Can you receive the Kingdom of God? Can you receive the Kingship of Christ? Because it is there, awaiting each one of us. But the choice remains ours.
Thank you for travelling this past year with me; you have been wonderful companions.
Amen