For My Non-Liturgical Friends: A Quick Introduction to the Church Year

The church year takes us on a liturgical journey through the story of our redemption in Christ. It begins with Advent, the season of anticipation of the coming of Christ, moves to Christmas and Epiphany, then on to Lent and the drama of redemption in Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter. It then turns to Ascension and Pentecost, the birth of the church. We then proceed through the rest of the year to Christ the King Sunday. This, the last Sunday of the church year, celebrates the ultimate establishment of Jesus’ Kingdom at the end of time.

The Advent Season

Advent begins four Sundays before Christmas. It is a time of waiting. During Advent, there is a dual focus. We remember the long centuries Israel waited for the coming of the Messiah and revisit the prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus’ first coming. But we also look ahead, waiting with hope for Christ’s second coming in Glory to judge the living and the dead and to bring his Kingdom in its fulness. Traditionally, Advent was a time to prepare ourselves for his coming by fasting, self-examination, and repentance.

We would only turn from fasting and repentence to celebration on Christmas day, and this celebration would continue through the twelve-day feast of Christmas. We tend to get this backward today, holding Christmas parties before the actual holiday, and then discarding our Christmas trees and moving on a day or two after Christmas.

The two comings of Advent are connected. In Revelation 5, we are told that it is Christ’s death that gives him the right and power to open the seals on the scroll, which as we see in the subsequent chapters involves executing judgment on earth. He does this from the very throne of God. And with his blood he purchased people with whom he shares his Kingdom rule. In a very real sense, Christ’s Incarnation and Second Coming are two phases of a single event, the in-breaking and consummation of his Kingdom.

The Other Comings of Christ

But, if we think about it, Christ comes in other ways beside his first coming in Bethlehem and his final coming at the end of the age.

• He told the Apostles in the Upper Room Discourse that he would not leave them as orphans but that he would come to them, a promise he fulfilled in the person of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
• He comes and makes his home in us when we love him and obey him.
• He comes in to dine with those who hear his voice and open the door to him.
• He comes to us in the bread and wine of Communion, where we are told we have koinonia, deep, intimate fellowship, with his body and blood.

These are all related to his first coming for our redemption, but he has also been coming in foreshadowings of his final judgment.

• He came to judge Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.
• He warned the churches at Ephesus, Pergamum, and Sardis in Revelation 2 and 3 that he would come to judge them if they did not repent. None of these churches exist today.
• He has undoubtedly come and will come to judge the nations, kingdoms, and empires that try to replace him as the object of the people’s ultimate allegiance.

And he warned us that he comes to us in the person of the needy and the stranger—those about whom he says that when we serve them, we serve him—and connects how we treat them to our fate in the final judgment.

Watching, Waiting, Preparing

So Advent is a time of watching, waiting, preparing, both for the celebration of Christmas and in hope of Christ’s final coming. But in the meantime, we can be watching for his coming in less noticeable ways—in the sacrament, in our response to his voice, in our obedience, and especially in our encounters with the needy and the stranger, for he comes to us in all these ways. In the words of the ancient Celtic Rune of Hospitality:

I saw a stranger yestreen;

I put food in the eating place,

Drink in the drinking place,

Music in the listening place;

And in the blessed name of the Triune

He blessed myself and my house,

My cattle and my dear ones.

And the lark said in her song

Often, often, often,

Goes the Christ in the stranger’s guise.