A Sojourner's Quest

PA RT I I I : L I V I NG I N T H E WAY / 1 5 3

we connect our lives to the Bible’s telling of the Christ event, and connect our engagement of the Word to that horizon of texts provided by the Revised Common Lectionary. Such an emphasis has opened us to a rich contemplation of the meaning of the Gospels and Jesus (i.e., the lectionary is designed to read through most of the Scripture every three years), and keeps us open to the vast devotional, sermonic, and teaching resources available to believers which are focused on Christ, and keyed to the Christian Year. We who love and serve Christ in the city can benefit from the powerful connection of history associated with the Christian Year. From the very earliest records, we can see the rhythm of celebration and remembrance spoken of by the Fathers, embodied in the ancient, undivided Church, and passed on through the centuries. Before the skirmishes of Catholi- cism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, or Protestantism began, the ancient, undivided Church focused on the person of Christ and sought to live out that focus in community together. Truly the Church Year suffered much regional and particular abuse through the Middle Ages, for which many of the Reformers, in reaction to Rome’s indulgences, “threw out the baby with the bath water.” A retrieval of our love for Christ, and our deep hunger to know him and obey him, can renew our evangelical interest in the Story, and draw us into closer fellowship with the ancient traditions of the Church, i.e., those who focused so joyfully on the victorious work of Christ as the destroyer of evil and restorer of creation. Perhaps the greatest blessing of all in practicing the Church Year is the way in which a Christ-centered evangelical appropriation of it can enrich us spiritually. With its focus on the story of Christ and his working in and on behalf of the Church, your Christian Year reflection will bring you back to the Storyline that lies at the foundation of the Church’s worship and mission – the story of Jesus. The Christian Year can enable you to walk to his beat with a new rhythm, a beat whose pulse pounds counter to those rhythms thumping so loudly in civil calendars and in secular society.