Church Matters: Retrieving the Great Tradition

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Chur ch Mat ter s : Ret r i ev i ng the Great Trad i t i on

What Is the Christian Year?, continued

things hold together (1:17), and the one through whom all things are reconciled (1:20). Christ is the cosmic center of all history. Everything before Christ finds fulfillment in Christ. Everything since Christ finds its meaning by pointing back to Christ. From Christ the center, three kinds of time are discerned. First, there is fulfilled time. The incarnation of God in Christ represented the fulfillment of the Old Testament messianic longings. Here, in this event, all the Hebraic hopes rooted in the sequence of significant historical moments of the Old Testament were completed. For in Christ the new time ( kairos ) had arrived as Jesus himself announced: “‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The Kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:15). Second, the coming of Christ is the time of salvation. The death of Christ came at the appointed time as Paul wrote to the Romans: “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6; see also Matt. 26:18; John 7:6). Jesus’ death was the moment of victory over sin: “Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col. 2:15). Consequently, the death of Christ introduced the time of salvation: “I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Chron. 6:2). Third, the Christ-event introduces the Christian anticipatory time. This aspect of time is based on the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the promise of Christ’s coming again. Consequently, the church, like the Old Testament people of God, lives in anticipation of the future. Now, however, it is understood Christologically as the time of Christ’s glory (1 Tim. 6:14) and as the time of the final judgment (John 5:28–30; 1 Cor. 4:5; 1 Pet. 4:17; Rev. 11:18). This Christian conception of time is important because it plays a significant role in the worship of the church. The historic and unrepeatable Christ-event is the content which informs and gives meaning to all time. Therefore, in worship we sanctify present time by enacting the past event of Jesus in time which transforms the present and gives shape to the future. The oldest evidence of a primitive church year is found in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian Christians in a.d. 57. Here Paul refers to “Christ our Passover lamb”