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

A Theology of the Christian Year, continued

preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, the use of a lectionary offers a better chance for the Scriptures to relate to our current perceptions of the world and human affairs, rather than the other way around. This is not to say that a particular event may not sometimes impel the preacher to turn to another Scripture for the sermon, but the congregation ought not to be robbed of the steady and consistent reading of the Scriptures in the worship assembly. We thereby come to one final theme that has tentatively surfaced at a number of points in our discussion and now needs to be dug out: the theme of history and mystery, of time and eschatology. dramatically new phase in the Christian understanding of history and of this temporal world. Certainly it is no accident that this century – that of Constantine’s conversion – provides our first evidence for the practice of an annual Holy Week (Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday), a feast on the day of Pentecost (and soon a separate Ascension day), and a celebration of the Savior’s birthday and public appearance (with Christmas and Epiphany becoming distinct feasts). Yet it may be a mistake to discern a drastic change rather than a more subtle and gradual shift of emphasis. There was no sudden decline from kairos into chronos (to use a distinction beloved of an older biblical theology). The church’s Constantinian “settlement into the world” was fore shadowed, if H. Conzelmann’s exegesis of Luke-Acts in Die Mitte der Zeit has value at all, in the Lucan accommodation to the delay of the Parousia. There was probably from the first a touch of historical commemoration in the early designations, as we saw of Wednesday and Friday as weekly fast days. The weekly Sunday and the yearly Easter, both inferable from the New Testament writings, commemorate the raising of Jesus from the dead, which was considered as at least an historical event. The resurrection was, of course, more. That is why Christian worship is always also a celebration of Christ’s presence and an anticipation of the Lord’s return. With Christ, the final kingdom began its irruption into this world, and all our created History and Eschatology It is sometimes argued that the fourth century marked a