Marking Time: Forming Spirituality through the Christian Year

Ses s i on 3: Keep i ng the Rhy thm of the Sp i r i t 85

c. The Text This Week: Lectionary, Scripture Study and Worship Links and Resources: http://www.textweek.com/

d. Revised Common Lectionary: http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lectionary/

F. It is versatile: The Church Year allows for a broad range of application , based on the worshiper’s conscience and sense of freedom.

1. Many Protestant churches have tended to ignore the power of “ancient-future time,” throwing out the baby of the Church Year with the bath water of medieval excess!

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The Christian year, developed in antiquity, was a vital part of worship until the Reformation, when Protestants abandoned much of it because of the abuses attached to it in the late medieval period. Protestants claimed that nearly every day of the year had been named after a saint. The emphasis on these saints and the feasts connected with their lives overshadowed the celebration of the Christ-event in the more evangelical pattern of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, and Pentecost celebrations. Consequently Protestants discontinued observing the Christian year and lost its positive aspects as they attempted to remove Roman excesses. The current return to the Christian year among Protestants advocates a very simple and unadorned year that accents the major events of Christ, a Christian year similar to that of the early church [italics mine]. ~ Robert Webber. The Services of the Christian Year . Nashville: Star Song Pub. Group, 1994. p. 79.

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2. Church Year observance can be seen as a continuum: from the rejection of all observances of the Christian calendar as complex, sub-cultural and unbiblical, to the ballooning of the calendar to include every kind of