Church Year, Church half [Sunday after the Ascension]

 

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Ezekiel 36:22-28

• 1 Peter 4:7-11

• St. John 15:26-16:4

Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior. (Titus 1:4)
 
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His Service, saying: 

“But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes you may remember that I told them to you.”

 
Thus, with this Gospel reading and our snuffed Paschal candle, our Easter season draws to a close. More than that, our part of the Church Year that we call “the Festival half” is also ending. As in, we have finished celebrating all the High Feasts of our Lord’s life. Following the Festival Season is the Church Season, or Non-festival season, in the vulgar. 
 
What these two halves of the Christian year teach us is first, by it, the Faithful faithfully follow Jesus's command to hear His Word and believe. Second, that all of Jesus’s work completed in the first half was to create the second half for you. For understanding of that wonderful gift, we turn to the Holy Spirit, Who is now the main actor in this second half of, well, all of time, basically.
 
For, Pentecost is not the birth of the Church, as some suppose. The Birth of the Church is the birth of Faith in Christ, which happens right in the beginning. Yes, all of history revolves around God and His work so it makes sense that when His Church properly arrives on the scene, she would be sensitive to this and employ it in her worship. This cycle is so natural to creation, that even the world in its sinfulness has adopted, what we may call, the anti-church-year.
 
One part of this anti-church-year is created by those so opposed to anything that even smells Roman Catholic, that they throw out all of Church History as well. These are the people who will, annually, write and share articles and “proof” of how Christmas and Easter are pagan festivals and Christians should not observe them, much less the rest of the organized, Church year.
 
But what do they do instead, that is so much more mighty and holy? They follow their own Lectionary that they don’t admit is a lectionary! For every year they teach about the birth of Christ and every year they will proclaim His miracles, His crucifixion, His parables, and His Resurrection. And since those don’t change in the Bible, neither does their reading schedule. But they feel better so…
 
On the other side, you can sin by thinking that the Church Year is required doctrine for Faith in Christ. As in, when you miss a holy day, God is going to remember on the Last Day and you won’t get in.
 
The root of this grievous misunderstanding is a lack of the knowledge and power of the Church that Jesus created. When all you believe is that God is on a throne, far away, stuck at the Right Hand, then all that matters is us living holy lives in order to reach Him.
 
However, if God is close, creates His Church, and invites to a feast, then He is to be gathered around and worshipped regularly, wherever He says that takes place.
 
All the Anti-Church-Year crowd accomplishes is to find itself in agreement with the fallen world. The fallen world also believes that the Life of Jesus should not be celebrated on specific holy days. It also wants to replace the proper Church Year with its own calendar of “holy” days and required obeisance towards certain “holy” and privileged groups, dedicating entire months to them.
 
When they come together and try to understand the Lord’s Incarnational Church, we get the popularly understood Christmas and Easter. Christmas is easy for them. They pretty much understand it, on the surface, and so give fanfare and commercialism to it. A double portion of what the sinful world can offer. Hot dog!
 
Easter is second, as it is infinitely harder to understand. So there is no fanfare, no understanding, given, but only commercialism is offered in order to make up for and hide their ignorance.
 
However, there is a third high holy season that we all tend to forget together. One that is neither commercialized nor celebrated. That is the church half of the Church year, which celebrates the Church. 
 
And I mean “we”. We attend Church, but we don’t really “get” Church. We participate in Church, but we don’t comprehend the weight of that. We align ourselves with Church, but like the world, we think we could better spend our time and efforts elsewhere, not on monotonous lectionaries.
 
Repent.
 
Ascension will help us get to a better understanding of this 3rd greatest holy season in the Church Year. It is in Acts 1, the very first verse, that St. Luke’s gift of handling the Word of Truth really shines. There he records, “In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach.”
 
This “began to do and teach” refers to all that was accomplished between Advent and Easter, that is the work of Jesus to produce salvation for sinners. This is the focus of the Festival Half: Jesus does the work.
 
St. Luke’s words also imply a continuation. What Jesus began in the Gospels, continues, somehow. That beginning is His sending of the Holy Spirit, to give the power of Word and Sacrament to the Apostles, and they take it to any and everyone. As in, the real beginning starts now, at the beginning of this second half of the Church Year.
 
Jesus continues to work in His Church, in His Body and Blood. This is cause for celebration, just as much as His work in Christmas and Easter. Why? Because, having been united with Him in Baptism, Jesus now continues to work through you. It doesn’t stop with His Ascension. His Word continues to go out and accomplish what it set out to do in the beginning: create salvation for sinners.
 
His Sacraments continue to be administered according to that Word, accomplishing what they were employed for since the beginning: salvation for sinners. In the Church Year, we celebrate God’s Great, Awesome, Powerful, and Mysterious work…that is done among us also!!
 
Of vital importance to our view of life is the truth that Christ is still among us as one who serves. In other words, the crucified, risen, and ascended Christ is still among us as The God Who Serves.
 
If we think about Matthew 18:20, to “come together in Jesus’ name” means to gather together in keeping with His person, work and Word. In other words, all that He began to do and preach.  His person and His work center in serving us with His gifts of grace.  The living Christ is indeed still present to serve His people, in His Church. 
 
The Bible also makes clear how long Jesus will remain with His Church to serve them: ALWAYS. (Matthew 28:20)
 
In other words, the Gospel isn’t just history and the Church Year is no child’s play!  It is history, the beautiful, gracious history of God’s undeserved love in Christ, but it’s so much more!  It continues! For the Christ of history is also the Christ of this hour.  He still lives!  And He’s still present with His gifts to feed His Church with His Word and His Meal.  That’s why the center of the Church’s life is worship! 
 
That’s also why worship among us is called the Divine Service (Gottesdienst).  In worship, God is present to serve us with His life-giving and life-sustaining gifts of forgiveness.  We also respond in prayer and praise, but the beating heart of worship is God serving us with forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
 
Christian worship, then, is table fellowship with God.  The risen Christ is present to give us His Word to hear and His very body and blood to eat and drink.  Here something different happens from what happens anywhere else in the world.  Here the Bridegroom is present to serve His Bride the food and drink of heaven.  This is the center of life.
 
The Holy Spirit led the early church to draw her life from the gifts of the risen Christ.  The Apostles devoted themselves to this very same Church (Acts 2:42) with all of their strength. The proclamation of the apostles’ teaching and the Lord’s Supper (breaking of bread) were the gifts at the heart of the church’s fellowship.  Their fellowship in the receiving of Word and Sacrament was formed by “the prayers.”  In other words, there was a liturgy, an ordered way of worship, when Christ came to serve them.
 
And if there was an ordered way of worship, then there was an ordered way to hear the Holy Gospel each and every time. This we would call the Church Year. It is the Church Year that forms the pillow, or the manger, for Christ’s Word and Sacraments, for you. The Church Year is the place setting, your place setting, at His Wedding Feast.
 
So we will celebrate the beginning of the Church half of the Church Year and we will continue to celebrate it until Jesus returns. What joy we receive when we believe that God still works among us and that we are invited to worship Him. Worship, according to the Gospel, is the desire to receive forgiveness of sins, grace, and righteousness (Apology IV, Tappert, p. 310).  Faith is that worship which receives God’s offered blessings (Ap IV, p. 48).  These blessings God has located in His Word and Sacrament.
 
What a joyous festival! What a blessed Church Year! Rejoice loudly, dear Christian, Your God comes to you righteous and having salvation, humble and mounted on Word and Sacrament. Not stopping for this or that, but offering His Work and Life for you, year after year, culminating not on Himself, but on you.
 
We, the Church of Baptized Believers, employ the Church Year for three reasons: 1) it allows us to fight back against the world’s and our own sinfulness, 2) it creates a place ordered under God’s Word, and 3) it houses and delivers Christ Crucified and Risen for the forgiveness of our sins.
 
Can other readings do that? Sure. Can other lectionaries do that? Of course. It’s based on God’s Word, not vice versa. But we take confident comfort in what has been sent to us through time, remembering Christ’s words, and obeying His command to celebrate His Church.