A Plea to Recover the Church Calendar

First, the obvious: This post is not intended for my Anglican or Catholic or other high-church friends but for those who, like me, were raised in the low-church or nondenominational world of American evangelicalism, where the faith was once for all delivered to the saints by an orange puppet named Gerbert.

So, to make the title more precise, what follows is a plea to recover the church calendar in evangelical, nondenominational, and other low-church congregations.

AN INESCAPABLE CONCEPT

Ordering time is natural, and therefore inescapable. We are time-bound creatures, so the question is not whether we will order our time, but how we will order our time.

Nature presents the world to us in an orderly way. The world moves according to daily (sunrise, sunset), monthly (cycles of the moon), and annual (seasonal) rhythms. But it’s not just natural in the sense that nature does it; it’s also natural for man to structure his understanding of time in similar rhythms.

It’s not whether we follow a calendar, then, but which calendar we follow. Hasn’t your year so far been marked by New Year’s Eve, the Super Bowl, and March Madness? Do you follow the Hallmark calendar (Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, etc.)? The academic calendar (Spring Break, Summer Vacation, Back to School)? American holidays like Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving? A newfangled pop culture calendar that includes Mario Day (March 10 = Mar10 or MAR10), Pi Day (March 14 = 3.14), and Star Wars Day (May 4 = May the Fourth)?

In truth, we all pick and choose from these varied calendars, but the central point is that none of us gets to opt out of following a calendar. Remember: It’s not whether, but which.

JESUS IS LORD OF TIME

So, if it’s true that we inescapably order time, why would Christians not order it in a manner that commemorates the Lord of time?

J. Brandon Meeks wrote, “When Jesus died and rose again, he conquered sin and death — but he also conquered the calendar.” And so we recognize Jesus as the King of the Calendar when we structure our year according to the great work he has done in our redemption.

Although the magisterial Reformers jettisoned much of the liturgical calendar, Daniel Hyde pointed out that they “retained what they called the ‘evangelical feast days,’” which are those days that celebrate “the salvation which Christ had already accomplished for them in his Incarnation (Christmas), death (Good Friday), resurrection (Easter), ascending to the Father (Ascension), and giving of his Spirit (Pentecost).”

We see in Exodus 12:2 that the first thing God does when he frees his people from Egypt is to reorder the Israelites’ calendar: ”This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.” God reorders their sense of time, centering it around his redemptive work in the world. It seems appropriate, then, that when Jesus freed us from slavery to sin in the greater Exodus, we should reorder our own calendar, our own sense of time itself, around that historic event.

This church statement says it well:

“[W]e gladly encourage the celebration of the historic church calendar as a glorious testimony of the victory and rule of Christ over time. Rightly understood, His life celebrated and remembered in our days and weeks and months is a continuation of the triumph of Christ over the principalities and powers.”

CALENDARS TELL STORIES

“Calendars are not neutral,” wrote Andrew Wilson, “they narrate a particular vision of the world.” In contrast to the narratives told by the tax year, or the academic year, or the seasonal calendar year, “the Church calendar,” Wilson continues, “tells a different story again, one shaped by the gestation, birth, appearing, temptation, death, resurrection, ascension and gifts of the Lord Jesus. If you’re going to use a calendar at all, and most of us are, it might as well be one which holds together around the gospel.”

Matt Chandler picked up on this narrative theme in a video explaining why his church follows the church calendar:

“You and I, we are storied people,” Chandler said. “We live basically out of our gut and out of our heart, and those things are informed by stories.” He points to the consumerism and hedonism prevalent in our culture and says, “These are the stories of our day, and we want to counteract those stories or stand in opposition to those stories by living the story of Jesus.”

WE LIVE OUR CALENDAR’S STORY

Did you notice Chandler’s subtle shift from narrative and storytelling to story-living? It’s one thing to hear the story of Jesus, but it’s another thing altogether when we enter into and rehearse the story ourselves. “We want to experience as embodied souls the story of Jesus,” Chandler said, “and we believe that by doing this, it shapes and molds us as the people of God.”

Back to Andrew Wilson for an extended paragraph on how living the Christian calendar “shapes and molds us”:

The Church calendar does not just say things, it does things. When (as I do) you give something up for Lent, you find yourself pining for the resurrection. When you pray or study your way through Advent, you focus on the return of Christ in a sustained way that might well not happen if you didn’t. When you take Holy Saturday as a day of contemplation and quiet, you feel the silence and confusion and sheer weight of the period between crucifixion and resurrection, and notice the connections between that day and the rest of the Church age. When you baptise people on Easter Sunday, you enact new life at the same time as you celebrate it.

Can you see how the Christian calendar helps you practice — not just hear — the Christian story? We aren’t just told the story; we live it. And as we live it, we are being shaped by it.

A TOOL TO BUILD THE NEW CHRISTENDOM

We are in a battle over time itself, and the enemies of the church know this better than we do.

“Cultural dominance requires two things,” wrote Carl Trueman: “control of time and space.”

If we understand that restructuring a culture’s time is a means of gaining cultural dominance, then we can begin to understand why contemporary battles over the calendar have become so important. That’s why we have Pride Month, now; it’s why Columbus Day is disappearing for an ascendant Indigenous Peoples Day. This is why we’ve replaced BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, the year of our Lord) with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). These shifts in our calendars are really the pursuit of secular cultural dominance.

Christians had that cultural dominance once: “Liturgical calendars developed in the fourth century and beyond, as Christianity came to dominate the empire,” Trueman wrote. In this first Christendom, controlling time “was achieved through developing a calendar which gave the rhythm of time a specifically Christian idiom.”

It follows, then, that if we want to build the New Christendom (and we do), then reclaiming the church calendar is one critical way to do so.

‘NOT HOLY BUT HELPFUL’

None of this is to say that the church calendar should be required, only that it is, in the words of Daniel Hyde, “not holy but helpful.”

There are more reasons than those above that the church calendar is helpful, including:

It is a reminder of the historical nature of our faith — the Christian claims happened at particular times in history
It unites us to the universal, catholic church through shared practices
It demonstrates a respect for Christian tradition
It provides a structure for disciplined times of feasting and fasting

Hopefully, some of you have been convinced by my plea — my invitation — to step into the benefits of ordering your time according to the Christian story. I’m not trying to implement a mandate here. But whether you’re convinced or not, either way, remember:

“One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind” (Romans 14:5).

WHAT THIS RECOVERY MIGHT LOOK LIKE

A few quick, closing thoughts:

Recovery in the Church

Again, remember that the question isn’t whether your church follows a calendar, but which calendar it follows. In many (most?) parts of evangelicalism, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Super Bowl Sunday, and Spring Break are more likely to get a mention from the pulpit or programming than are Epiphany, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, or Ascension Sunday.

As a baseline, I’d like to see every single church reclaim and celebrate the five evangelical feast days of Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. Almost every church already celebrates Christmas and Easter, and many or most mark Good Friday, so we really only need to do the heavy lifting on Ascension and Pentecost.

The other days surrounding this can be practiced according to conscience or tradition, including Advent, Ash Wednesday, and Lent (not to mention the numerous other days of feasting, fasting, and commemoration in various liturgical calendars).

Recovery in Your Personal Life

If you’re personally convinced of the benefits of the church calendar, you can mark the days yourself, even if your church doesn’t. Simply find a church calendar (I use and recommend the Anglican one) and begin paying attention to it.

A lot of this will be unfamiliar at first. Start small — stick with the big ones, like the five evangelical feasts or some of the others (Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Christ the King). Don’t worry about what Whitsunday means or which days are Days of Rogation or whether to fast on Ember Days. Start with the basics and add as you go.

You can also work to structure your life according to seasons of feasting and fasting — whether you do this with or without the church calendar, these disciplines are both biblical and good for you.

A quick note on saints’ days or feast days:

I used to be uncomfortable with saints’ days, but the truth is, I already commemorate people all the time. My personal calendar is full of birthday reminders for my friends and family members, and as I grow older, it’s beginning to fill with days remembering my friends’ and family members’ deaths. For a long time, I’ve noted the births and deaths of authors or public figures I’d like to remember (e.g., C.S. Lewis, Jonathan Edwards, John Bunyan, P.G. Wodehouse). I even mark the birthdays of some fictional characters.

Fictional characters notwithstanding, it is normal and human and good to remember these things — so we should do so. And if we’re going to commemorate our friends and family, why would we not also commemorate our fathers and mothers in the faith? One helpful tool for me has been Our Church Speaks.

Recovery in the Culture

As I said earlier, one reason we lost the culture is that we lost the calendar. And one way to win the culture back is to reclaim the calendar — which is to say, reclaim time itself — in the name of Jesus. But we can’t give the world something we don’t have. Start in the church and your own life, then look to the culture.

We can look for ways to re-Christianize the major cultural holidays that come from the church: Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day. But we can also begin to publicly celebrate the rest of the church calendar as a means of reasserting a peculiarly Christian culture.

Think of the way that restaurants in certain regions still have Fish Fry Fridays during Lent, or whose businesses still close on Sundays — this thoroughly secular sphere has responded to the cultural demands of Christians who follow the church calendar. We want more of this, and we want it on many more church holidays. Our goal here should be to aim for a critical mass of Christians, such that the culture notices and begins to change in response.

See there the slaughtered Lamb

“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12)

See there the slaughtered Lamb
who sits upon his throne.
The King of nations, slain,
has come into his own.

Bend every knee before
the slaughtered Lamb, our God.
Sing every tongue and more
in praise of Jesus’ blood.

The body of the Christ,
once dead, now glorified,
still bears his wounds and scars
who once was crucified.

Where streams of blood once flowed
now living waters run,
from once the death-dark tomb
now shines the risen Son.

His blood has bought our lives.
Sing hallelujah! Sing!
Behold the Lamb of God,
our resurrected King.

All praise the risen Lord!
All praise the slaughtered Lamb!
All praise the suff’ring Christ,
The crucified I Am!

God who rescues, save this child

And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne. (Revelation 12:4b–5)

God who rescues, save this child,
Catch him to your royal throne.
From that dragon long reviled,
Catch and keep him for your own.

Adam fell before the serpent,
Still your plan was not undone.
Gospel seed would rise usurpant,
Save, as Seth, this little one.

You saved a savior from the Nile,
In an ark of pitch and straw.
As Moses from the crocodile,
Catch this child from the claw

Always crouched and ever waiting,
Satan seeks to snatch our young.
God of mercy unabating,
Save your daughter, save your son

Infant Jesus heard the weeping
Of sad Rachel’s slaughtered sons.
Still you kept Christ from the reaping,
Likewise, save these little ones

Jairus pleaded for his daughter:
“Come and heal that she might live”
In his mending arms Christ caught her.
Lord, today this healing give.

Whether whole and hale here with us,
Whether with you on your throne,
Saving Lord, this mercy give us:
God who rescues, save your own

American Logres

After William Blake’s “Jerusalem,” and for F. Scott Hoffman (requiescat in pace)

by Josh Bishop

Christ preached New England’s Pilgrim fields
from pulpit and with musket ball;
the light of Christ from Old North Church
shined clear to Independence Hall.

Christ westward crossed the fruited plain;
Christ bled to free the Southern slaves;
Christ led the million marching men
who dreamed Christ’s dream with MLK.

What now is this Christ-haunted land?
How long will we deny our Lord?
Where are the men who build and fight?
Where is my shovel? Where my sword?

By grace, we’ll build New Christendom:
from sea to shining sea he reigns!
His kingdom come, his will be done
in these United States again.

‘The Lord’s Supper’ by Thomas Watson

Several weeks ago, my wife and I served communion at The Gathering, a Sunday evening service on the campus of Hope College, where I work. Communion is served at The Gathering every week, as it is at a number of other local churches — but weekly communion has never been a part of my church experience.

I suspect that the less frequent celebration of the Lord’s Supper in the broadly Evangelical, nondenominational churches where I’ve worshipped for all of my adult life is largely a function of their understanding that communion is only or primarily a means of remembering Jesus’ crucifixion: “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).

If communion is what Pastor Uri Brito calls “a matter of subjective mental recollection,” then infrequent communion is just fine. But what if communion is something more than that? I suspect that churches which celebrate the Eucharist weekly do so because they believe that communion actually does something. And if that’s true — if communion actually does something — then what does it do?

To help answer that question, I turned to The Lord’s Supper, a small volume by Puritan Thomas Watson (c. 1620–1686), originally published in 1665 as The Holy Eucharist. I don’t intend for this post to be a comprehensive review of the book or a complete summary of Watson’s argument — only to share some excerpts from the book that I appreciated as I read it.

In the first place, Watson argues against the remembrance-only view of communion, writing that a proper view:

“confutes such as look upon the Lord’s Supper only as an empty figure or shadow, resembling Christ’s death, but having no intrinsic efficacy in it. Surely this glorious ordinance is more than an effigy or representation of Christ.… Such as make the sacrament only a representation of Christ do aim short of the mystery, and come short of the comfort.” (18–19).

(He also argues against the “Papist” view of transubstantiation in language that would likely offend my Catholic friends.)

So if communion is more than a remembrance, what is it?

Throughout the book, Watson repeatedly insists that the elements of the Eucharist actually are the body and blood of Jesus. When a Christian partakes of the bread and the wine (or, sigh, the grape juice), he is consuming the body and blood of Jesus Christ — not in a literal, physical sense, but in a very real, spiritual sense:

“We hold that Christ’s body is in the sacrament spiritually” (17).
“Christ… gives us his body and blood in the Eucharist” (26).
“[I]n the blessed Supper, Christ gives himself to believers; and what more can he give?” (26)
“Christ offer[s] his body and blood to us in the Supper” (39).
We “receive Christ in the sacrament” (40).
“In the sacrament, the whole of Christ is served up to us” (49).
“We shall have not only a representation, but a participation, of Christ in the sacrament” (59).

Watson writes, “in the right celebration of it, we have sweet communion with Christ” (18–19). In other words, we spiritually commune with Jesus. (This is, of course, what the word “communion” means. Duh.)

We receive the nutritious benefits of the medium-rare ribeye and cheesy potatoes by eating them; in a comparable way, by consuming the elements — which is to say, by consuming the body and blood of Christ — we receive the spiritual benefits of Christ’s crucifixion: “as surely as [we] receive the elements corporeally, so surely [do we] receive him into [our] hearts, spiritually” (7).

“In this gospel ordinance, Christ does not only show forth his beauty, but sends forth his virtue. The sacrament is not only a picture drawn, but a breast drawn; it gives us a taste of Christ as well as a sight” (19). By “a breast drawn,” Watson means that we nurse on Christ as an infant nurses on his mother’s breast: “We need but cry, and he [Jesus] gives the breast” (44). Except, in this case, we nurse not on milk but on blood.

Watson spends much of the short volume outlining the benefits of Christ crucified that we receive in the Lord”s Supper: “All kinds of virtues come from him: mortifying, mollifying, comforting. Oh, then feed on him. This grace of faith is the great grace to be sent to work at the sacrament” (49).

At the beginning of the book, Watson responded to an important objection, asking, “But why was the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper appointed? Is not the Word sufficient to bring us to heaven?” (2). And he answers:

“The word is for the engrafting, the sacrament for the confirming of faith. The Word brings us to Christ, the sacrament builds us up in him. The Word is the font where we are baptized with the Holy Spirit, the sacrament is the table where we are fed and cherished. The Lord condescends to our weakness. Were we made up all of spirit, there would be no need of bread and wine, but we are compounded creatures. Therefore God, to help our faith, does not give us an audible Word, but a visible sign” (2).

Now, I do know that a lot of this is basic — especially to my friends in confessional and sacramental churches. But to those of us who were raised in Evangelical and nondenominational churches, this is a fairly revolutionary, radical view. In some ways, reading this book felt like a halting lurch toward a recovery of an inheritance that has been kept from me: Communion is not only a remembrance; rather, it actually does something.

To bring it back to my brief, initial comments on the frequency of communion: If in the Eucharist we commune with Jesus himself, and are fed his body and blood, and our faith is strengthened, and we receive comfort, and we are built up in him, and we are cherished by him — then it follows that we should eat at this table often: “There is no danger of excess at this Supper… the more we take the bread of Life, the more healthy we are, and the more we come to our spiritual complexion” (44).

At the very least, Watson’s book made me hunger for the Eucharist. I don’t expect that America’s non-confessional churches will move away from a remembrance-only view of communion, but as for me and my house:

“We should pray that God would enrich his ordinance with his presence; that he would make the sacrament effectual for all those holy ends and purposes for which he hath appointed it; that it may be the feast of our graces, and the funeral of our corruptions; that it may be not only a sign to represent, but an instrument to convey, Christ to us, and a seal to assure us of our heavenly jointure [union]” (57).

Christmas Triptych

by Josh Bishop

From in the neighbor’s house, warm lamplight,
overflowing in a homey amber glow,
extends its pleasant beams into the night,
spilling from a row of green-wreathed windows
to paint a quaint, Kinkadian sight:
The panes cast golden, scalene squares on snow
that falling all day long has gathered white
and freshly billowed on the ground below.

II.

And all at once the midnight sky turns bright
in brilliant, sunless dawn: A hundred score
of close-come stars — no, angels! — recite
their song to shepherds in their fields: Glory
to God! Still, these simple shepherds can’t quite
grasp what all this means — no, not before
they witness Joseph lifting high the light
of the world from a bloody, straw-strewn floor.

III.

We must’ve caught and torn a piece of night
sky when we cut our tree from Prince’s farm.
Look how the strings of incandescent lights
approximate inside our home the charm
of cloudless winter evenings, crisp and bright.
We’ve seen through leafless branches those same stars
while walking on the snowy streets in moonlight,
hand-in-mittened-hand to keep us warm.

Jesus is Lord of Holland

This is a guest column that I wrote for our local newspaper as a means of encouraging the saints in Holland, Michigan, and throughout West Michigan. The paper declined to print it, so I’m putting it here instead.

I’d like to speak for a moment to the conservative Christians in West Michigan, and what I want to say is this: Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for supporting public policies that are in line with your Christian beliefs. Don’t feel bad for wanting West Michigan to be a decent, Christian place and then working through the political process to make that happen. Don’t feel bad for wanting a Christian culture and a Christian public square.

I’m sure you’ve heard the arguments against this view, and they’ve been effective at cowing Christians into quietly accepting an increasingly pagan culture. If you support Christian policies, you’ll be accused of violating the separation of church and state. You’ll be accused of wrongly imposing your morality on others. You’ll be told that because Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world, Christianity has no place in the political process. None of these things is true.

First, the naysayers don’t really believe any of it. They’re happy to leverage Christianity so long as it helps them get the public policies they want. Immigration reform, refugees, climate change, masks and vaccines, affordable housing, minimum wage — all of these and more are defended and promoted in explicitly Christian terms. And, in many cases, they’re right. But Christian policies related to marriage, family, sexuality, gender, or abortion? Ha! You’ll have them calling you a Christian Nationalist and waving their picket signs quicker than you can finish saying, “What is a woman?”

So no, they don’t really want to keep Christianity out of the public square; they want to keep traditional Christianity out of the public square. They want to keep your Christianity out of the public square. Their progressive version is just fine, thank you very much. You simply need to understand that theirs isn’t a sincere objection — it’s a political tool designed to keep you quiet.

And, second, secular neutrality is a myth. It’s not possible to have a values-free public square. The question is not whether our culture and laws are informed by morality, but which morality informs them. The question is not whether our laws impose morality on others, but which morality our laws impose. The question is not whether we enforce blasphemy laws, but which blasphemy laws we enforce (curse Jesus, and the world will yawn; use the wrong pronouns, and your job may be on the line).

Our culture is becoming less Christian because Christians have been duped. We bought the big lie that if we jettisoned Christianity from the public square, we’d have a neutral, utopian space where every view would be welcome. But that’s not what happened. Christians vacated the public square, and secular progressives quickly claimed the ground we abandoned. As just one example, Pride Month has become a public celebration that puts the religious pageantry of the medieval church to shame — but you’d better keep your Christianity at home where it belongs, you bigot, and lock it up so the kids can’t find it.

In the book of Acts, an angry mob accused the early Christians of “acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king, Jesus” (17:7). Today, do not be surprised when the angry mob accuses you of acting against the decrees of the people, or of the neutral public square, or of secular liberalism. Perhaps they’re right — but we’re Christians, for Christ’s sake, and there is another king, Jesus. “And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14).

One of the central Christian creeds is this: Jesus is Lord. All authority in heaven and earth — all of it — has been given to him (Matthew 28:18), which means that Jesus is Lord of America, and he is Lord of West Michigan. Jesus is Lord of Holland. Live and, yes, vote as if that’s true, because it is true. All you need to do is stop feeling bad about it.

Bell, Book, and Candle

by Josh Bishop

“But these dark powers do not rule the universe: they are in rebellion against Providential order; and by bell, book, and candle, literally or symbolically, we can push them down under.”
Russell Kirk

A faceless hood unfolds from Corbett’s crypt.
A clammy fog fast fills the churchyard lawn.
At witching hour, hours before the dawn,
some specter’s skin-crawl claw creeps in to grip
the throat with fingers like a hangman’s rope.
This ancient power manifest tonight
(malice-made-flesh, perverse incarnate wight)
has come to leach your life and, worse, your hope.
Best pray that Tailor John will too soon chime
his cock-crow toll, his solemn, pealing call;
or incantate the Word — some sacred rhyme
breathed out on quivering, unsure lips is all
you’ll need; or light the feeble, flickering shine
of candle flame to drive away the pall.

H.M.S. Dimnent

*Dimnent Memorial Chapel, Hope College – Holland, Michigan*

by Josh Bishop

Three stone steps, then through the chapel doors to stairs
ascending down into the hull. There’s ceiling tiles
beneath our feet (black-and-white-checked chess-board squares)
and far above our heads the vaulted roof-ridge keel’s
held high by buttressed ribs. Brilliant stained-glass portholes
cast colored light full bright from some delightful land
on pews where galley bondslaves four times each week row
their oars in common meter to the drums’ command.
On the sternchancel deck, beside the ship’s-wheel pulpit,
the faithful helmsman crouches, steering strong and true
along the Captain’s bearing, guided by the sextant
of the Word. The westward rose-window prow cuts through
the swells to lead our rightwise stone sanctuary
toward the kingdom that has overturned this world.
A watchman chimes eight bells from the crow’s-nest belfry;
the lamps are lit, main and mizzen sails unfurled;
the crew belowdecks gathers at the board to eat
a double portion, strong wine and hardtack rations.
Weigh anchor! We’ve long leagues left in this topsy sea —
keel-up, mast-down — and still the Captain cries, “Sail on.”

Backpacking Somewhere Near Red Bridge

by Josh Bishop

In a coppice of aspen, their trunks silver-white,
bright beams of splendent sunlight like spearshafts in flight
pierce down through a ceiling of branches. The leaves
as a yellow-green snow falling soft in the breeze
drift to earth, and they flash as they turn in the sun.
I swear — swear to God! — that the leaves of Lothlorien
pale when compared to this common, anonymous
wood; the Fields of Elysium, set next to this,
cannot be nearer to heaven; if Avalon
ever had gardens, their beauty’d be counted as none
by any who’ve had the grand fortune to stand in
this spinney. No wonder the ancient pagans
built altars to worship the gods in these spaces
where numina stoop to ordain common places.