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Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
The feasts of Christian calendar get us to look back at Jesus and forward to a world made new. Ordinary time gets you to look around, to notice your setting, to embrace the hallowed ordinary. Today, we are jumping back into the final installment of our shared practice series. Sacred practice. Shared practice too.
Speaker 1:Shared ones are pretty sacred as well. This has been a fun series as we've looked at some of the ways that our tradition invites us to imagine faith less as an intellectual pursuit and more as something that works itself out in our bodies, in our habits, in our shared experiences. We've talked a little bit about why we sing. We've looked at how to be attentive through journaling. Last week, Bobby led us through a discussion of pilgrimage.
Speaker 1:And today, we are going to examine the Christian practice of keeping time. But before we do that, why don't we pause for a moment? You may have had a very hectic week. You may be facing all kinds of busyness. Why don't we pause in this moment?
Speaker 1:Won't you pray with me as we get started? Loving God, to whom all hearts are open today and all desires are known. We sit here in this moment, all of us, seeking something. For some, it might be the reprieve that we feel in these quiet spaces. For some, it might be the joy of being recognized in community.
Speaker 1:For others, it might be the chance to be anonymous, having no need to pretend. And as we pray, spirit of God, we ask simply that you would continue your faithful work in us. We ask that you comfort the places of our sorrow. That you'd eliminate illuminate the places of our darkness and our confusion. That you'd open up along the way, the places that have some resistance and some guardedness in our hearts.
Speaker 1:And as we turn to maybe focus our minds and our imagination on the wisdom that you might offer us today, we ask that you'd bring us your peace. We pray in the name of Christ who is our hope. Amen. Well, in a sermon about keeping and observing time, it's only fitting that I think that we would just jump right into things. Along the way today, we're gonna talk about the why.
Speaker 1:We're gonna talk about tradition and adaptation. We'll talk about every day and endings and beginnings. First things first though. Lots of what we're gonna talk about today will be in reference to what is often called the Christian calendar or some people call it the liturgical calendar. Some of you might be familiar with that terminology, some of you may not, so here is your not AI generated summary.
Speaker 1:Christian tradition has, over centuries, developed a rhythm of events and practices and seasons that shape the life of the church around the world. These generally unfold in a cycle that traces key moments from Christ's life and story along with significant elements of Christian faith. For most Christians, this cycle begins in the late fall with Advent, a season of preparation for Christmas. Following that, there's the season of Christmas tide, celebration of course, and then early each year in the calendar year, churches mark the season of epiphany before in February or March, we enter the season of Lent, which is season of journeying with Christ toward crucifixion and the hope of Easter. Easter leads into Eastertide, this season of celebration and resurrection, and that season ends in the late spring with the feast of Pentecost, where we acknowledge the ways in which the Holy Spirit is present in the world.
Speaker 1:After which, the church spends the remainder of the year in what we call ordinary time. And this is a season where we're invited to contemplate divine presence in our most common experiences and we're encouraged to participate in the divine story that the scriptures lay out for us. Promise you, we are not deep diving all of this today, that wouldn't be possible, but if you want to explore the calendar more on your own, here's two quick recommendations. First, Robert Weber's Ancient Future Time. This book was super helpful for me in my own encounter with this tradition early in my twenties.
Speaker 1:It's actually written to help uninformed protestants get up to speed. So if you are one of those, this is your book. And then, there's Joan Chitister's book. She's called The Liturgical Year. Chitister's a Catholic nun.
Speaker 1:She's a scholar and an activist and her book is also a great access point. Okay. Now that you have your homework assigned, we can turn our attention to how keeping time and observing it isn't a uniquely Christian behavior. It's actually a feature of human consciousness and awareness. Of course, tracking the passage of time is something that human beings, homo sapiens, have done for millennia.
Speaker 1:The ancient Egyptians, for example, watched the night sky and they learned to associate the appearance of certain stars in certain places with the annual flooding of the Nile River. There are then other ancient monuments all over the world where the function of them seems to have been, at least in part, to mark time. One example is the sort of space called Newgrange in Ireland. Some of you may have been there. It's a world heritage site.
Speaker 1:And there's an earthen structure and a tomb there and it has an inner chamber that it only receives external light on the winter solstice. When a special window allows the lowest of December light to cascade in into the middle of that building. And then, of course, there are the sundials and the incense clocks and the hourglasses that we have contrived to locate ourselves in time. Even as our philosophers and our poets and our artists have grappled with what it means to be aware of time's passing. Modern neuroscience teaches us, it's actually still unraveling, how our individual perception of time is a complex phenomenon that involves our senses and our memory.
Speaker 1:How it's actually constructed by different parts of the brain. Neuroscientists believe that this is part of why time seems to extend to be so long when we're young and why it moves faster the older we get. This has to do with the way that our brains need time to process information. How in our youth, our brains have to take in and process and reorder all kinds of new data all the time. Creates that time that sense of time stretching.
Speaker 1:And then, how as we age, we tend to repeat experiences. And this seems to speed things up for us. They've also discovered fun things like how the neurotransmitter dopamine seems to accelerate our time perception. This is why when you're with that friend you haven't seen for a long time or you're doing something relaxing or you are scrolling TikTok at 1AM, time gets away from you. What lies beyond the scope of science, however, and more within the purview of a series like this, is the consideration of why we mark time as a species.
Speaker 1:Why Christians have developed a calendar of feasts and saints and readings? Yes. But also, why do we notch door frames as children grow? Why we commemorate small achievements and also the big ones, like anniversaries? Why we can stand in a teeming concert hall or we can be alone on a windsurp peak.
Speaker 1:Why we can share riveting conversation with someone or retreat into uninterrupted silence and sense that in our practice of observing and sensing time, we find it somehow sacred. The roots of Christian timekeeping are, of course, firmly embedded in a Jewish system of thought and practice. It's actually quite ancient. The Hebrew Bible contains a record of Jewish ritual and celebration that all of which was tied to historical events and to annual occurrences. For example, the book of Exodus tells us about Israelites escape from slavery in Egypt and how they began to celebrate the yearly Passover feast.
Speaker 1:They also celebrated the feast of tabernacles and how it commemorated their desert wanderings, but also has come to be a kind of fall festival, a celebration of the yearly harvest. And it's these rhythms that defined the experiences of Jesus and his earliest followers because they were all devout Jews. And in the aftermath of Jesus' death and resurrection, the book of Acts tells us repeatedly that Christ's followers continued to observe these routines of Jewish faith. They prayed together at certain hours, they frequented the temple, and they also observed the feasts of Christian or not Christian calendar of the Jewish calendar. And they began to embody faith in ways that would become synonymous with Christian ritual and practice.
Speaker 1:Acts two describes how they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone in the community was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs that were being performed by the apostles. And all the believers were together. They had everything in common. They sold their property and possessions to give to anyone who might have a need.
Speaker 1:And every day, they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes. They ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Now, I would suggest to you that these verses are as close as we can come to identifying the genesis of our annual procession from Advent through Easter into ordinary time. And that might strike you as curious, given that there's no overt reference here to a prescription of particular days or themes or feasts at all.
Speaker 1:It's just a concise description of what was happening in one early Christian community. The truth is that if you search the scripture for direct correlates between particular texts and our practices of yearly rhythms, you are gonna be hard pressed to find evidence. Contemporary scholars of Christian history are clear that the liturgical year, the Christian calendar as we know it, developed gradually and erratically. Often as a product of local innovation and emphasis as opposed to top down dictates. For example, our practice of observing Advent before Christmas traces back to communities in Gaul, modern France, and Spain and Northern Italy in the fourth and fifth centuries, where new converts were collected and encouraged to fast and prepare for their baptism during Epiphany in January.
Speaker 1:It's actually not until the middle ages and the German empire of Charlemagne that Advent became synonymous or associated with Christmas and Nativity. The same is true of our observation of Lent before Easter. You can go all the way back to the second century, and there, Irenaeus wrote and noted the regional differences in how Christians were celebrating this time. Wasn't until the council of Nicaea in the fourth century that the use of the biblical model of forty days became more widespread. And to this day, depending on where you are in the world, your Lenten fasting and feasting will be very different.
Speaker 1:And this kind of diversity is simply a continuation of the unique local practices described in the book of Acts as I've read to you. Christians have, since the beginning, devoted themselves by remembering the events and the teaching of Jesus, by gathering at particular times, by feasting at particular intervals, creating prayerful space, and they have done so creatively and with profound variety. Which just means that when you come and you sit here at Commons, and we light advent candles and we recite Lenten readings of confession each year, when you cast your imagination back in time to your predecessors in life and faith with us on All Saints Day in November, when we invite you to locate yourself in time with repentance and with a posture of reconciliation on National Indigenous Peoples Day each June, when you do that, you practice a storied tradition and the local adaptation of a distinctly Christian calendar. And perhaps, you will find that it acts on you and that it changes you as you devote yourself to keeping it. And this is how I wanna suggest to you, we should locate ourselves, all of us here today, in this moment, in this space.
Speaker 1:In Alexandra's prayer earlier, you've been invited to bless and be conscious of school time returning all around the city as September looms. To feel excitement or to feel the anxiety or to acknowledge the tension and insecurity about a possible work stoppage. Some of you might be able to feel and perceive that in your bodies, all of it, all at the same time. In our prayerful pause today, you have already been invited to allow a Christian imagination of time significance to bring you perspective. Because, aren't these fall moments sacred in all of their ordinariness?
Speaker 1:This kind of attentiveness seems appropriate given that we are in the season known as ordinary time. Whereas, the church's move from Christmas through Pentecost invites us to think about Jesus's death, resurrection, his incarnation, and sending of the spirit. Ordinary time has historically invited Christian adherents like us to consider the rhythms of a Christ like life. And, that can only be done if we attend to our lives as they are. While it's right that Christmas and Easter kinda dazzle us with joy and anticipation, that they move us into moments that feel extraordinary and exceptional, it's also so right that ordinary time would attempt to arrest you with the nowness of life.
Speaker 1:The feasts of Christian calendar get us to look back at Jesus and forward to a world made new. Ordinary time gets you to look around, to notice your setting, to embrace the hallowed ordinary. And what does this look like? Well, Acts two describes how every day the earliest followers of Jesus continued to meet, how they broke bread in their homes, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts. And, I think this is more instructive than prescriptive.
Speaker 1:See, I think the secret is in the everydayness here. In their choice to regularly meet and receive the sacrament of community in all its forms. It was there in the eating and the sharing they had. It was there in their cultivation of simple gladness. And, is it possible?
Speaker 1:Is it possible that this is what ordinary time offers you? This season, every year, we're right in the middle of it, where you can intentionally reorient yourself from the patterns of the past and the uncertainty of whatever your future is, and you can alternatively make faith the force of your daily life. That's what Joan Chitister says you should do. And maybe maybe you're sitting and you're like, well, like, how? How would I do that, Scott?
Speaker 1:Well, you might already be doing it. Could it be that your practice of fiercely contending for just five minutes of quiet every day? Or your efforts to be an advocate? Or your consistent attempts to be a good friend? Or your practice of making more meaningful toasts before your meals?
Speaker 1:Could it be that the act of you paying attention to what makes your heart glad? Those experiences and relationships in which you find yourself the most unguarded and sincere, could it be that such daily moments are the holy practice of time? And could these be the cornerstones of ordinary, recognizable, Christ like faith? The Nine years ago, next Sunday, during ordinary time 2016, my family and I, we joined the commons community. Here is a photo from that day.
Speaker 1:And I love this photo for a few reasons. First, it's a reminder of how my children have grown up as our community has grown up. They're so small here, they are not so small anymore. It's also a reminder that Jeremy Duncan hasn't aged a day. And finally, it captures a wonderfully candid moment because in this shot, I had just finished introducing myself and our three kids, and I had forgotten to introduce my wife Darlene.
Speaker 1:And I don't know if the room has ever laughed more at my expense than it did that day, but since that day, every September, as I will again next weekend, I will complete another cycle in our rhythms as a local church. And in a way, each year I return to that moment there, where my wife and I passed through one of life's many crucibles of ending and beginning. See, we had left careers and community and much that we loved in Ontario to move here. And there was some grief and some uncertainty, some nervousness for us that day. And at the same time, we were so excited to join this amazing group of people to lend our energy, our love, our faith to this shared work.
Speaker 1:And when I look at this photo, I see a version of who we were. Each September, I I remember those people. They they knew some things. They they had some wisdom. They had some experiences to draw from.
Speaker 1:But what they didn't have was any idea of what was going to happen, of what time was going to bring them. They had no idea of the depth of friendship that they would find. They had no idea how hard they'd laugh or how profoundly they'd be loved and supported. They also had no idea of how much would change and who they would lose and how much they would not be able to control. And in a way, I'm not talking just about me and my family.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about us. My journey with you through Christian time year after year now has taught me to see and feel and love and cherish more deeply. Sasha Sagan writes that rituals are among other things tools that help us process change. There is so much change, she says, in this universe. So many entrances and exits and ways to mark them, each one astonishing in its own way.
Speaker 1:And I think Sagan is right. I I found that our annual cycle of Christian community has taught me a lot about why marking time is so important. Doing so, yes, it helps us center our ethics, values, our decisions in Jesus. But I promise you, the Christian calendar will also help you track the ways that your deepest growth and transformation is rarely instantaneous. It'll help you pay attention to the things, the people, the experiences that are profoundly good for you.
Speaker 1:And it will help you admit where you need or where you want to be different. In the ways that the calendar returns us to the familiar, as it will next week, each year, it can inspire a kind of gratitude for what has happened, an astonishment at all that is happening, and a reverent hope for what could be. And for me, this is an echo of what we see in Acts two when it says that everyone was filled with awe at what they'd been through, at what was unfolding around them, and what lay ahead for them. Like them, I think that we have a similar experience where each fall, as summer ends, and we complete another cycle together, whatever endings you might be facing, whatever beginnings might be approaching, maybe this week you can let the first yellow leaves and the cooling air inspire a little bit of wonder at the ways that God has been faithful. Which is not to suggest that Christian timekeeping is somehow blandly sentimental.
Speaker 1:That you and I don't experience time sometimes as dragging on or running out or passing us by. No. Often, feels like time is wearing us down or shattering us or altering the shape of our lives. But truth be told, I've found that our advent readings and our epiphany delight and our Lenten introspection and our Easter joy and an ordinary time return, it's helped me be more honest about that experience. And this is why, when I look at that photo and I think about the cycles I've lived through with many of you since, I can sense that I am beginning to trust ever so tentatively that the most vital feature of our faith is not that we keep time well, but that time somehow keeps us.
Speaker 1:That the mystery of our endings and beginnings, they're found in Christ's example. They find their companionship in community, that they find their fulfillment in the promise that grace goes on and on repeating. Let's pray. Loving God, Beyond time as a creative force. Entering time as Christ our servant with us in time as Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:Perhaps it's only right that we would pause for a moment and let our beating hearts be our prayer. Even as we consider the ways that to live day by day is to make our way from your great goodness back to your immense kindness. And how the church, this local expression, its rhythms help us to be more awake along the way. And today, we confess the tension maybe that we feel. For some of us, the days are long.
Speaker 1:And for some of us, it feels like they're short. And perhaps in our grief and in our challenge today, we can feel as though time is a burden we carry. And this is why we pray simply. Would you give us eyes to see and hearts to feel the ways that you are right here with us? And as we end this year together and we start again next week, I pray that we would be filled with joy.
Speaker 1:In the name of Christ, our hope. Amen.
Speaker 2:Hey, Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at Commons, you can head to our website, commons.church, for more information. You can find us on all of the socials commonschurch. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel where we are posting content regularly for the community. You can also join our Discord server.
Speaker 2:Head to commons.churchdiscord for the invite, and there you will find the community having all kinds of conversations about how we can encourage each other to follow the way of Jesus. We would love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in, have a great week.
Speaker 1:Talk to you soon.