Lent Reflection #9 for Day #10: Why a Calendar?
I just finished walking my dog about three miles. She's let me know she's exhausted.
I listened to a podcast called The Disrupters, which is led by Esau McCaulley. He is a New Testament professor at Wheaton. I'm hooked now, after listening to an interview with N.T. Wright and Tish Harrison Warren. Much to be challenged by there; in my seventh decade I'm less impressed with the evangelical party line and wish to have more of a connection to historical Christianity rather than the mode of this moment.
All three of these writers/speakers/scholars are Anglican. It is a rich tradition that spawned the Puritans, C.S. Lewis, and many others whom we looked to for wisdom, although I am not attracted to it myself. Perhaps that is self-serving: I'll read its books and feast on its ideas but reject itself. Something about its ties to a state church bothers me. Perhaps I'll get over it.
But I bring all this up because of the discussion on the podcasts about liturgical year or calendar. A comment was made by a priest that "Now Advent is hip, but we'll be doing it twenty years from now when it's not hip anymore." Very good. And that is the point; liturgy and the liturgical year defies trends and fads and hipness. It reminds us that we are part of a community centuries old and global. Our whole beings live in the kingdom of God; our bodies live in the political unit called the United States(or Canada, or England, or . . . )
Liturgy is how we fight our individualistic culture with a holy collectivism. I was at a conference two weeks ago where several sessions trotted out the collectivist/individualistic dichotomy (it's a range, not an either or that we get sorted into). The message was a woke "individualism bad, collectivism good," which I took issue with. Most of these professors and students pining for collectivism wouldn't be able to live a week in it. Ha! They wouldn't want their parents picking their spouse!
Yet evangelicalism is fraught to its core with an individualism that can become toxic. We don't need a dose of The Book of Common Prayer; as Tish Warren said, we would need to soak in it for a couple of decades!
So that is my Lenten reflection. Step back from doing Lent as a trendy practice that says, "I'm not just one of those mindless evangelicals who goes along. I can do this thing no one else does and look at how cool I am." Step into Lent as a lifestyle and life-long commitment, a life of gratitude and repentance.
I listened to a podcast called The Disrupters, which is led by Esau McCaulley. He is a New Testament professor at Wheaton. I'm hooked now, after listening to an interview with N.T. Wright and Tish Harrison Warren. Much to be challenged by there; in my seventh decade I'm less impressed with the evangelical party line and wish to have more of a connection to historical Christianity rather than the mode of this moment.
All three of these writers/speakers/scholars are Anglican. It is a rich tradition that spawned the Puritans, C.S. Lewis, and many others whom we looked to for wisdom, although I am not attracted to it myself. Perhaps that is self-serving: I'll read its books and feast on its ideas but reject itself. Something about its ties to a state church bothers me. Perhaps I'll get over it.
But I bring all this up because of the discussion on the podcasts about liturgical year or calendar. A comment was made by a priest that "Now Advent is hip, but we'll be doing it twenty years from now when it's not hip anymore." Very good. And that is the point; liturgy and the liturgical year defies trends and fads and hipness. It reminds us that we are part of a community centuries old and global. Our whole beings live in the kingdom of God; our bodies live in the political unit called the United States(or Canada, or England, or . . . )
Liturgy is how we fight our individualistic culture with a holy collectivism. I was at a conference two weeks ago where several sessions trotted out the collectivist/individualistic dichotomy (it's a range, not an either or that we get sorted into). The message was a woke "individualism bad, collectivism good," which I took issue with. Most of these professors and students pining for collectivism wouldn't be able to live a week in it. Ha! They wouldn't want their parents picking their spouse!
Yet evangelicalism is fraught to its core with an individualism that can become toxic. We don't need a dose of The Book of Common Prayer; as Tish Warren said, we would need to soak in it for a couple of decades!
So that is my Lenten reflection. Step back from doing Lent as a trendy practice that says, "I'm not just one of those mindless evangelicals who goes along. I can do this thing no one else does and look at how cool I am." Step into Lent as a lifestyle and life-long commitment, a life of gratitude and repentance.
Comments