A probing but clearly written book, Calendar will find an appreciative audience beyond academia and clergy to the laity of the church: choirs and their directors, worship planners, adult study groups, and others who want to understand better the church's times of preparation and celebration. Calendar centers largely on theological meaning and parish practice in relation to liturgical time. Deliberately, almost no attention is given to detailed historical development, much of which is exceedingly complex in its origins and technical in its detail. An appendix entitled "Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (Or, This Book in a Nutshell)" aptly describes the radical reordering that Stookey believes occurs when our understanding of time and the story of Jesus takes its bearings from the Incarnation. So, just as the Christian week begins with Sunday, the day of Resurrection, Stookey follows the Christian year beginning with the season of Easter, and only then Lent; Christmas, then Advent. Illuminating discussions of Ordinary and Extraordinary Time, and the Sanctoral Cycle follow. A probing but clearly written book, Calendar will find an appreciative audience beyond academia and clergy to the laity of the church: choirs and their directors, worship planners, adult study groups, and others who want to understand better the church's times of preparation and celebration. Calendar centers largely on theological meaning and parish practice in relation to liturgical time. Deliberately, almost no attention is given to detailed historical development, much of which is exceedingly complex in its origins and technical in its detail. An appendix entitled "Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (Or, This Book in a Nutshell)" aptly describes the radical reordering that Stookey believes occurs when our understanding of time and the story of Jesus takes its bearings from the Incarnation. So, just as the Christian week begins with Sunday, the day of Resurrection, Stookey follows the Christian year beginning with the season of Easter, and only then Lent; Christmas, then Advent. Illuminating discussions of Ordinary and Extraordinary Time, and the Sanctoral Cycle follow. Laurence Hull Stookey is Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Worship, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C., and Pastor of Asbury United Methodist Church in Allen, MD. He has authored the following books for Abingdon: Eucharist: Christ's Feast With the Church; Calendar: Christ's Time for the Church; Baptism: Christ's Act in the Church; Let the Whole Church Say Amen; and This Day: A Wesleyan Way of Prayer. also try lstookey@wesleyseminary.edu Calendar Christ's Time for the Church By Laurence Hull Stookey Abingdon Press Copyright © 1996 Abingdon Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-687-01136-0 Contents Preface, Prologue, 1. Living at the Intersection of Time and Eternity, 2. The Year of Our Risen Lord, 3. Easter: The Great Fifty Days, 4. Lent: Forty Days of Devotion and Discipline, 5. Christmas: The Great Exchange, 6. Advent: The End and the Beginning, 7. Ordinary and Extraordinary Time, 8. The Sanctoral Cycle: Resurrection Power in Human Lives, Epilogue, Appendix 1: Putting Liturgical Colors in Their Place, Appendix 2: Forgetting What You Were Always Taught (or, This Book in a Nutshell), Appendix 3: Calendars, Notes, For Further Reading, Index, CHAPTER 1 Living at the Intersection of Time and Eternity To be deeply Christian is to know and to live out the conviction that the whole human family dwells continuously at the intersection of time and eternity. A superficial Christianity may be content with far less, believing merely that some portions of the human family dwell there—for example, only those who are "believers," as defined, perhaps, very narrowly. Or a superficial Christianity may identify certain occasions on which God, the Eternal One, has momentarily entered into human history or into the experience of particular persons, only to be obscured again thereafter. But such interpretations of the Christian faith fail to grapple with the way in which God is perpetually at work in all of creation. The abiding conviction that history and eternity continuously intersect is grounded in the most basic of Christian affirmations. For our scriptures insist that in the days of the Emperor Augustus the eternal Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, born in Bethlehem when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Further, our creeds affirm that this Christ—"God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God"—was crucified in the time and under the jurisdiction of Pontius Pilate and rose from the dead after three days. To take these assertions seriously is to be bound to the conviction that God and human history are intertwined. Hence, as Christians we ought continuously to be aware that we live at the intersection of time and eternity, but often we are not; for one thing, our preoccupation with the pressures an