Finding God in the New Year (Part 2)

Many people find the New Year to be a helpful time to refocus and recenter on their relationship with God. This series will provide some concrete ways for you to do just that.

The series uses Epiphany (Jan. 6) as a launching point for engaging in specific practices designed to help you find God all day, every day this New Year.

The first posts in this series will lay out the biblical vision for a life of connecting with God at all times. They will also explore some particular ways for doing this based on the work of St. Ignatius in his Spiritual Exercises.

Beginning Jan. 6, the posts in this series will give you specific practices to engage in each day in order to grow in your own awareness of and attentiveness to God. These posts will run through Transfiguration Sunday (Feb. 7). The practices in these posts will help you focus on the life of Jesus from his baptism to his Transfiguration.

The previous post explored David’s testimony in Ps. 16 that God can be connected with all day, every day.

Finding God in the Seasons

This is the testimony not only of a few Psalms. It is the testimony of the entire book of Psalms. Taken together, Psalms addresses what Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann calls the “seasons of life.” He lists three specific seasons. And Psalms equips us to connect with God in each of the three.

1. Certain psalms, called by Brueggemann “psalms of orientation,” are tools to help us experience and express God’s presence “in satisfied seasons of wellbeing.” I call these “psalms of the plain”—prayers that help us connect with God when life is routine and ordinary and things are humming along normally.

2. Other spams, labeled by Brueggemann “psalms of disorientation,” are tools to help us experience and express God’s presence “in anguished seasons of hurt, alienation, suffering and death.” I call these “psalms of the pit”—prayers that help us connect with God when life is horrible.

3. Finally, some psalms, labeled by Brueggemann “psalms of new orientation,” are tools to help us experience and express God’s presence “when we are overwhelmed with the new gifts of God, when joy breaks through the despair.” I call these “psalms of the peak”—prayers that help us connect with God when life couldn’t be better and when we are standing on the mountaintop of joy and gratitude.

The books of Psalms exist to help us seek God’s presence continually—whether life is normal and routine, or life is trying and terrible, or life is wonderful and full of Wow! In each season, there are ways to encounter the presence of God and thus to experience that pleasurable fullness of joy heralded by David. Fulness can be found in God. And God can be found in all times. In every season.

Finding God in the Calendar

The early church built on this belief. These first followers of Jesus believed life with God could be experienced every day and every month of the year. That’s why they created what we now call the “church/ Christian/ liturgical calendar.”

From a Christian perspective, we can imagine two ways of measuring time. A civic calendar enables us to measure time together with all who live around and among us, regardless of their faith perspective. The civic calendar is the normal calendar everyone uses. But a liturgical calendar enables us to measure time in ways that highlight the Christian story. Just as ancient Israel marked the passing of the days and months of each year with feasts and festivals designed to help people connect and reconnect with God, so the early church marked the passing of the days and months of each year with spiritual observances. This may be news to many of us, especially those from an evangelical background. Yet for almost two thousand years the church has organized the year by specific observances and occasions designed to help Christians focus on life with God winter, spring, summer and fall.

• For example, as early as the mid-350’s the early church was celebrating Christmas on December 25. An ancient document entitled “Chronography of 354” lists December 25 as the date on which Roman Christians corporately marked the birth of Jesus.

• In addition, another document from this same time period (late fourth century and early fifth century), the “Old Armenian Lectionary” lists Epiphany (Jan. 6) as an important celebration in the calendar of the church.

• And, Easter (with its corresponding season of Lent) has appeared on the church’s calendar from the earliest of times. During its first two centuries, the early church observed a two-day fast prior to Easter (Friday and Saturday). By the third century, this fast extended to the six days prior to Easter (water, bread and salt were eaten for the first four days and a complete fast was observed for the final two days). And by the time of the Council of Nicea in 325, churches were observing a 40 day period of preparation for Easter, which we call Lent.

Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter and events such as these marked the year for the church, enabling them to experience the presence of God during every season of the year.

The church year, Christian year, or liturgical year now consists of two “halves.” The first half utilizes events that tell the story of the life of Christ. It stretches from early December through mid-year. The second half utilizes events that tell the story of the church. It runs from mid-year through late November.

The first half highlights events which historically and theologically carry the greatest significance. Two trios make up the first half:

1. Advent/ Christmas/ Epiphany and

2. Lent/Easter/Pentecost.

In each trio there is a season of preparation (Advent & Lent), a season of celebration (Christmas & Easter) and a special day(s) of rejoicing (Epiphany & Pentecost).

The civic calendar, the one on our walls, watches, desktops and phones, enables people to count time together so they can plan a trip or schedule the closing of a deal on a house or anticipate a change in weather. The civic year “is a purely solar event, a chart of the plant’s journey around the sun.” But the liturgical year …

“is the year that sets out to attune the life of the Christian to the life of Jesus, the Christ. It proposes, year after year, to immerse us over and over again into the sense and substance of the Christian life until, eventually, we become what we say we are—followers of Jesus all the way to the heart of God. The liturgical year is an adventure in human growth, an exercise in spiritual ripening.”

The church believed that by filling the year with moments to prepare and celebrate and rejoice certain parts of the biblical story, we would be better able to connect with God all year long.

I was reminded of the need for this recently by a comment made by one of our church traffic guards. Like many churches, ours hires traffic guards to help with traffic coming into/leaving from our church building due to a very busy street that adjoins our property. This guard had just finished her morning duties and she caught me and Lawana Maxwell, our Women’s Minister, in the church lobby. “You know,” she said, “I see a lot of church signs these days that say ‘Jesus is the Reason for the Season.’ (It was December). That’s true. But I’ll tell you what–I need Jesus every season! I need him all year long!” That’s what the early church hoped to accomplish through the liturgical calendar. They hoped to help people like our traffic guard, and all followers of Jesus, find and follow Jesus in every season of the year.

[to be continued]