UMR Communications is offering the latest headlines in the RSS format.
Q & A
Q&A: Living out the Christian year Mary Jacobs, Nov 20, 2009
Bobby Gross
The Christian liturgical calendar is more than a series of holy days, according to Bobby Gross. In his book, Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God (InterVarsity Press, 2009), he delves into the “seasons of spiritual meaning” of the Christian year.
Mr. Gross is director of graduate and faculty ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and serves on the national board of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA). He spoke recently to staff writer Mary Jacobs.
In the foreword to your book, Lauren Winner talks about “living into the church’s calendar.” Why should Christians consider that idea? If we take the year as an opportunity to use the annual rhythms of the calendar and the rhythms of our own lives as a framework of systematically rehearsing the story of Christ each year, therein lies the potential spiritual benefit of the practice. Especially year after year, if it becomes a habit, we’ll find ourselves immersed regularly and ever more deeply in the story of Christ, and it gives meaning to how we experience time.
I notice you use the word “rehearsing” the story instead of recalling or remembering or recounting. What do you mean by “rehearsing”? I also use the word “inhabit.” It’s the idea of living in the story or being aware that our own personal lives fit inside a larger narrative—to dwell in it, to be conscious of it, to take our cues from it.
There are two spiritual dynamics going on in our practice of living the Christian year. First, there’s the rehearsing, the remembering. Sometimes theologians use the word “anamnesia.” It’s the opposite of amnesia: an active remembering, rehearsing, appropriating something from the past into our present experience. The other dynamic involves another fancy word that theologians use: “prolepsis.” It’s when we anticipate in the present something that’s not yet fully realized. So, if I set aside money for my grandchild’s college fund—even though the grandchild is not born yet—that’s an act of prolepsis. It’s bringing the future in our present experience in a way that engenders hope and affects how we live.
You grew up Southern Baptist. Sometimes I see an element of skepticism about the liturgical calendar among Christians in non-liturgical churches. What’s behind that? Yes, I grew up with that suspicion. Then I married a woman who is Catholic and we ended up in an Episcopal church. My wife was at home in the liturgy, but I was lost for several months. That’s how I first became acquainted with the liturgical calendar. I had to overcome some suspicions. And I had to understand: What’s the basis of this?
I think the skepticism is rooted in the Reformation. In reacting to the excesses of practices in the Catholic Church in the 1500s, there’s some baby thrown out with that bathwater. At that time there was a vast proliferation of saints’ days and the calendar was quite crowded. So those reformers rejected that whole system. Not all of them did. Luther didn’t, but many did. So along with an unadorned worship space and a Bible-centered faith, embedded in all that is a suspicion of ritual and tradition created by human beings, a fear that that encrusts the real treasure, which is the gospel or the scriptures. So a lot of the churches in the free tradition just moved away from anything that smacked of liturgy or the liturgical calendar. I would say that we forfeited a great tradition with proven value of over 1,700 years.
There are a lot of secular calendars that bombard us. How do we become more mindful of the Christian calendar? I work in campus ministry, so the start of the academic year feels like the start of the year. You might think of Jan. 1 as starting the calendar year, or a different date as the start of the fiscal year if you’re in business. So we have all these patterns to think about our year. We don’t need to disregard those other markers, but we can choose to mark the Christian year in order to sacralize time—to connect our days and seasons with the story of Christ. It’s not easy. That’s why I wrote the book.
We’re coming up on the season of Advent. Can you talk about the idea of “waiting” as its theme? Those four Sundays prior to Christmas Day set into motion all kinds of emotions. If we’ve had any losses or deaths around Christmas, those emotions can surface. It can be a lonely time for some of us; it can be an exciting time. It can be a frenzied time with the purchasing and the parties. So it’s quite easy to neglect the spiritual. But we can give ourselves permission in those weeks to both celebrate and to groan or lament. It’s a season to anticipate the coming of Christ, but it’s also a season to lament the fact that the world is not the way it is supposed to be. The days are getting shorter and darkness is growing. It reminds us of all that is not right in the world, all that is not right in our own lives. It can be a time to lament, with the prophets: Lord, how long is it going to be this way?
We can also use this time to practice restraint: not go to every party or to send out all 300 Christmas cards. Are there some choices we can make to open up some space, to step back and retreat, to get quiet, to do some praying in preparation? If we’re so busy and caught up in the activity, we’re not spiritually alert to what God might want to do in our lives in this season of anticipation. By getting into a posture of openness and anticipation, Christ can come into our own experience in a fresh way in this particular season.
Bobby Gross
I notice you use the word “rehearsing” the story instead of recalling or remembering or recounting. What do you mean by “rehearsing”? 
