Endings and Beginnings

Last week I received my Lectionary for the coming year. It’s a book full of useful information including which Bible readings are suggested for services on each day of the year. It also lists festivals, saints days and indicates which liturgical colour should be used on each day (e.g. purple for Lent and Advent and gold or white for Christmas).

This week is the last week of green Ordinary time before we enter Advent and a new lectionary year on 30 November. Paula Gooder has written a book about Ordinary time called ‘Everyday God – the spirit of the ordinary’. She explains that Ordinary time comes from ‘tempus ordinarium’ which is Latin for measured time – the numbering of weeks in the liturgical calendar. We are reaching the end of a period when we have been living week by week in the ordinary present - meeting God in our everyday lives. On Sunday 30 November we will pivot to Advent - a season of waiting – waiting for the birth of Christ, waiting for his Kingdom to come, waiting for him to come again.

All this begs the question of why we have liturgical seasons and colours and an ending and a beginning as Advent starts, especially as God is beyond and unconstrained by calendar time. I don’t know the answer to this but there are many cyclical features of our lives.  Over the year we experience the seasons and the activities and blessings associated with them (today at the very end of autumn I planted my bulbs and look forward to seeing them come up in the spring). We commemorate birthdays and anniversaries. The research survey I run in schools has an annual cycle which follows the academic year and the report is published the same week every year. All these aspects of our lives go round and round and yet each year they are different - gardens develop and are not the same every spring, each year at our birthday we are older (and maybe wiser?) and have experienced more of life, each year the survey report shows something different from the year before.

I wonder what we notice about how our faith and life have changed each year as the liturgical seasons come round. How have we changed since last Advent? What have we discovered on our inner journey with God? Reflecting on the year that has passed, what do we hope for in the coming year as Advent begins?

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

Revelation 1:8