Latest / Eurasia Region Podcast / S2-E21 | Everyday Eurasia |  Dr. Steve Wright

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S2-E21 | Everyday Eurasia |  Dr. Steve Wright · Eurasia Region Podcast

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  This week on the podcast, we're welcoming Doctor Steve Wright.
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  In 2015, he moved from Australia and joins the faculty at Naswin
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  Theological College in Manchester to teach theology.
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  Originally from the Wesleyan Methodist Church tradition, he
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  teaches and supervises across a wide range of subjects.
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  He will take us on a journey through time, exploring the rich
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  themes and deeper reflections of the Christian liturgical
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  calendar. The Christian Church is that
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  community which patents its worship on the proclamation of
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  the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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  The resurrection of Jesus Christ radically reorders and recenters
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  and reshapes our sense of time. Time is we ordinary ordinarily
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  understand it. Your passes from the past into
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  the future. It is a place that is filled
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  with growth and development. It is a place that is filled
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  with the setting of objectives and strategies and goals.
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  But in the resurrection we see something new happen.
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  This isn't time as we ordinarily know it.
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  Time as we ordinarily know it has all of these cycles and
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  natural rhythms built into it. But the resurrection of Jesus is
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  a disruption of these natural cycles and rhythms.
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  It's something radically new. It's not an ordinary thing in
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  the passage of history for a dead man to raise back to life,
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  but this is precisely what we proclaim in the resurrection.
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  And so Christian worship is patent on this message of
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  deliverance in Jesus Christ. This is something that we
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  inherit from the faith of Israel, who has all of these
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  festivals and rituals for commemorating and keeping alive
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  the memory of God's saving acts such as the Passover.
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  And so the Christian pattern of worshipping on the Lord's Day,
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  on the Sunday, is a way of keeping this message of the
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  resurrection. Central Christians don't
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  typically worship on a Saturday, the Sabbath, which is set aside
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  in Scripture as a day of rest. Instead, we worship on this
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  first day of the week, the Lord's Day.
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  When we think about the passing of the year, our ordinary way of
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  marking the year is to think of the calendar year, which goes
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  from January to December in the western world.
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  On the 1st of January, many of us are setting setting our
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  expectations for the coming of the year.
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  Some people set resolutions where they they lay out
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  objectives for the year before them because they want to feel
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  productive. They want to feel like they're
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  making good use of their time and our way of inhabiting time
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  then becomes very centred on us and what we want to get out of
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  our time. Well, this is not what's
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  happening in what we call the church year.
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  Many Christians around the world follow a church calendar which
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  doesn't follow the ordinary calendar.
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  The church calendar doesn't begin with January 1.
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  It begins earlier, back in November, December, with Advent,
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  the season prior to Christmas. This is 4 weeks of waiting, four
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  weeks of waiting for the coming of the promised Messiah.
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  So this isn't a period of setting expectations and goals.
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  It's a period of patience, of opening oneself up, of, of
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  inhabiting time in a different way, a way that's not centered
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  on us, but centered on the coming of Christ.
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  And so this church year, this church calendar, is a way of
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  enacting the drama of the death and resurrection of Christ.
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  It's a way of ordering our time not around ourselves and our own
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  goals, but around the saving work of God in Jesus Christ.
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  The church calendar moves through its own seasons.
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  Not the natural seasons of the year, but the seasons of
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  Christ's life from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany.
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  The commemoration of the arrival of the wise men into Lent,
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  preparation for the coming before the death of Christ.
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  Easter, the commemoration of the death and resurrection of Christ
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  on to Pentecost and Ordinary Time.
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  These rhythms are built around the holding fast to God's saving
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  work in Christ, and so we're inhabiting time differently when
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  we worship in the Christian Church.
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  This is what Martha Dawn, the Christian writer, calls a royal
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  waste of time. It's unproductive time in the
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  ordinary sense, not driven by objectives and market deadlines,
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  but instead heeding the call of the psalmist to simply sing to
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  the Lord and bless his name. That is not seen to the Lord
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  because it brings you some personal benefit, but to Orient
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  yourself towards God. And so there's a sense in which
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  Christian worship is inherently unproductive.
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  But this is not to say that it doesn't involve us.
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  So one of the temptations, I think, in the Christian faith
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  when it comes to worship is to focus on the good bits, to focus
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  on joy. And indeed some worship services
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  with some of the contemporary music that we have, we might
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  feel the burden to constantly be experiencing joy.
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  But this is not how ordinary life unfolds.
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  Life is diverse and varied. Human experience, and therefore
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  Christian experience, encompasses the whole range of
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  human emotion. And by building our worship
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  around not our experience of joy, but around Christ's death
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  and resurrection, we find a broader emotional range enfolded
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  within our worshipping acts. And so, in following the
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  Christian year, we find that not only joy, but also sorrow and
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  trial and testing all belong to the worship rhythms of the
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  church's life. The earliest church seemed to
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  borrow its worship patterns in part from the singing and
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  praying of the Psalms. And if you've ever spent much
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  time with the Psalms, you'll find that there's a wide range
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  of human emotion and experience encoded within those texts.
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  They speak not only to the the wonder and majesty of God's
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  work, but they also speak to uncertainty and sorrow and fear
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  and doubt, sometimes to rage and fury.
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  All of these human experiences brought into the Christian
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  pattern of worship by the singing of these Psalms within
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  the context of the proclamation of the resurrection of Christ.
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  So why follow the church here? Why follow a church calendar?
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  Well, because it makes the main thing the main thing.
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  It helps many Christians around the world to focus not on
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  themselves and their own wants, but to focus on Christ and his
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  gifts. And so in these next episodes,
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  I'll be talking through some of these major events and
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  celebrations of the Christian calendar.
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  And I hope that you will journey with me through this.
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  Let me pray for you, Holy God, who comes to us not as we want,
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  but as we need. Holy God who speaks to us not
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  what we need, not what we want to hear, but what we need to
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  hear. Holy God, who arrives in
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  unexpected ways and makes new sense of the world, guide us
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  into true praise and worship of you as we proclaim the risenness
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  of Jesus Christ. Send your Spirit upon us that we
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  might be emboldened to proclaim to ourselves and to the world
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  that Christ is risen and time has been made anew.
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  Amen. Thank you for listening to the
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  Everyday Eurasia podcast, Inspiring Fate for everyday.
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  For more Everyday Stories, subscribe on this podcast
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  newsletter Snapshots. For our newsletter and further
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  information about the Eurasia region, visit our website,
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  eurasiaregion.org.