# Der Lutheraner_Frankfurt am Main_Januar 1950_S3
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Number I

January 1950

Page 3

What Does the Church Year Have to Say to the Individual Christian?

Let us imagine for a moment: someone was cast away, utterly alone, on a distant island, and had with him for his Christian edification only a Bible and his hymnal. Would not the longing rise in him, ever more ardently the longer it lasted: If only I were in the midst of a Christian congregation that gathers around this word of Scripture and worships God together with the songs of my hymnal? And when Advent and Christmas came, Good Friday and Easter, Ascension and Pentecost: would not a h o m e s i c k n e s s arise in him for the days when he too had once been o n e  a m o n g  m a n y who t o g e t h e r worshiped the triune God in spirit and in truth? Despite Bible and hymnal, he would feel inwardly lonely and impoverished, because he would have to do without the fellowship of Christians, without which a Christian simply cannot live.

Yet how many are there who live not on a distant island but in the very midst of Christendom, and who d e l i b e r a t e l y withdraw from all Christian fellowship, thinking they can do without the church year with its holy seasons and its richly blessed observances. It is therefore important to make clear to oneself what s i g n i f i c a n c e the church year has for the i n d i v i d u a l  C h r i s t i a n.

Let us take as an example the A d v e n t  a n d  C h r i s t m a s  s e a s o n now behind us. Must not even a half-dead life of faith, as E. Haack says in his fine little book "The Church and Its Life of Worship" ("Die Kirche und ihr gottesdienstliches Leben"), feel itself freshly stirred by the refreshing breath that pervades the earnest, longing, and yet so comforting Advent hymns? Will not everyone who earnestly wants to be a Christian be gripped by the awakening tone of the old Advent epistle: "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light"? We recall how that word of Paul, Romans 13:11–14, brought about the conversion of the great teacher of the church, Augustine. Is it not a joyful sound for every Christian heart: "Behold, your King comes to you — gentle and lowly"? Oh, how many a hardened and cold human heart grows soft and warm again beneath the sunny Advent memories of childhood days, so as then, on holy C h r i s t m a s  D a y, to sink in worship together with the congregation into the mystery of the incarnation of our Redeemer! "The time is fulfilled" — salvation is here.

The E p i p h a n y  s e a s o n that follows points again and again to "the shining through of divine glory through the human nature of Christ" (op. cit.). Whoever experiences year after year the s e a s o n  o f  t h e  P a s s i o n  w i t h  G o o d  F r i d a y and the E a s t e r  w e e k s  u p  t o  A s c e n s i o n, to him the fact becomes ever more overwhelming: "God reconciled the world to himself"; Jesus Christ, the Crucified and Risen One, exalted into heaven, is the God-given, sole M e d i a t o r in whom the Father in heaven grants me everything! Pentecost, however, sets the individual wholly and entirely as a believing member into the great fellowship of Christendom, and brings to our remembrance Luther's glorious explanation of the Third Article of the Creed: "The Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith."

By means of the church year, the individual Christian is led through the w h o l e  h i s t o r y  o f  s a l v a t i o n and past all the great s a v i n g  a c t s  o f  G o d, and each time relives them inwardly anew.

But he is also reminded of the t a s k s  o f  o u r  C h r i s t i a n  c a l l i n g. The feast of E p i p h a n y shows us not only those heathen wise men who found their way from the distant East, by way of Jerusalem, to Bethlehem, but also makes clear to us the obligation to carry on the work of m i s s i o n s among our de-Christianized people and throughout the whole world with ever-renewed zeal — not as our own affair — but as G o d ' s  c a u s e. For we ourselves received the Christian religion through the service of mission work among the heathen. A w o r l d w i d e  h o r i z o n opens up here before the eye of the Christian. "Behold what wonders the Lord performs; he gives his messengers courage, and strength to the witnesses of the truth!" The feast of the R e f o r m a t i o n confirms us in personal certainty of salvation and truth. Beyond that, however, it makes us joyfully certain that a Gospel which, after sixteen hundred years, was experienced entirely afresh, can also be newly discovered again in the twentieth century and can lead to a renewal of the church, if it pleases God. To stand aside here and refuse to help in the work means burying the pound that God has entrusted precisely to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. How much we can learn here from our Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther! He indeed sings loudly and joyfully of what "God has done for him," but only in order to tell it to the "dear Christian congregation," so that they too may experience it and spread it further. T h e  c h u r c h  y e a r  l e a d s  u s  t o  l o v e. How could it be otherwise, when Jesus is the church year's hidden light, shining forth ever brighter and warmer? At holy Christmas it is the Child in the manger, in the Epiphany season the Savior of the heathen, in the Passion season the suffering form of Christ, in the Easter season the risen Lord of glory, at Pentecost the Spirit of grace and prayer, in the Trinity season the whole fullness of the Gospel set before us, through which love of brother and neighbor can be kindled in us. What a summons to extend a hand of forgiveness to one's fellow Christian is M a u n d y  T h u r s d a y and e v e r y  a p p r o a c h  t o  t h e  L o r d ' s  S u p p e r for those who eat of one bread and drink from one cup!

Of special significance is the service the church year renders in furthering Christian k n o w l e d g e. There one learns to distinguish the m a i n  f a c t s of our Christian faith from the s e c o n d a r y  m a t t e r s, and is kept safe from the danger of falling prey to s e c t s. Thus Sunday forms the center and hinge-point of the whole church year. Whoever observes it gratefully in the midst of the congregation will at once recognize the Sabbath doctrine of the Adventists as a fundamental error. Whoever, on the last Sundays of the church year, commemorates with the congregation the s e c o n d  c o m i n g  o f  C h r i s t will not hit upon the idea of joining some special "bridal congregation of Christ." For the idea of "the coming of Jesus" underlies the whole church year: he came in lowliness — he comes daily to us in his Word and Sacrament — he will one day come in glory: "a curse to him who curses him; with grace and sweet light to him who loves and seeks him." Rightly, therefore, has the church year been called a "regulator of Christian piety." It keeps our life of faith h e a l t h y and "guards against an arbitrary, morbid emphasis on particular favorite notions, against the atrophying of the content of faith and the narrowing of the spiritual horizon" (op. cit.). For us Lutheran Christians, the year of the church is no outward ceremonial service, but pure inwardness, pure Gospel.

Let this counsel therefore be given to you, dear fellow Christian: place yourself deliberately in the very midst of the ordered life of your church and congregation! Never absent yourself without cause from the preaching, lectionary, main, and auxiliary services arranged also for you! Do not come only now and then, whenever you happen to "feel a need" (that is self-chosen egotism)! Listen to the radio sermon when you are sick, or bound to the house on account of age, or kept at home by some duty (never, ever will or can it replace the congregation's worship service)! Do not lead a separate existence for yourself, but take your place in the congregation that praises and worships God, and you will e x p e r i e n c e how you grow in the inner man, how your everyday life is blessed from Sunday onward, how cares and temptations yield under the believing reception of the Gospel, and how the joyful anticipation of eternity more and more fills you. "Let us be upright in love and grow in every way into him who is the h e a d :  C h r i s t." (Ephesians 4:15–16)

J. Fritze