Whose Calendar?

Tomorrow will be Father's Day in the USA. For most children it presents a problem because they have no idea what to get their father, and they probably don't have enough money to get anything he wants that he does not have. I always felt badly about birthdays and Father's Day because I had already bought myself anything I wanted that was under $25.00. I also knew that they did not have even that much usually to buy me something. So Father's Day was a problem. It is a problem for lots of other people as well because some of us fathers are not very nice people, and some children do not even get to know their fathers.

But Father's Day, Mother's Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Valentine Day, and the list goes on are a problem for the faithful preacher and his congregation. How much do you let the civil calendar influence the life and teachings of the Christian community? How much authority do you give to the civil, commercial, and popular culture to determine the agenda of the worship experience of the People of God?

One of the very first meetings of a Commission on Ministry I attended as a new member of Presbytery was a real shocker to me. An older minister made the statement that he never found preaching very hard. He summarized it quickly: New Years - talk about new beginnings, Valentine Day - love, Spring - new life; Mother's Day - Mothers; Father's day - Fathers, 4th of July - loyalty; Labor Day - hard work. And he said you just have to say nice things about all of them and people love it.

And somehow the fact that he had never even come close to anything in the Bible or dealt with the question of sin, the necessity of forgiveness, the need for grace, the mystery of the Divine, the reality of doubt, the questions of why is there something and not nothing, what is the meaning of life, where do we go when we die, and the list goes on. He was happy. It was easy. The Congregation, he said, was happy, so what was the problem?

It was the adoption of the liturgical calendar and the lectionary in Presbyterian circles to try to combat the older gentleman's preaching program. It was an effort to substitute the calendar of the Church for the commercial calendar of the culture. So it is interesting in some places to hear and read the cry coming from younger preachers that we need to get away from the lectionary and become "more relevant" in our preaching. Which for them means more along the lines of the cultural calendar.

I can only speak for myself, but the congregation and the preacher who spends time talking about the dates on the secular calendar is a congregation and preacher I would stay away from. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. What better way to be "not of it" than to have our own agenda and our own calendar which moves to a whole different time frame?