Because the church is God’s own civilization, His city and kingdom, she marks time by her own calendar. The church lives by rhythms different from the rhythms of the world, including temporal rhythms.
Yet, during the past week, many of us stayed up late to welcome the New Year and we’ve all changed to 2009 calendars, just like our unbelieving, semi-believing, and once-believing neighbors.
The church has her own calendar, but the church also shares a calendar with the world.
This two-sided time-keeping points to the double mission of the church. By Christ and His Spirit, we share already in the age to come, and we fulfill our mission only when our participation in God’s new time gets embodied in the way we live together.
Yet, Jesus aims to imprint the pattern of the age to come on this age, and He aims to do it through us. Through our teaching, fellowship, prayers, and Eucharist, Jesus makes this world more like His kingdom.
And it’s been working. Much of the world celebrated the beginning of the year 2009 this past week, even in places like Japan, India, China, and Thailand that have no reason to count time from the birth of Jesus. And the previous week, non-Christians in Japan celebrated Christmas by decorating their homes with evergreens and telling stories about a Buddhist version of Santa Claus.
The calendar not only reveals the nature of our mission, but the degree of our success. It shows that Jesus has spent the last two millennia slowly transforming the world’s time into His own.
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