Here at Kairos, we loosely use a framework known as the church calendar to help guide our year through worship. The church calendar (and lectionary) was both instituted in some church bodies as a way of ingraining the Biblical narrative into everyday life, predicated on the belief that we are not only thinking or feeling beings, but loving beings. Both were implemented In a post-Constantianian religious landscape, where many of those baptized into the faith had a hard time understanding how to live faith out. The calendar helps us seasonally posture our whole bodies towards God, attuning ourselves to the varying colors, sounds, temperatures of the year. In this way, we are mysteriously reminded that we are not meaningless bodies with heads full of ideas and propositions, but porous entities with physiological realities connected to spiritual truths. In short, these were tools to help capture our imaginations to the glory of God as imagination is the gas tank of motivation.
As many of you know, I am a songwriter and performer, which often gives me a unique vantage point on what people want from music, and sometimes what they want from life. I have a producer friend who said to me, “People listen to music because they’re looking for a soundtrack to their lives; they need your music to help them see themselves in a narrative marked with purpose and rhythm.” At Kairos, worship is designed for you to find yourself in the soundtrack of Jesus. What’s on your playlist?
Since Advent, we have spent the majority our time in worship working to find ourselves in the life narrative of Christ – his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension. Soon, we will celebrate Pentecost Sunday and go into what is brilliantly called Ordinary Time. Some like to think of Advent through Lent as cultivating a practice of reminding ourselves of Christ’s story and Ordinary Time is when we go out into Christ’s story in communal life. As a sent people, let’s contemplate the ways Pentecost colors our day to day as Christians. In doing so, let’s pray that God makes us a Pentecost people, eager and craving His next move. Below is a brief summary of thoughts offered by Andrew Moody from the Gospel Coalition:
1) A New Movement in Human History: Pentecost is a reversal of Babel; a sobering story marked with the limitations of human ambition, language, and autonomy. At Pentecost, many cultures and people hear the gospel preached in their own language and a new stage of human history is inaugurated where the story of Christ goes to the ends of the Earth.
2) The Exaltation of Christ: “Jesus is elevated and becomes a sender of the Spirit – just like the Father. The completed man Jesus has received ‘all authority in heaven and earth’ and has been made ‘first in everything.’ God’s name is now his name; God’s power is now his power; God’s Spirit is now the Spirit of Christ.” The Spirit that drove Christ’s journey from conception to death was now the unified power of God in Christ to rule and renew all things.
3) The Glorification of Humans in Jesus (and vice versa): “The coming of the Spirit incorporates ordinary humans into the cosmic theatre of God’s glory. As we speak and live in light of the cross, God sends forth his Spirit to glorify his Son and Christ sends forth that same Spirit to glorify his Father.”
– Micah
Art: JESUS MAFA. Pentecost, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.