“Church time is sacred time with a story. And in sacred time, memory, imagination, and meaning work together so we can celebrate the shared stories of God’s activity in human history by remembering them as though they were happening to us. Memory enables us to remember and recall the story; imagination enables us to relive it, make it new again; and meaning interprets and applies it to our actions.” – Young Children & Worship, Steward & Berryman
If you’ve been around Redeemer Kids at all in the past couple of years, you’ve seen a giant piece of gray felt hanging in several of the kids’ rooms with what looks like a clock face on the front. Only instead of numbers, there are blocks of color that create a circle and a felt arrow that moves around that circle by ticking around the 52 blocks each week; it moves steadily and slowly like the minute hand on a watch face. This simple felt art on the wall is how we introduce the children in our ministry to the "sacred time with a story" we call the liturgical calendar, and it has become one of my very favorite lessons in the curriculum year.
This is one of the few lessons that sync up every room in Redeemer Kids on the same Sunday, and children who grow up in Redeemer Kids will hopefully know this story by heart by the time they finish 5th grade! Every year on Christ the King Sunday – the very last Sunday of Ordinary Time and the last green block of the long, long stretch of green blocks that make up half the church calendar – we break from our pattern of listening to Old Testament stories of judges, prophets, and temples to position ourselves for the transition into the New Testament in Advent. The stories of the Old Testament that the children have heard are put in the metanarrative of Jesus as King: the King who will rule over every mighty king in history and defeat the death and sorrow that plagued Creation from the moment Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden. We will close the old year out by remembering that every story points to Jesus the King. Then in two weeks, on December 1st, the capital-C Church will celebrate the start of the Christian new year! Only instead of entering the new year with fireworks and parties, we enter quietly, somberly, and with rich anticipation. We enter the new year through Advent, the season of waiting and watching, remembering how the Israelites waited on the Messiah, and now we all await his second coming together. Our felt calendar-clock tickspoints to the purple blocks — four of them — where we watch them move steadily each week, lighting candles in our Advent wreaths as we go. While our culture gets noisy with parades and parties and presents, our little rooms at church get quiet.
“[The Church calendar] is a powerful means of shaping our lives around God’s one big unfolding story as laid out in scripture. Rather than our lives turning around our own agenda, it turns around Christ. Rather than being about my own achievements and acclaim, my life becomes about what God has done in Christ.” — "The Church Year" from God's Big Story
Time is a funny thing, especially for children. We say the Messiah is coming, the Messiah has come, and the Messiah is here, all at once. We say time moves in a line and in a circle. The language we use about time can feel disorienting instead of enlightening! The Church calendar invites us to use our collective memory and imagination to help each child, and the rest of us, find our place in God’s time together across centuries and continents. In the next couple of months, particularly the months of December through February, the church will move through three seasons of the liturgical year – Advent, Christmastide, and Epiphanytide. During those months there are tangible and compelling ways to draw our children into the story of the Gospel, "God's one big unfolding story": by lighting candles on wreaths in Advent, celebrating the Eucharist together on Christmas morning, witnessing baptisms in Epiphany, and so much more. Telling the story of our faith by the way we inhabit time together is a powerful tool to unify our congregation, old and young, with the ancient church and believers around the world.”
Casey Cisco
Director of Redeemer Kids
