It was a question I was asked several times on Sunday – “What’s up with the blue hangings at church?” Answering that question fully leads me into another “Why Do We Do That?” type response.
The place to begin is with the church year and the liturgical seasons. As Anglicans, we embrace and participate in the historic liturgical seasons of the Church. The liturgical seasons and their respective themes are:
Advent: Preparation, Watching, Waiting
Christmas: The Incarnation
Epiphany: The manifestation or revealing of God
Lent: Penitence
Holy Week: The final days of Jesus
Easter: Resurrection joy & the victory of God
After Pentecost/Ordinary time: The Church in the world, the ongoing Christian life
The Church Year can be better understood as revolving around two cycles, corresponding to the life of Jesus and the central aspects of our salvation.
–The Incarnation cycle includes Advent/Christmas/Epiphany
-The Paschal cycle includes Lent/Holy Week/Easter
But why do the liturgical seasons at all? What difference does it make? These are fair questions to ask. To me, the best answer I can give is this: Participating in the liturgical seasons connects us to that which is larger than ourselves, our own time and place and frantic schedules.
1. The liturgical seasons have been around for many centuries and observing them connects us with Church through the ages.
2. The liturgical seasons connect us with Jesus and events in his life as participants and not just observers.
3. The liturgical seasons connect us with the fast/feast cycle going back to the Old Testament. In our culture, there is a tendency to want to celebrate the big day, the feast, without doing the necessary preparation which comes before it. In many churches, we now have Christmas without Advent and Easter with no Lent. Something vital gets lost by taking such short cuts, and the liturgical seasons force us into introspection and preparation before the feast.
4. Finally, the liturgical seasons give us a different way of marking time. This coming Sunday isn’t just the 10th of December, it is the Second Sunday in Advent. The Seasons give us a way of sanctifying time, a way of making our time God’s time.
“The Christian year is a mystery through which every moment and all the times and seasons of this life are transcended and fulfilled in that reality which is beyond time.”
-Mitchell, Leonel. Praying Shapes Believing
“The church calendar is not about the cycle of life—school or sports or harvest time—but about the movement of history toward a glorious goal. We celebrate the past events of salvation history not merely to remember them, but to note how they infuse the present with meaning and power, and point us to our future hope. …The church calendar aims at nothing less than to change the way we experience time and perceive reality.”
-Galli, Mark. Beyond Smells and Bells
On to the liturgical colors. Each of the liturgical seasons has colors associated with it which are symbolic of the season. The colors serve as powerful visual reminders of the season we are in.
White, for purity and joy, is used during the great festivals of Christmas and Easter and other major holy days.
Red, signifying blood and fire, is used on Pentecost, Holy Week, and martyrs’ days.
Purple or violet, symbolizing penitence and mourning, is the color of Advent and Lent.
Green is for life, hope, and peace; it is used for seasons of Epiphany and Pentecost.
Black represents great sorrow and is used on Good Friday.
There has been a more recent trend to expand the liturgical colors beyond the traditional list seen above. There are good reasons for this. In the case of Advent, the traditional purple is still fine, but Advent isn’t a true penitential season – and Advent deserves a color all its own! Blue is now increasingly used during Advent. Blue is the color of the sky, the same sky from which Christ will one day return. Blue is the color of hope, signifying the hope we have in Him. Blue is also the color of royalty, appropriate for the season in which we await the coming of the King of Kings.
We have had liturgical hangings at CTR only within the past year. When the opportunity came for us to begin using them, it made more sense for us to go with blue hangings for Advent. I think they look great! My answer became a little more involved (and I hope informative) than I intended, but this is what is up with the blue hangings you see at church this Advent.
See you Sunday!
-Bill
