Full observance of the church year is central to Lutheran spiritual life. Lutherans have been influenced by ecumenical developments, as seen in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s adoption of the Roman Catholic calendar and lectionary. They have also influenced the ecumenical development of the Christian year, particularly in the observance of Advent.
The church year has always had a secure place in the Lutheran tradition. The liturgical seasons (Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Sundays after Pentecost or Trinity), the major festivals (Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, Christmas Day, Epiphany), many lesser festivals (All Saints Day, Holy Cross Day, Reformation Day, and some saints’ days), and days of devotion (Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday) have been observed for centuries. The church year lectionary has, for the most part, controlled preaching, hymn, and anthem selection. Paraments and vestments (stole, chasuble) reflect the colors of the liturgical seasons. Banners have highlighted symbols related to days and seasons. The folk practices that Lutherans have retained from various European cultures have been connected with the church year, such as Advent wreaths and calendars, Christmas trees, Lenten self-denial banks, and Easter eggs. The church year has helped to form a liturgical spirituality within Lutheran congregations and homes.
The major change in recent years has been the adoption of the archetypal Roman Catholic church year calendar and lectionary for Sundays and festivals within the church bodies which formed the ELCA in 1988. The European Lutheran churches have not adopted this calendar and lectionary.
Since the Roman calendar and lectionary constituted a reform of the historic church year, the changes have not been major. They have included dropping Latin tags for the names of Sundays in the church year and clarifying the organization of the church year around the Christmas and Easter cycles. This resulted in dropping the pre-Lenten Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima). The Epiphany season was extended through the Sunday before Ash Wednesday, which is now celebrated as the Feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord (some sixteenth-century Lutheran church orders counted the Transfiguration as an Epiphany event anyway). The last Sunday of the church year is Christ the King rather than Judgment Sunday, as in the older Lutheran observance. Of greater consequence is the recovery of Easter as the focus of Sundays as well as the central festival of the church year.
Lutherans have made their own contribution to the development of the church year. In particular, the Lutheran observance of Advent (originally a Gallican liturgical season rather than a Roman one) has had an ecumenical impact. The Lutheran liturgy provided a proper eucharistic preface for Advent before one was provided in the Roman Sacramentary. The Lutheran use of blue as a liturgical color for Advent rather than purple (thus emphasizing hope more than penitence) has been imitated in some other churches. Lutheran hymnals contain a rich collection of Advent hymns which are awaiting appropriation by other denominations (including “O Lord, How Shall I Meet You,” “Come, O Precious Ransom, Come,” “Rejoice, Believers,” “Prepare the Royal Highway,” and “Savior of the Nations, Come,” as well as the kingly chorale “Wake, Awake for Night is Flying”). The Advent wreath is virtually a Lutheran invention since it first emerged in northern Germany in the sixteenth century. All this has helped Lutheran congregations to resist capitulation to the secular Christmas celebrations in American culture. Some pastors have courted martyrdom by insisting that no Christmas carols be sung in church services before Christmas Eve. To a lesser extent, Lutherans have made an ecumenical contribution to the celebration of Lent, adding the focus on the Passion of Christ to the catechetical/penitential observance of Lent in the Roman tradition. Again, a number of Lutheran passion chorales await adoption in the hymnals of other denominations, just as the Lutheran Book of Worship has been enriched by ecumenical hymn traditions.
Some ritual practices associated with the church year in the Lutheran Book of Worship are recoveries of long-abandoned practices. Some of these were abandoned even before the Reformation. The re-introduction of such practices as ashes on Ash Wednesday, the blessing of palms on Palm Sunday, the foot-washing on Maundy Thursday, and the veneration of the cross on Good Friday have required patient pastoral teaching and the overcoming of latent anti-Catholic and anti-ritualistic prejudices in American Protestantism and culture. For several decades now there has been a patient but persistent effort to reintroduce the Easter Vigil as the “Queen of Feasts,” although it has had to compete with the more typical (and popular) Protestant Easter sunrise services. The recovery of an adult catechumenate process based on the R.C.I.A. will probably go a long way toward recovering the importance of the Easter Vigil in parish life. Special liturgies for Ash Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil are included in the Lutheran Book of Worship, Ministers Edition (1978).
Commemoration of Saints Ancient and Recent
In the instance of a Lutheran recovery of the sanctoral cycle of the church year (the calendar of saints’ days), opportunities for creative celebrations have emerged. Lutherans have always observed days of certain biblical saints such as Mary the Mother of our Lord, Mary Magdalene, the Apostles and Evangelists, St. Stephen (and some church orders retained a few post-biblical saints such as St. Lawrence and St. Lucia). In the Lutheran Book of Worship, the calendar of commemorations is greatly expanded from any previous Lutheran list anywhere. It is also a more balanced list in terms of the catholicity of the Christian witness in all times and places than that of any other denomination. So it includes not only renewers of the church outside the Lutheran confession, such as John Calvin, John and Charles Wesley, George Fox, and Pope John XXIII, but also some who were only at the fringe of church life, like Dag Hammarskjold. It includes women as well as men, people of color as well as whites. Even a recitation of the names in the calendar for the week in the concluding remembrance of the faithful departed in the Sunday intercessions will expand the congregation’s consciousness of the size and extent of the communion of the saints.
Some commemorations may give rise to a festival, such as the Day of Bach, Handel, and Schutz on July 28. Much helpful information for the observance of these days is included in Philip H. Pfatteicher, Festivals and Commemorations: Handbook to the Calendar in Lutheran Book of Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1980).
Great headway has been made in congregations in the observance of the festivals and commemorations of the church year since the publication of the Lutheran Book of Worship in 1978. One would like to think that this progress will continue since the church year is such a powerful tool of formation into the life and mission of Christ. This prognosis depends on whether Christian initiation or church growth models prevail in the ELCA in the years to come.