Living The Gospel Through The Liturgical Year

What if the most sacred work God does in you happens on the days that feel slow, repetitive, and utterly ordinary? We walk through the liturgical year—Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and the long green stretch of Ordinary Time—and show how the church has learned to keep time by Jesus rather than by sales cycles and sport seasons. Each season carries a color and a theme that preaches: purple for waiting and repentance, white for glory and joy, red for Spirit and mission, green for growth and steady faithfulness.

We start with Advent’s honest ache and move into Christmas joy, then Epiphany’s widening light. Lent invites a wilderness of preparation where we lay down illusions of control and make room for the grace that cuts deeper than convenience. Easter unveils a fifty-day feast because resurrection takes practice; it’s not just a song for Sunday but a new way to live all week. Pentecost ignites the church with flame and purpose, pushing us from pews into neighborhoods as the Spirit still fills, empowers, and sends.

Finally, we linger in Ordinary Time, the longest season and the place most of us live. Ordinary does not mean boring; it means ordered—a steady heartbeat where roots go deep and character grows. We explore how color, symbol, and rhythm can disciple our attention, reframe our routines, and remind us that every season is sacred. If you’re craving fireworks, we invite you to find grace in the daily—prayer that persists, worship that endures, obedience that keeps showing up. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a fresh vision of time, and leave a review with the season that’s shaping you right now.

Chapters

• 0:09 Why A Church Calendar Matters
• 2:00 Advent: Waiting In The Dark
• 4:42 Christmas And Epiphany: Joy And Revelation
• 6:50 Lent: Repentance And Preparation
• 8:52 Easter: Learning Resurrection Life
• 11:17 Pentecost: Fire, Spirit, Mission
• 13:11 Ordinary Time: Growth In The Middle
• 17:30 Colors That Preach: A Visual Theology

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:09

Hello and welcome back to Uncomfortable Grace, where truth and mercy collide. Today we're doing something a little different. We're talking about something that a lot of modern Christians don't really think much about. The liturgical calendar. Now, before you roll your eyes or think that this is just high church people stuff, stay with me because this stuff is powerful. It's more than colors and candles and fancy words. The liturgical calendar tells the story of Jesus over and over and over again. And it invites us to live inside that story instead of trying to make Jesus live inside of ours. And maybe more importantly, it reminds us that most of life and most of faith is spent not in the extraordinary, but in the ordinary. And that's exactly where God forms us the most. The liturgical calendar is basically the rhythm of redemption. It's how the church keeps time. See, the world keeps time by fiscal years, sport seasons, and sales cycles. But the church, the church, for two thousand years has kept time by Jesus. It's our way of saying Christ defines time, Christ is the center, Christ is the rhythm. It's divided into seasons that tell the story of the gospel, not in theory, but in color, sound and movement. Every season is a chapter in the story. Every color preaches a message. And when you start to live by that rhythm, you realize something. The gospel isn't just what we believe, it's what we inhabit. So let me start us off. We start off in Advent, waiting in the dark. The story begins at Advent. And the color is a deep purple. The theme? Well, that's expectation. Advent is the time before Christmas when the church waits in the dark for light to break in. It's the sound of candles flickering in a quiet sanctuary. It's the aching Come Lord Jesus, come. We remember that the world waited for a Savior once. And we still wait for him now. Advent is a season of holy tension. We remember promises not yet fulfilled. We look at a world full of injustice and whisper, How long, O Lord, how long? And it's in that longing that hope is born. Because waiting is not wasted time when you know who you're waiting for. Then suddenly the waiting ends. The Christ child is born. Christmas. The color is white. The theme is joy. Glory to God in the highest. Heaven meets earth. Eternity steps into time. But the church doesn't stop there. We move into empiphany. The color? Well, it's white again. But the theme this time is revelation. Epiphany means to reveal. It's the season when the light of Christ spreads. The magi arrive. The world sees the glory of God in the face of a baby. And that same light that broke into Bethlehem begins to break into the nations. Advent was the ache. Christmas was the arrival. Epiphany is the unveiling. God was with us. God with us and God revealed through us. Then comes Lent. The color is purple again. But it's different this time. Not royal. It's repentant. Lent is forty days of walking with Jesus in the wilderness, stripping away every comfort, every distraction, every illusion of control. We remember our mortality. We confess our sins. We fast to make room for fullness. Lent isn't about punishment. It's about preparation. It's not about guilt. It's about grace that cuts deeper than convenience. It's the season that whispers You can't resurrect what you won't let die. Then resurrection. We're into Easter now. The color is white again. The theme is life, triumphant joy. The tomb is empty. Death has been disarmed and defeated. Hope breathes again. And Easter isn't just one day, it's a fifty-day feast. Because resurrection takes time to sink in. It's easy to celebrate Easter Sunday, but it's a whole different thing to live Easter Monday through Saturday. Resurrection life means relearning how to live when the old you is gone. It means letting joy become your default again. That's why the church keeps Easter for fifty days, because that's how long it takes to remember that life wins. Then comes Pentecost. The color is red, the theme is fire, spirit, power. The church is born, the spirit descends, tongues of fire rest on believers, and suddenly the mission begins. What started in a manger is now moving through the streets. The light that broke into the world at Christmas is now burning through people of God. Pentecost reminds us that the same spirit that hovered over the water in Genesis now hovers over us, filling, empowering, sending. It's not a history lesson, it's a commission. The same fire that fell then still falls now. And then after all the high holy moments, the waiting, the birth, the cross, the resurrection, the fire comes the longest, quietest season of all. Ordinary time. The color is green. The theme is growth, maturity, faithfulness, and honestly, honestly, that's where we live most of our lives. Most of your Christian life will not be spent at the manger or the empty tomb. It will be spent between the miracles, in the long, slow, steady work of becoming more like Christ. Ordinary time isn't called ordinary because it's boring. It's called ordinary because it's ordered, it's structured like a steady heartbeat, if you will. Green is the color of life, growth, discipleship. The long stretch between Pentecost and Advent is where faith is lived, tested, and proven. This is where God teaches you to love your neighbor. This is where God teaches us forgiveness. This is where you learn faithfulness in the mundane. Because holiness doesn't happen in the spotlight. It happens in the slow light. So many of us chase mountaintop moments. Oh, we crave and we we wander around just lurking and looking for that mountaintop moment. We crave revival. We crave fire and goosebumps, and those are good. They are good. We need them. But God does his most faithful work in the middle, in the ordinary, in the long green season. This is where roots go deep, where character is formed, where spiritual maturity grows quietly under the soil. Think about it. Jesus spent thirty years in obscurity, working, praying, learning, living, before three years of ministry. Thirty years of ordinary prepared him for three years of extraordinary. We want the Pentecost fire, but God is more interested in the faithfulness of Galilee. Ordinary time reminds us faith isn't proven by intensity, it's proven by consistency. Every color on that calendar preaches a sermon. And you might ask what those sermons are, but let me tell you, purple would be waiting in repentance. God working in our longing, white, glory and joy, God's faithfulness revealed, red, fire and passion, God empowering his people, green, growth and faithfulness, God shaping us through time. It's a living visual theology. You could walk into a sanctuary and see the pyramids and know the story, the great rich story, the great history that you are standing in. That great cloud of witnesses that Hebrews mentions. God doesn't just redeem our souls, he redeems our sense of time. He teaches us that even the slow seasons, even the silent months, even the stretches of green are holy ground. So here's my challenge for you. Don't despise the ordinary. Don't waste the green season wishing for fireworks. If you're in a stretch of routine, keep showing up. If your prayer life feels quiet, keep praying. If your worship feels familiar, keep singing. If obedience feels boring, keep obeying. Because that's where God does his deepest work. That's where the spirit forms the fruit that outlasts the hype. That's where holiness takes root and begins to grow leaves. Ordinary time isn't spiritual downtime. It's discipleship season. It's the proving ground of grace. So maybe you're not standing in Advent anticipation or Easter celebration. Maybe you're just in the middle. Maybe everything feels slow, unremarkable, repetitive. Good. Good. That's where the spirit grows saints. The God who parted the Red Sea and rolled stones away still works through seeds, through seasons, through sanctified routines. So when you see the colors change in your church, don't just roll your eyes. Let them remind you of the story you're standing in. Let them reframe how you see your own life. You are living in the same pattern of grace that the church has walked for centuries or centuries. And God is still riding redemption through every ordinary day. The liturgical calendar isn't about religion, it's about rhythm. And the same God was faithful in the waiting, faithful in the wilderness, faithful at the cross, and faithful in the fire. It's the same God who was faithful in all those seasons. And he's faithful in the long green stretch of the ordinary time. Because in God's kingdom, nothing is wasted. Nothing is ordinary. Every season is sacred. Every color that tells a story. Every life, every life that stays faithful in the ordinary becomes extraordinary in the hands of the eternal. Well, thanks for hanging out with me today on Uncomfortable Grace and learning about the liturgical calendar for what it's worth, whether that interests you or not. But I just think this is really one of those things that we all ought to know about, all ought to learn about, and maybe all ought to stop thinking, well, that's just high church stuff, because the liturgical calendar really does tell a story, and we're living in it. But until next time, stay uncomfortable, stay faithful and stay in the fight. And remember, God is not done with you yet.