This is a picture of a Roman coin depicting one of their gods, Janus who was their god of beginnings and endings, of time. The name of the first month of our calendar is derived from this deity and seems appropriate: looking back, looking forward. I would think that the Romans were a “forward looking” people, given the profile of Janus.
This Sunday, the 21st is the end of the Church Year. On the 28th of November is the 1st Sunday in Advent which marks the beginning of the Church Year. Yes, beginnings and endings, time and I thought of this false god, Janus, in relation to the Church Year. Two notes on the Church year and time:
1. The Church Year does not correspond with calendar/secular year. It’s out of sync. Yes, the Lord’s “time” is not in sync with our time. “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” (1 Peter 3: 8) Indeed, the Lord has His own time,
In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.(Galatians 4:4; emphasis my own)
We are about to enter Advent in which by His Word and the Word made flesh, we are reminded again of “…the fullness of time…” that Christ Jesus was born for this: our salvation, again TODAY! Indeed, Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
2. This is a false deity because he is looking only two ways: forward and backward, both not quite real. It’s about time, that is Today: 2 Corinthians 6:2: “For he says, “In a favorable time I listened to you,and in a day of salvation I have helped you.”Behold, now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.” Janus is looking only two ways. Our Lord looks to us for our salvation. Only the true God can look upon us with His own eyes. C. S. Lewis in his fiction, The Screwtape Letters, a series of letters written by Screwtape, a high-up tempter in hell to his nephew Wormwood who has been assigned a Christian to tempt away from the Lord and Faith: “In a word, the Future is, of all things the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely termporal part of time–for the Past is frozen and no longer flows,and the Present is lit up with eternal rays.” Screwtape also writes is that temptation is always in the future. “For the Present is the point at which times touches eternity.” (Screwtape) This is what the devil does not want us to touch and the Lord has touched us in His infant hands and when He comes to again to claim His own. It’s about time. Come, Lord Jesus.
Concordia and Koinonia 