Travis Ryan Pickell

ET3316 Ethics and the Problem of Evil

Final Paper

“The Narrative of Redemption: a Liturgically Funded Thick Description”

December 8, 2009

“‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’ says the Teacher. ‘Utterly meaningless! Everything

is meaningless’” (1:2). With that, the author of the book of Ecclesiastes launches into

twelve wearying chapters about the sheer vanity of life. “I have seen all the things that

are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (1:14). A

worldly man, he has experienced all that life has to offer; yet for him no meaning could

be found. The Teacher is not simply a cantankerous person, prone to a bitter disposition.

He is a common-sense realist. When he looks out into the world around him, he sees

labor, toil, injustice, striving, greed, riches, pleasures and pain, and his moral calculus

configures that, in the end, all there is “under the sun” cannot add up to a meaningful

whole. And yet, one must ask whether all there is “under the sun” is, in fact, all that there

is. If that is the case, it is reasonable to join in with the Teacher’s cry of vanity, for even

St. Paul concedes, “If only for this life we have hope, we are of all people to be most

pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). The Christian story asserts that we do not live in a world

without windows—a closed system of nature without meaning or purpose.

This essay will explore how the Christian liturgy, specifically the liturgical

calendar year, clues us in to a reality beyond the empirical, which in turn places our

experience in a greater context, one that offers hope for investing this world—along with

its joys and sufferings—with meaning. First, it will offer an account for how religious

symbols and rituals shape a faith-community to encounter the seemingly chaotic world by

conditioning within its members certain moods and motivations, which then inform their

view of the “really real.”1 Next, it will give a “liturgically funded thick description”2 of

the Christian calendar as enumerated in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, with

specific attention given to its narrative quality and function. Finally, it will show how the

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liturgical calendar helps the church to encounter suffering in the world by forming an

alternative, counter-cultural view of time and history, and by establishing a Christian

ethic of remembrance.

In his essay, “Religion as a Cultural System,” cultural anthropologist Clifford

Geertz distinguishes between different “perspectives” through which humans view the

world around them including, but not limited to, the perspectives of common-sense

realism, scientific doubt, aesthetic disengagement, and religious belief.3 These

perspectives describe different ways in which people encounter the world, specifically

those aspects of experience that threaten to unhinge confidence in the intelligibility of the

world: namely bafflement, suffering, and ethical paradox (i.e. unexplainable evil).4 Such

experiences, left unaccounted for, “lead to a deep disquiet”5 among religious and

irreligious alike. Because the social character of humanity occasions need for patterns of

behavior not supplied by genes or raw instincts, humans require “extrinsic sources of

information,”6 by which to order their lives. It is this need that religion fulfills. For

Geertz, a religion is “(1) a system of symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful,

pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions

of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of

factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.”7 In other words,

religious symbols explain the chaotic world in terms of an orderly whole and condition

1 Clifford Geertz, The Interpretaton of Cultures, (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 112.2 Randi Rashkover, “Introduction: The Future of the Word and the Liturgical Turn” from Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption, ed. Randi Rashkover and C.C. Pecknold (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 1.3 Geertz, 110-111.4 Ibid., 100. 5 Ibid., 100.6 Ibid., 92. 7 Ibid., 90. Italics original.

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the religious community to actually believe it. The mechanism by which this occurs is

ritual. Through ritual performance, one’s sense of the “really real” is transformed.

Empirical reality, so often characterized by seeming chaos and arbitrariness, is

relativized; while the “moods and motivations a religious orientation produces cast a

derivative lunar light over the solid features of a people’s secular life.”8 The religious

person, then, moves dialectically between the world of ritual and the world of secular life,

in a constant “oscillation between worship and ethics,”9 by means of which her view of

the secular world is conditioned and informed by her religious convictions.

For Geertz, the function of religious ritual is basically meaning-making. Humans,

by and large, can endure evil and suffering themselves, so long as some meaning can be

found. Indeed, “[man] can adapt himself somehow to anything his imagination can cope

with; but he cannot deal with Chaos”10 that is, meaninglessness. Religion counters

bafflement, suffering, and evil, not by alleviating them but by placing them in a

meaningful context. “As a religious problem, the problem of suffering is, paradoxically,

not how to avoid suffering but how to suffer, how to make of physical pain, personal loss,

worldly defeat, or the helpless contemplation of others’ agony something bearable,

supportable—something, as we say, sufferable.”11 It will most likely be countered that

Geertz’ account of religion amounts to a species of escapism and quietism that is morally

reprehensible in the face of horrendous evils. At the very least, it echoes Marx’s oft

quoted statement: “religion… is the opiate of the people.” This critique, it seems, is partly

legitimate, and we will return to it below.12 For now, I will simply make two points. As to

8 Ibid., 1249 Frank C. Senn, “Between Life and Life: An Eschatological Vision” from Liturgy: Ethics and Justice, Journal of the Liturgical Conference vol. 7 no. 4, Spring 1989. 85. Quoting Geoffry Wainwright.

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the charge of escapism, Geertz himself refutes this characterization of religion on the

grounds that (contra Malinowski) religion “has probably disturbed men as much as it has

cheered them; forced them into a head-on, unblinking confrontation of the fact that they

are born into trouble.”13 As to the charge of quietism, Geertz explains religion

independently of ethical injunctions, but this is not because religion is antithetical to

ethics. Ethical response to suffering in the world will be conditioned by the character of

the moods and motivations produced by the particular content of the religious world in

which one participates through ritual performance. At the generic level, however, one

cannot comment on “religious ethics” without reference to the specific religion involved.

With this account of religion in place, it is only fitting that it be tested within the

context of a specific ritual practice. This is fully in keeping with Geertz’ own

methodology, who states, “the essential task of theory building…is not to codify abstract

regularities but to make thick description possible.”14 Therefore, the remainder of this

essay will be dedicated to an analysis of one aspect of my own religion: namely, the

Christian liturgical calendar. For the sake of simplicity, the liturgical calendar given in

the 1979 Anglican Book of Common Prayer (BCP) will be used. While by no means

universally accepted, it provides enough continuity with other mainline Christian

denominations (Catholic and Protestant) to be of particular use. It may be objected that

the liturgical year is not, in fact, a single religious ritual but rather a collection of

religious rituals. I concede the point. Within the Christian faith, however, there are many

layers to ritual performance. The Eucharist, for example, is pregnant with ritual

10 Geertz, 99. Quoting Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 287. 11 Ibid., 104.12 See. Pg 10 of the present document. 13 Geertz, 103.14 Ibid., 26.

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significance in and of itself, yet it is doubly so on Easter morning, after the absence of the

Eucharist on Holy Saturday. The Easter Eucharist is invested with an additional layer of

meaning by virtue of its place within the rest of Holy Week. In a similar manner, each

individual season of the church year is invested with meaning by virtue of its relation to

the other seasons and holidays, and its particular place within the liturgical year. For that

reason, the liturgical calendar, as a whole, draws participants into its own internal logic in

the same way that, for instance, a service of Eucharist would.

“The Church Year consists of two cycles of feasts and holy days: one is

dependent upon the movable date of the Sunday of the Resurrection or Easter Day; the

other upon the fixed date of December 25, the Feast of our Lord’s Nativity or Christmas

Day.”15 The first of these cycles, the Christmas cycle, begins with a season of preparation

and anticipation called Advent. During the four weeks of Advent, the lectionary readings

focus on the coming of Jesus Christ (adventus = Latin for “coming”) from two

perspectives. By reading the messianic prophecies in the Hebrew Scriptures, the church

anticipates the celebration of the coming of the Messiah. It enters into the history of

Israel, which is, of course, also the history of the church. From this perspective, the focus

is on the incarnation of Christ, as the One for whom Israel waited. During the season of

Advent, the church also focuses on the eschatological vision of the New Creation, the

peaceable kingdom, and the consummation of history. In doing so, the church is

reminded that, according to the Christian story, not only has Christ entered into history,

but Christ will also come again. Advent reminds the church that it lives in the time

between the incarnation and the parousia (Greek for “coming” or “appearance”), a time

characterized by a fundamental tension. The kingdom of God is both already and not-yet

15 The Book of Common Prayer, (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 1979), 15.

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—inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but not yet

consummated, brought to its full completion.

While Advent is a time of preparation and anticipation, Christmas is a time of

celebration. During the season of Christmas (which lasts, contrary to popular belief, for

twelve days) the church celebrates the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Christmas is a

celebration of the fact that God entered into human history in the person of Jesus in order

to redeem humanity, and history itself. The focus is on the incarnation—the enfleshment

of Jesus. As such, it is also a remembrance of the goodness of creation and the certainty

of God’s compassion for humanity.

Christmas gives way to Epiphany, which falls on January 6. In the Anglican

Church, Epiphany has two main significances. As a remembrance of the visitation of the

infant Christ by the Magi (Matthew 2), Epiphany celebrates “the Manifestation of Christ

to the Gentiles.”16 While Advent reminds the church of the particularity of God’s salvific

election through the nation of Israel, Epiphany celebrates the cosmic aspect of Christ’s

coming for the entire world. On the first Sunday after Epiphany, the church celebrates

“The Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ,”17 which is the main focus for the season of

Epiphany for the church in the East. Jesus Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist in the

Jordan River (recorded in all four Gospels) is remembered as the moment when Jesus

was manifested as the second person of the Trinity, “at the beginning of the mission

which will lead him to Easter.”18

16 Ibid., 31.17 Ibid., 31.18 Jean Lebon, How to Understand the Liturgy, (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1988), 89.

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The second major cycle of the church calendar is the Easter cycle. Although

coming after the Christmas cycle, it is no less important or foundational. In fact, “the

paschal mystery is the wellspring whose waters flow through the liturgical year.”19

“Christmas… will be badly misused if one does not at the same time see in it the whole

destiny of God made man, which reaches its fulfillment in the paschal sacrifice.”20 This

“means that the liturgical year emanates from the passion and resurrection of Christ;

[however] we do not by this limit the mystery of salvation to mere passion and

resurrection of Christ, but it embraces the entire life of Christ.”21 Christmas is inherently

celebrated at Easter, just as Easter is inherently celebrated at Christmas.

The Easter cycle begins with the season of Lent, a forty-day period of fasting,

penitence, and identification with the testing of Christ in the wilderness (Matthew 4,

Mark 1, Luke 4). Lent begins with the ritual of Ash Wednesday, during which ashes are

imposed upon the forehead of the congregants “as a sign of our mortality and penitence;”

thus the injunction: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”22

Historically, the “season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were

prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins,

had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and

forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole

congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the

Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their

repentance and faith.”23

19 Aloysius I. A. Nwabekee, Worship and Christian Living (Uwani: Calvaryside Printing Press, 1995), 102.20 Lebon, 89.21 Nwabekee, 101-102.

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At the end of the Lenten season comes Holy Week, the climax of the church year.

Each day in Holy Week is charged with ritual significance, constantly moving the

worshipper between remembrance of the suffering of Christ’s Passion and the glory of

Christ’s resurrection. At every point, suffering and glory are juxtaposed. For example,

Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week, is a celebration of Christ’s triumphal entry into

Jerusalem (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, John 12) but is called “The Sunday of the

Passion.”24 Likewise, “the liturgies of the Paschal Triduum [Maundy Thursday, Good

Friday, and Holy Saturday] are compelling because they enact salvation in the midst of

suffering.”25 Taken as a whole, they focus on the last days of Christ’s life and his

suffering; however, they do so at every point with the knowledge that “Sunday’s

coming.”26

Easter Sunday is the Great Sunday of the Resurrection. The liturgy begins before

dawn with The Great Vigil of Easter. After a fire is kindled, the Celebrant lights the

Paschal Candle, which in turn is used to light the candles of the congregants. The Paschal

Candle represents the “light of Christ” and will be burned at every service from Easter to

Pentecost.27 The Service of Lessons, also called the Liturgy of the Word, follows the

Service of Light. The Liturgy of the Word is initiated with the following words: “Let us

hear the record of God’s saving deeds in history, how he saved his people in ages past;

and let us pray that our God will bring each of us to the fullness of redemption.” With

22 Book of Common Prayer, 265.23 Ibid., 265.24 Ibid., 31.25 James W. Farwell, This Is the Night: Suffering, Salvation, and the Liturgies of Holy Week, (New York: T & T Clark International, 2005), xii.26 Tony Campolo, “It’s Friday, But Sunday’s Coming,” http://www.tonycampolo.org/sermons.php (accessed, December 9, 2009).27 Book of Common Prayer, 287.

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that, the narrative of God’s redemptive history is rehearsed—Creation, the Flood,

Abraham’s call and testing, the Exodus, God’s sustaining presence in the wilderness, and

various prophecies of God’s continued redemptive action. After the Liturgy of the Word,

the congregants renew their baptismal vows and celebrate the Holy Eucharist,

proclaiming, “Alleluia, Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.”28

The Season of Eastertide lasts for 50 days, culminating with the celebration of

Pentecost, also called Whitsunday. “According to Luke [Pentecost] was the day on which

the Church was born in the power of the Holy Spirit, and when it was sent back into the

world.”29 At Pentecost, the Church is reminded of its mission in the world, and its

dependence upon the Spirit of Christ to fulfill it. The rest of the year (over half of the

calendar year) is simply referred to as “The Season After Pentecost” or “Ordinary Time.”

The church, empowered by the Holy Spirit and formed by the liturgy, then lives in

“ordinary time” until it once again celebrates Advent and looks forward to the coming of

Christ. One can easily see that the church during “ordinary time” lives, liturgically

speaking, between Christ’s resurrection and his parousia.

The Christian liturgical calendar, as should be evident at this point, has a definite

narrative character. Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost,

Ordinary Time, Advent. By participating in the liturgical calendar, each year the church

awaits the coming of the Messiah, welcomes him into the world, remembers his mission

and baptism, identifies with his temptations and suffering, celebrates his resurrection,

receives the Holy Spirit, lives out its own mission in the power of the Holy Spirit, and

awaits Christ’s parousia. This narrative character is not, however, strictly linear. As

28 Ibid., 294. 29 Lebon, 90.

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noted earlier, at every point in the liturgical year, the entire story of God’s salvation

history is implied and remembered. It is not necessary to suspend remembrance of the

whole story in order to fully enter into part of it. All parts must be simultaneously held up

and affirmed in order for any single part to have meaning.

Which brings us back to Geertz. The story Christians tell is not one that can be

read, as it were, off the face of the world around us. That is not to say that there is no

evidence for its truth in our experience. Rather, according to Alasdair MacIntyre, “we

point to the state of the world as illustrative of doctrine [or, shall we say, our story], but

never as evidence for it.”30 The story we enter through ritual is not the story of common-

sense realism, but that does not mean that it is not, as a matter of fact, true. “The liturgical

structures of time and ritual play invite us to experience anew an ever-deepening sense of

our place in God’s story.”31 To say that “worship is world making, creating and inviting

us to participate in an alternative reality”32 does not mean that in worship we make-up a

world out of thin air. Nor does it mean that the alternative reality is created by us, rather

the alternative reality is created in us. If there is more to the world than we can see with

our eyes and touch with our hands, and if there is more to history than meets the eye, the

alternative reality to which we are introduced through liturgy may, in fact, be more true

than the world of common-sense realism. This, according to Stanley Hauerwas, is exactly

what the Christian faith claims: “We can only act within the world we can envision, and

we can envision the world rightly only as we are trained to see. We do not come to see

merely by looking, but must develop disciplined skills through initiation into that

30 Geertz, 109. Quoting MacIntyre.31 Daniel T. Benedict Jr., Patterned by Grace: How Liturgy Shapes Us, (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2007), 60.32 Ibid., 67.

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community that attempts to live faithful to the story of God…To be redeemed… is

nothing less than to learn to place ourselves in God’s history, to be part of God’s

people.”33 In this sense, liturgy is sacramental in that it “is an action that brings about the

state of affairs that it communicates… Liturgy is soteriology in motion.”34

At this point, Christian liturgy seems to fit within Geertz’ account of religious

ritual in such a way that it deserves the same critique mentioned above. If to be redeemed

is simply to be a part of a meaningful story, does that not simply lead to inaction and an

implicit acceptance of [possibly avoidable] suffering, so long as it can be accounted for

within the context of a meaningful whole? Not necessarily. As noted before, the ethical

response to suffering in the world will be conditioned by the character of the moods and

motivations produced, which is in turn dependent on the particular content of the

religious world in which one participates through ritual performance. Understanding

one’s self as part of a larger story—specifically the Christian story of God’s salvific

deeds in human history, Christ’s incarnation, suffering and resurrection, and God’s

ultimate aim for creation—that is enacted through the liturgies of the church year,

actually conditions moods and motivations that lead to engagement with, and opposition

to, suffering and evil. This occurs in two ways: by reinforcing a counter-cultural view of

time and history, and by instilling in the worshipper an ethic of anamnesis (i.e.

remembrance).

This is no place for a philosophical treatise on the nature of time. The way in

which humans think about time, especially in relation to history, is so complex that any

treatment of it in this paper will be quite reductionistic. That being said, some

33 Stanley, Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 29-30, 33. Italics added. 34 Farwell, 2, 98.

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comparisons can be made between different ways of understanding time. From the very

beginning, the Judeo-Christian view of time has had a distinctively narrative-historical

shape. There is a telos to human history (i.e. history is going somewhere) and humans

have their own part to play in the story. This may be contrasted with, what might be

called, the pagan view of time (see Figure. 1-A.). “In pagan worship it is a closed cycle,

more or less marked by fatalism and ultimately static.”35 As can be seen in vestiges of

some Eastern and New Age philosophy today, history is ultimately cyclical: we are

sitting on an ever-turning wheel of time, of which the ultimate goal is to disembark.

Suffering is inherent within creation, and redemption from suffering comes from

escaping creation. This was the predominant view of time that the early church had to

confront in Gnosticism.

Beginning with the Enlightenment, a different conceptualization of time has been

dominant. “Modernist notions of history… stress linearity”36 and progress on the

horizontal plane (i.e. in the natural, human sphere). With Modernism, the narrative

structure of history was recovered, yet the closed system remained (see Figure 1-B.).

Questions of transcendence were relegated to the sphere of “myth.” Redemption, for the

Modernist was to be a result of technology and human ingenuity. Suffering was largely

ignored, seen as an unfortunate yet inevitable stage in a dialectical process that would

35 Lebon, 85.36 Rashkover, 23.

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B.

A.

C.

D.

Fig. 1

ultimately culminate in universal flourishing (whether from a Hegelian or a Marxist point

of view does not matter). The problem, as demonstrated by two World Wars and the

horrors of Auschwitz, is that technology did not make humanity more humane; rather, it

made humanity more technically efficient inflictors of pain and suffering. Progress, it

seems, was actually the “myth.”

“While modernity gave us a story without an author, postmodernity has given us

a world without a story.”37 Postmodernity, as ambiguous as it is, can be succinctly

defined as “incredulity toward metanarratives.”38 Instead of a grand narrative,

postmodernism is characterized by greater attention to the individual—what Geertz calls

the “thick description” (see Figure 1-C.). While this viewpoint does fight to keep the poor

and oppressed from falling under the tracks of history, it also tends to lead to an arbitrary

view of time, a loss of a meaningful history. “Without an overarching narrative in which

the self might locate an enduring identity, the smaller narratives of human lives easily

become fragmented into dislocated moments.”39

37 Scott Bader-Saye, “Figuring Time: Providence and Politics” from Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption, ed. Randi Rashkover and C.C. Pecknold (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 94.38 Jean-Francois Lyotard, quoted in Farwell, 25.39 Bader-Saye, 94.

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The Christian story, on the other hand, implies a teleological view of time.

History has a goal, a telos. Not only that, but that telos is breaking into the present along

the way. “The central events of Israel, Christ, and church occur within history while also

enacting the goal [telos] of history. In this way, they give history its coherence and

trajectory.”40 The church, through the liturgy of the church calendar, reminds itself of the

broader history in which it participates (see Figure 1-D.). “Every year, we celebrate again

the same mysteries (anniversaries), but as we celebrate them, in trying to live them out in

our lives we are journeying towards the end of time. The history of salvation is that of a

people on the march: it is a time that goes from the creation to the new creation, and this

new world is being built up in the present-day life of humanity, from day to day and from

year to year.”41 Because the story that is told through the Christian liturgy affirms the

reality of suffering while also affirming the providence of God—the compassionate

incarnation and suffering of Christ, the reality of the resurrection, the presence of the

Holy Spirit and the hope for New Creation—suffering is neither ignored nor approved.

“Reading our sufferings in figurative relation to cross and resurrection does not dissolve

the significance of earthly events, but it does challenge the finality and ultimacy of the

tragic.”42 Suffering is no less real, but the moods and motivations produced within the

worshipping community through the enactment of the liturgical year empower the

community to face, and oppose, suffering with the knowledge that suffering can, and

ultimately will, be overcome. “Tragedy is real but penultimate.”43

40 Bader-Saye, 98.41 Lebon, 86.42 Bader-Saye, 102. 43 Bader-Saye, 103.

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This view of time has implications for Christian ethics. One implication is

demonstrated by the very nature of the fact that the Christian liturgical calendar rehearses

a history. “The liturgical year is perpetual anamnesis, or remembering.”44 When

confronted with the death and suffering in this seemingly chaotic world, the intuitive

thing to do would be to try to forget them, to try to take our eyes off of the brokenness of

the world and refocus on that which is easier to handle. This is precisely what the

Christian faith, however, will not allow us to do. “Remembering,” says Nicholas

Wolterstorff, is “one of the profoundest features of the Christian and Jewish way of

being-in-the-world… We are told to hold the past in remembrance and not let it slide

away. For in history we find God.” That is, we are told to “resist amnesia”45—precisely

the meaning of remembrance in Greek: an-amnesia. “Contrary to the modernist

abstraction of the future whose telos requires suffering to be repressed or wished away,

the [Christian] liturgies shape a church whose future emerges from the narrated

Eucharistic memory of the suffering of Jesus Christ as the suffering of all humanity, and

the presence of God in all human suffering.”46 Two objections may be raised. The first is

that, while remembering can be a good action, it can also be a violent action (e.g. the

perpetual remembering of another person’s faults, an offense done to you, or a self-

defeating pity that is consumed by the memory of one’s own pain). To the objection that

“remembering is unbelievably dangerous,”47 there are two responses. First, however

dangerous remembering may be, not-remembering is surely more dangerous. When

suffering is great, and when evil agency is involved, forgiving does not imply forgetting.

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Second, as noted earlier, due to the narrative structure of the liturgical year, one cannot

remember part of the story without also recalling the story as a whole. While the story

told through the liturgical year includes suffering, it does so in light of redemption. While

it includes redemption, it never does so to the exclusion of suffering. In this way, our

remembrance is kept holy, leading to reflection on God’s deeds in history and our part to

play in history’s eventual telos. The second objection is that remembrance is still

quietism, it does nothing to oppose suffering and evil on the practical level. To this may

be responded that remembrance is action. It is surely much easier to forget the sufferings

of others and our own suffering. To bear in mind the brokenness of the world and to

confess hope that all brokenness can be healed is fundamentally an act of faith. Not only

that, but it is an action (recall Geertz) that forms within us certain moods and motivations

which we carry with us into our everyday lives. Remembrance, then, may be conceived

as preparatory act. Sometimes remembrance is the only action available. In that case

remembrance is a necessary and helpful action in opposing evil and suffering in the world

(so long as it is right remembrance) in and of itself. Sometimes, however, we have more

power at our disposal to prevent specific instances of suffering. Only if we have

remembered those who suffer in the world, and only if we have hope for redemption, we

will put those resources to use. In either case, right remembrance is foundational.

Is this life meaningless? Are all of our sufferings and joys meaningless? In the

end, the answer to that question depends on what one believes about the world in which

44 Leban, 89.45 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son, (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1987), 28. Italics original. 46 Farwell, 134.47 John Bowlin, “Darkness and Light.” Lecture, Princeton Theological Seminary, Princeton, NJ, December 08, 2009.

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we live. This essay has analyzed the Christian liturgical calendar, using Clifford Geertz’

account of the meaning-making function of religious ritual, in order to show how it helps

the Christian church encounter and oppose suffering in this world. It has shown how the

narrative structure of the liturgical year provides the church with a view of time and

history that leads to engagement in the suffering of the world, rather than disengagement.

It also has shown how the liturgical calendar forms within the community an ethic of

remembrance, which is the first step toward practical opposition to suffering in the world.

The Christian liturgy tells a particular story about the world. While by no means

answering every objection with a systematic and airtight defense of the possibility of

meaning, it at least points the way toward a confession of the goodness of God—and the

goodness of God’s creation—by acknowledging that there is more to this world than

what we can see and understand “under the sun.”

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