For some reason, the skeletons all around my neighborhood (most are bleached white, though a few are fluorescent orange and green!) never seem to make it out of the ground. They are still “buried.” Often they are surrounded by signs that read “No one leaves!” or “No one gets out!” Definitely signs of the times: we fear death, it’s scary, but we die and that’s it. In the grave and don’t leave. How sad!

But for the Christian gospel, death is a whole other thing! Why? Because Jesus incorporated death into life. Christian faith means faith in a God who makes death into a positive feature of life. “Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and Hades” (Revelation 1:17b-18). By being the “first Man,” Jesus established the possibility of a different stance toward suffering and death. Life after the cross, and life in light of the cross, is a life in which death never has the final word, but where death is the means and path toward new, more expansive resurrection life. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:10-11).

Faith in the God of the future (“I am alive forevermore”), who is also revealed in the cross, enables us to die not only to all the false gods out there in the world, but even to ourselves day after day, and move to the future. Death to our selfish selves, to our sins, to our ungodly aspirations, and even wrecked situations we find ourselves in so much, means moving forward in the resurrection life of Jesus. The Christian life is one of daily death and resurrection, and because of Jesus, death has paradoxically become the key to everlasting life. Even abundant life!

That’s something you really need to share with the owners of those skeletons!

When we think about time and holidays, we are bound to think about calendars. Why? Because calendars write history, helping us to remember the great events. Days, festivals, holidays, the order of meals, rest and vacations, together with religiously observed rituals and symbols, are sources of history.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy notes that modern society is “completely sensational, totally forgetful, and wonderfully devoid of memory.” He said that seventy-five years ago! He hit the iPhone video MO directly on the head!

That’s why he liked calendars! They shape time by commemorating cataclysmic events that open and close epochs; and the societal creativity to mark those epochs give form to time. They give time rhythm, and that’s important for the church. ERH notes that “liturgical rhythm is expressed in terms of Sunday and weekday, Christmas and Easter, Pentecost and Advent.”

The church’s calendar defies natural time. Nature has 365 days, but the church’s 365 days express the true infinity of all time from beginning of the world to its end. The reasoning mind sees time as consisting of units, days, or years. But for Christian faith, “one year’s course inducts into the whole linear expanse of all time. So much so, that from Christmas to Easter, a whole lifetime of thirty years is remembered, and from Pentecost to Advent, the whole experience of mankind through the Old Testament and our whole era is remembered.”

For ERH it’s clear that our understanding of time is deeply rooted by Christian convictions concerning Jesus, his death and resurrection, and eschatology. So the Christian faith “gives unity to humanity’s times by giving humanity a common future…humanity lives a unified time and history only because of Jesus.”

By now you are sick of all the Halloween unDecorations, since they celebrate death and grossness and witchcraft and demons, albeit sometimes in a funny way, as in all the Minions in my neighbor’s front yard. You can’t help but chuckle—they are cute and they overcome the tragedy of death comically. But the sadness with all the skeletons is that it is a parody of the resurrection, albeit without bodies and flesh. Leave it to Satan to promise resurrection without skin and flesh and warmth and beauty! No thanks; I’ll take the true resurrection in Christ!

Which brings us back to some of Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s observations. He notes that in observing a national holiday, say the War of Independence, it “celebrates more than survival: Through the holiday the tragic events, the death involved in the events commemorated, are incorporated into communal life, as we look ‘with condescension’ on our conflicts because we have triumphed over them. Holidays are the mortar of society; the fruit of a holiday’s observance is the rebirth of the community.” Why? Because as we view the painful events of the past, we “see the connection of death with birth, of darkness with light, of heaven with earth.”

He further notes that “the fellowship of a normal group…is the answer to our hunger for rhythm. Without holidays, humans are deprived of the necessary rhythm of time, and suffer psychologically.”

So we, first, ought to be at regular weekly worship; that gives us the Lord’s Day rhythm, from which the rest of the week flows. Secondly, let us remember to invite our family, friends, and neighbors not only to church holiday observances, but also to our homes for coffee, drinks, and sweets, just to fellowship around the holidays. What a privilege to exhibit peace and trust in Jesus to our neighbors so joyfully!