Inhabiting a Bigger Story
A Review of
Rhythms of Faith: A Devotional Pilgrimage Through the Church Year
Claude Atcho
Hardcover: WaterBrook, 2025
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Reviewed by Julie Lane-Gay
The “Liturgical Year” used to evoke gloominess in me – smells, bells, Advent without chocolate calendars, Lent with sanctimonious fasting for weeks at a time. It felt like drudgery. But slowly I have come to see the liturgical year not as weight but as freedom – a gift of a richer way to live, a lighter yoke. I have come to want it, not for fasting or seriousness, but for the way it reframes life and lifts up my eyes unto the hills. As pastor Claude Atcho observes, “There’s something about keeping time through the cycles of the church year that allows us to inhabit a different story, even if our calendars remain full.”
Anglican, Episcopal, and Catholic churches (and a number of other denominations) observe the liturgical or church year. It consists of the cycle of seasons, such as Lent and Advent, and special days, such as Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, to help us live in Christ’s time rather than Caesar’s. We render unto Caesar what we must, but living by the church calendar means we live into something bigger, livelier, and deeper.
But even if our experiences on Sunday are rich, the liturgical year can be elusive the rest of the week. Claude Atcho’s new volume, Rhythms of Faith: A Devotional Pilgrimage Through the Church Year is a wonderful guide, abundant in scriptural, theological, and pastoral insights.
A pastor at a large non-denominational church for a number of years, Atcho is now Rector of an Anglican parish in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is the author of Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make our Faith More Whole and Just, and his love of literature, represented by writers as diverse as Annie Dillard, Pascal, and Bill Bryson, enlivens not just his writing about the liturgical year but his perspective. Atcho’s intention is to offer “the riches of the church year to readers across church lines” and while he includes prayers and scripture readings listed in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, Rhythms of Grace never feels denominational, nor does it necessitate worshipping in a church that follows the liturgical year: for Ash Wednesday he prods, “No ashes? Then do the deeper work. Confess your sins to God” (113).
For each season, Atcho shares a scriptural reflection, a list of suggested “practices,” an introduction to the season’s Holy Days, and a guide to the readings. He follows these introductions with weekly scriptural meditations and helpful reflection and discussion questions. As I write, it is the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany, World Mission Sunday, and Atcho addresses colonialism head on. “How do Christians avoid colonialism, arrogance and domination in Jesus’s name? Remember, the gospel came to us but did not start with us” (93).
Since Advent begins the Church year, Atcho’s book opens with realism. “Whenever we have been sluggish in our faith, apathetic towards Christ’s return, and bored with seeking Christ’s kingdom, Advent is a gracious wake-up call.” He encourages focusing on four practices as we wait for Christmas: prayerfully counting down to Christmas, making room for lament (Advent begins in darkness), surrounding ourselves with Advent hymns and music, and considering the “threats” keeping us from an intentional Advent – hurry, perfectionism, or noise.
In Epiphany, Atcho looks to Jesus’s baptism, which “reveals God’s identification with sinners and his sacrificial reversal of our situation.” Jesus’s baptism shows He wants to be amongst sinners, amongst us; “…the gospel reveals it. The physicality of the Jordan reveals it: Jesus wants to meet us in our lowest state and bring us back to life, back to God, by carrying our burdens on his psyche, his soul and his body” (65).
Lent has frequently been viewed “as a self-guided voyage toward personal growth or self improvement…in our fixation on individuality, customization, flexibility and self-centeredness, we are no less prone to rebrand Lent into our image” (104). By contrast, Atcho turns to the communal: “Lent is less of an individual undertaking a journey and more of the church following the footsteps of her Lord.” If we fast—for a week or a day, from food or digital technology—he urges us to do it in the company of others.
In the seven days of Holy Week – Palm Sunday to Holy Saturday – “the most significant and sacred days in world history,” Atcho reflects on Judas, how personally heart-wrenching his betrayal must have been for Jesus. “How many times in their three years together had they shared in back-slapping laughter? … ‘What are you willing to give me if I deliver him over to you?’ Judas asks the chief priests. In our vileness, we, too, make our creator and redeemer a means to an end” (158).
In Easter “Everything radiates out from the fact that Christ is risen, and every season points back to this triumph.” If in Lent we fasted for forty days, in Easter we feast for fifty. Atcho shows us glimpses of how we might “live the resurrection life” – the practices of rejoicing, delighting and sharing hope – and how we might learn anew to play.
The Church calendar concludes with Ordinary Time, the season when “God reminds us that even when life seems boring, even when it appears that nothing significant is happening, he is always at work, tending and cultivating us with the care of a wise gardener and growing us in ways we won’t even notice until sufficient time passes” (214).
Despite all that any church community might do to highlight the Liturgical Year, it can seem hidden in the darkness Monday to Saturday. Rhythms of Faith offers us an excellent flashlight.
Julie Lane-Gay
Julie Lane-Gay is a writer and editor in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is an avid gardener and trained horticulturist who writes for garden magazines in the US and Canada. She is also the Senior Editor of CRUX, Regent College's journal of thought and opinion and a Catechist at her Anglican church. She is the author of The Riches of Your Grace:Living in the Book of Common Prayer,(IVP,2024).
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