The Vigil of Easter

SATURDAY, APRIL 4: All church clean up, 9 AM! Come and help our grounds and sanctuary look beautiful for Holy Week and Easter. We'll finish with lunch.

Dear Church,
You'll hear more about it in the Fieldstone Crier, our monthly newsletter, but before I delve more into Good Friday (the third part of our series on the services of Holy Week), I wanted to share a little about how excited I am about the Easter Vigil. It's been celebrated at Christ Church before, but not for a while--and it's such a wonderful service that I am very pleased we're bringing it back this year. The Easter Vigil is just that--a Vigil--we enter a darkened church, after lighting the pascal candle from a fire outside the church (a small fire, admittedly-we'll be on the stone front steps of the church with plenty of extinguishers in hand) and then we process in singing, and hear the stories of our salvation from the Hebrew Scriptures. Halfway through the service, Easter begins!--we ring in our celebration with bells and more light (each of us will have to bring our own bell to ring). The service continues with a festive Eucharist, with incense and wonderful Easter hymns. The alleluias will be back! (speaking of familiar music, for the Easter season we're moving back to the service music settings from the Hymnal 1982). The Easter Vigil is at 7 pm on Saturday, April 11. I hope to see you all there.

The Vigil is the third part of what is technically one service of the "Triduum," or "Three Days." Part One is Maundy Thursday, with the washing of feet, celebration of the Eucharist, and stripping of the altar. Part Two is Good Friday. For Good Friday at Christ Church, we follow the liturgy in the Book of Common Prayer. It differs in some significant ways from the regular Eucharist we celebrate on Sundays. Instead of the Prayers of the People, we hear a series of collects (aptly named "the Solemn Collects) that offer prayers for the church and the world, for those who suffer and those who seek faith. After the collects comes the central moment, the entrance of the cross. The cross we use is not an elaborate one--it's not made of nice wood, or stained a beautiful color. It's two rough sticks, bound together, that Paula, the director of our altar guild, found in the woods. After the cross enters, we are all invited to reverence--to bow, to kiss, to kneel, or just to stand and wonder at the mystery of that symbol, an object of shame and violence transformed into life and love. On Good Friday we don't celebrate the Eucharist. The preacher Barbara Brown Taylor has said that Good Friday is the quietest day of the year--part of that silence is not celebrating the sacrament. In recognition of our need to be fed, however, we do share communion (the bread and wine having been consecrated at the service on Maundy Thursday). The service ends after a final prayer--as with Maundy Thursday, there is no dismissal, as the service has not, technically, ended. That only happens after the Great Vigil the next day.

Holy Week is, spiritually and theologically, the high point and center of the whole church year. Having gone through the journey of Maundy Thursday, the depths of Good Friday, the watching and waiting of the Vigil, the celebration of the Easter resurrection is that much more powerful--and honest. Our liturgies remind us of the truth of the human experience. On Maundy Thursday we enter Christ's care for each of us and the way we embody Christ to each other. On Good Friday we ponder the mystery of how the cross saves us--beyond our imagining, but a deep truth each one of us knows. And at Easter? We taste the joy we've been longing and longing for.

Blessings,
Sara+

Thanks to all who made last Sundays' ministry fair a great success, especially our organizers, Marcia Luce and Shawn Russell!