An Easter saga

At my old church in Florida, every year when we came out of church on Easter Sunday morning, the cars in the parking lot were plastered with fliers that decried Easter as having nothing to do with the resurrection.  The word “Easter” was a reference to a pagan god of fertility or something and, indeed, my dictionary of etymology says that Eastre was the name of a Germanic goddess, deriving from the word “east”, indicating an original reference to the goddess of dawn.  OK, but my etymological dictionary also begins the definition by stating that by the year 1103, it was a festival commemorating the resurrection of Christ, from which we get the name Ester (the title of a book of the Old Testament, last time I looked.)

Along those lines, I have never figured out what the heck the Easter Bunny has to do with the resurrection.  And why would a rabbit go around laying eggs anyway?  Besides, rabbits don’t lay eggs, so where would an oversized rabbit get eggs - from the Easter Chicken?  OK, an egg can represent new life, new life being offered by the resurrection, but Jesus didn’t lay an egg in the Garden of Gethsemane.  Egg hunts are harmless fun, but the closest thing I can come to a biblical reference for them is a horde of locusts descending on the landscape!
 
Eastre, bunnies, eggs…  I really wouldn’t mind coming around to what some have begun referring to as Resurrection Sunday.  Seems to say what we’re celebrating pretty straight-forwardly, but then, since its earliest days, Christianity has been shrewdly appropriating the dates of pagan holidays, taking what has already been considered sacred and overlaying it with the Christian story (everyone likes Christmas trees, right?), sanctifying the time to the Lord, but until it becomes more common, happy Easter!
 
— Marc Vance, Associate Rector

Life is changed, not ended

Dear friends,

If you have attended a funeral at St. Andrew’s, you have probably seen a note from the Book of Common Prayer in our bulletin.  It begins The liturgy for the dead is an Easter liturgy. It finds all its meaning in the resurrection. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.

A funeral is an Easter liturgy.  That’s why we vest the altar and the clergy in white, why we light the Paschal candle at every burial office.  We are an Easter people.  Even at the grave, as the words of the commendation tell us, we make our song:  Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

In a few days we will begin our slow, sad walk through Holy Week.  On Good Friday we will come to Jesus’ grave.  But the journey does not end there.  It ends with the resurrection light of Easter Sunday, of Jesus alive again and giving us that life, in this world and the next.

This is it:  Christians’ holiest season, the remembrance of Jesus’ death and celebration of his resurrection.  Not only does the burial liturgy find all its meaning in the resurrection; so do we.  Easter matters not only on the appointed spring morning but also, and more importantly, at every other moment of our lives, in all seasons, in joy and sorrow. 

The resurrection we celebrate with happy hymns on Easter Sunday is the central truth of our lives, from birth to death, and beyond.

One of my favorite lines in the funeral service is from the preface at communion:  For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended.  That is our faith in a nutshell.

Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we, too, shall be raised.  I look forward to celebrating Jesus’ resurrection with you on March 31—and to our living and walking as Easter people in all of the days to come.

Blessings.  -Anne

 

Wednesday, March 27

11:00 AM  -  Lenten Service of Holy Eucharist

Thursday, March 28

5:30 PM  -  Maundy Thursday Family Service: Click here for details & RSVP
7:00 PM  -  Maundy Thursday Service

Friday, March 29

12:00 PM  -  Stations of the Cross
7:00 PM  -  Good Friday Service

Saturday, March 30

7:00 PM  -  Holy Saturday/Service of Light

Sunday, March 31  -  Easter Day!

6:30 AM  -  Sunrise Service behind Hilton School
8:00 AM  -  Holy Eucharist, Rite I
10:00 AM  -  Children's Chapel with Easter Egg Hunt (gather in the Youth House beginning at 9:45)
10:30 AM  -  Festal Eucharist, Rite II

Maundy Thursday Family Service
March 28, 5:30 to 6:30  in the Parish Hall.
This gathering is designed for families with young children (although anyone is welcome!) and will include dinner, communion, foot washing, and other activities suitable for young children. Click here for more info and to RSVP.

Easter Children’s Chapel & Egg Hunt
On Easter Sunday, Children’s Chapel begins at 10:00 AM in the Youth House.  It will include an Easter Egg Hunt for children of all ages (bring a basket). Please begin gathering at 9:45 AM. 

Love's Endeavor, Love's Expense

 One of the many fun parts of my job is picking out new music for the choir. I can listen to new music online, or sit down with a stack of anthems and immerse myself at the piano. In school we focused mostly on music written 100 or even 300 years ago. Works by the great masters are still my staples, but I find I also have a need for new texts and music. A new hymn or anthem can be disarming in how it finds ways to expand my sense of God and address issues peculiar to modern life.

In past eras of church life, and still in certain Christian cultures and denominations, the focus of Lent and especially Holy Week is on Jesus’s acute suffering and the graphic nature of his Crucifixion. These things can’t and shouldn’t be overlooked, but to focus on them too much detracts from the self-sacrificial love at the heart of Jesus’s final hours.
 
In light of this, I was glad to come across a new anthem, “Love’s Endeavor, Love’s Expense,” which the choir plans to sing on Palm Sunday. As Holy Week fast approaches, I hope this beautiful poetry draws you closer to Jesus, to the fascinating paradoxes of power in weakness and life out of death, and most of all to his unconditional love for you.

Morning glory, starlit sky,
Soaring music, scholar's truth,
Flight of swallows, autumn leaves,
Memory's treasure, grace of youth:
 
Open are the gifts of God,
Gifts of love to mind and sense;
Hidden is love’s agony,
Love’s endeavor, love’s expense
 
Love that gives, gives evermore,
Gives with zeal, with eager hands,
Spares not, keeps not, all outpours,
Ventures all, its all expends.

Drained is love in making full,
Bound in setting others free,
Poor in making many rich,
Weak in giving power to be.
 
Therefore he who shows us God
Helpless hangs upon the tree;
And the nails and crown of thorns
Tell of what God's love must be.
 
Here is God, no monarch he,
Throned in easy state to reign;
Here is God, whose arms of love,
Aching, spent, the world sustain.

W. H. Vanstone (1923-1999)
 
—  Ginny Chilton, Music Minister

Lenten mute button

I use the mute button on the TV remote far more than any other.  I understand the economic necessity of businesses to advertise and networks to receive advertising revenue, but the constant insipid prattle blaring from commercials (all of which seemingly are recorded at a higher volume than the actual programming) drives me crazier all the time.  It makes me want to shut the blinds, light a candle, and put on Beethoven’s String Quartets, Op. 74-75.

There is such unrest in our lives in this era.  Street violence and environmental crises; wars and political polarization; over-scheduled kids and worn out parents.  Fewer and fewer people have the experience of iconic TV shows like Andy Griffith (who purposely minimized dialog) or the Waltons (with their family meals and wishing everyone good night), both shows with characters sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch having an actual conversation!
 
With Lent making an appearance this month, a couple of items from our tradition come to mind that might serve to remind us what “the observance of a holy Lent” means (BCP p. 265):
 
Psalm 131, v. 3: I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast; my soul is quieted within me.
 
From the Prayer Book, p. 832, prayer 59: O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to your presence, where we may be still and know that you are God. (based on Psalm 46:11)
 
This month, maybe it would be a good idea to use the “mute button” on life’s prattle and instead welcome the invitation to the observance of a holy Lent, quieting your soul within you, and in the stillness know God.
 
— Marc Vance, Associate Rector

A Lenten message from Bishop Haynes

In the Ash Wednesday Liturgy, the Celebrant says this: "I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word..." How do we accomplish this observance of a holy Lent? How do we do all those things—self-examination and repentance, prayer, fasting, self-denial, reading of Scripture? We are all certainly busy and overwhelmed with the demands of life...to add other disciplines seems impossible. 

Lent is a good time to establish new habits. Those who have studied the process of forming habits will tell you that establishing a new habit takes about six weeks. Lent, it turns out, is six weeks long! So, what new habit could you establish in the run-up to Easter? 

Earlier in our life together, my husband was an educator, at both the secondary and collegiate level. One year during Lent, he taught a Muslim student who was observing Ramadan. Since the Muslim was obligated to fast until sundown, he would come to my husband's classroom to pass the time during lunch. One day they got into a discussion about what it means to fast. The Muslim student offered that he had been taught that "one's ears should fast from gossip and one's tongue from unkind words." I am captivated by this idea! What would it be like for my ears to fast from listening to gossip and my tongue to fast from uttering any unkindness? Could I do that??!! We all know how tempting it is to listen to salacious things about others and to snap at others unkindly. Can I make a conscious decision to fast or abstain from this behavior—to bid my ears to fast from gossip and my tongue from unkind words? 

In a world fraught with division and fracture, gossip abounds; and kindness is in short supply. What if I, one day at a time, decided that when gossip approaches my hearing, I would shut it down? What if I, one day at a time, chose to speak only kind, uplifting things? What if a lot of us were to do that? How would that change the world? 

Perhaps you already have a Lenten discipline, but perhaps not. If not, I encourage you to consider the discipline of fasting and abstaining from gossip and unkindness. You can decide on a daily basis to engage this discipline. We won't be perfect at it. But we might make a little progress. And in so doing, the world will change. 

I invite you to a good and holy Lent. You continue in my prayers.

+Bishop Susan