Easter: Reliving the Mystery

Montgomeryville Baptist, a venerable stone church with several huge maples in front and a sprawling cemetery behind, sits proudly on the south side of Pike 309. Rumor has it George Washington once worshiped there.

For most people it is a typical evangelical Baptist church. But for me, it is special—my father was the pastor and it was there I worshiped as a teenager.

Worship from Sunday to Sunday was quite typical—a few hymns, prayers, Scripture reading, and sermon. But at least twice a year—Christmas and Easter—worship leaped out of second gear into overdrive. I remember Easter especially.

Easter was not simply a single day at Montgomeryville. It always included at least Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday itself. What made these days memorable was the style of worship. We moved out of the usual verbal communications alone to act out the events.

I have long since forgotten the sermons, but I can still remember marching with a palm in my hand, standing before the large, wooden cross, and getting up early for the open-air sunrise service before an empty tomb.

This dramatic re-enactment of the death and resurrection of Christ was done out of instinct—as though we knew Marshall McLuhan was right: “The medium is the message.” When we not only told the story but acted it out, the message took on new life.

Years later, when I began to study worship, I discovered that our acting out of the Easter events at Montgomeryville was rooted in traditions that go back to the early church. Traces of those traditions are found in the New Testament.

Easter In The Early Church

In the church of the first centuries after Christ, every Sunday was a “little Easter.” The Easter season itself (not unlike that at the church of my childhood) was a special event in which the living, dying, and rising of Christ was not only told in words, but acted out in a participatory drama.

The earliest evidence of an Easter celebration in the New Testament is found in the words of Paul written to the Corinthian community about A.D. 55: “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us” (1 Cor. 5:7). The clue to how Easter may have been celebrated in the primitive Christian community is found in the word Passover, for the earliest Christians were Jews.

Jewish worship passed two emphases on to early Christian worship: First, worship was rooted in an event. The Passover service, for example, celebrated the Exodus, when God brought the Israelites out of Egypt and made them into his people. Second, celebrating that event in worship made it contemporaneous—the original power of that event evoked feelings among contemporary worshipers similar to the response of the original participants in the event. The event was celebrated and made contemporary by telling the story and acting it out.

It was natural that the early Christians would adopt a worship style similar to the Jewish one. For example, early Christian worship was built around Word and table—a two-fold way of enacting revelation (God spoke) and Incarnation (God became one of us). Dramatic re-enactment was especially seen at the table where the action of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving the bread and taking, blessing, and giving the cup re-enacted the Lord’s last supper. The idea of acting out the full story sprang from the nature of the Lord’s Supper where the actions were as important as the words.

Perhaps the best insight into Easter worship as story told and acted out comes from the writing of a woman named Egeria. Her Diary of a Pilgrimage contains a firsthand account of Easter in Jerusalem in the late fourth century. The diary, together with liturgies from that period, provides us with an inspiring picture of Easter in the early church.

In those days, preparation for Easter began seven weeks before the date. There was an emphasis on personal identification with the suffering of Jesus. These ancient Christians were convinced that the resurrection could not be adequately experienced without traveling the way of death themselves. They desired to fulfill Jesus’ admonitions of Mark 10in a literal way by taking up the cross and going up to Jerusalem with him (v. 33). They wanted to drink of the cup that he drank (v. 39), and to be baptized with his baptism (v. 39). (Our Lord’s 40-day fast in the desert suggested the 40 days of Lent.)

While this 40-day experience emphasized fasting and prayer, it was not done in the spirit of legalism or ritualism. The intent was to prepare for Easter by reliving the mystery. Fasting and prayer were not ends in themselves—they led the participants into a deeper experiential appreciation of the mystery of salvation through a subjective identification with Christ. By hearing the Word and by acting it out—not just for a day, but over a period of time—the message took hold more firmly.

Holy Week

According to Egeria, what we call Holy Week was known as the “Great Week” in fourth-century Jerusalem. This week of the climactic events of the arrest, conviction, crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is the most extraordinary week in the Christian calendar, the week in which the redemption of the world happened, in which the re-creation of the world began.

Egeria describes the day-to-day events of the Great Week:

• On Palm Sunday, all the Christians assembled at the top of the Mount of Olives. Grasping palms and branches in their hands, they sang, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” as they walked slowly to the church in Jerusalem. The bishop of Jerusalem, symbolizing Christ, was in the midst of the crowd. When night fell, evening prayers were celebrated, concluded by a prayer in front of a cross erected for the occasion.

• On Monday, they continually sang hymns and antiphons, and read passages from the Scriptures appropriate to that day in Holy Week. Egeria reports that these readings and songs were continually interrupted with prayers.

• On Tuesday, they did the same except for this: “The Bishop takes up the book of the Gospels, and while standing, reads the words of the Lord which are written in the Gospel according to Matthew at the place where he said ‘Take heed that no man deceive you’ ” (Matt. 24:4).

• On Wednesday, everything was done as on Monday and Tuesday except that the bishop read the passage where Judas went to the Jews to set the price they would pay him to betray the Lord (Matt. 26:14ff., Mark 14:10f., Luke 22:3–6ff.). Egeria reports that “while this good passage is being read, there is such moaning and groaning from among the people that no one can help being moved to tears in that moment.” (This, and similar comments throughout her account, suggest the powerful effect that re-enactment can have on the worshipers’ feelings.)

• On Thursday evening, Communion was celebrated. Then all went home to eat their last meal until Easter, and later returned to worship all night as a way of re-enacting the gospel accounts of Thursday night. “They continually sing hymns and antiphons and read the Scripture passages proper to the place and to the day. Between these, prayers are said.”

• Early on Friday, after worshiping all night, the Christians proceeded to Gethsemane, where they read the passage describing the Lord’s arrest (Matt. 26:36–56). Egeria reports that “there is such moaning and groaning with weeping from all the people that their moaning can be heard practically as far as the city.” They then went to the place of the cross where the words of Pilate were read (Matt. 27:2–26, Mark 15:1–15, Luke 23:1–25, John 18:28; 19:16). Then the bishop sent the crowd home to meditate, instructing them to return about the second hour so that everyone would be “on hand here so that from that hour until the sixth hour you may see the holy wood of the cross, and thus believe that it was offered for the salvation of each and every one of us.”

• On Friday night, they acknowledged the cross as the instrument of salvation. A cross was put on a table and the people passed by “touching the cross and the inscription, first with their foreheads, then with their eyes; and after kissing the cross, they move on.”

• On Saturday, worship was conducted at the third and sixth hours. After nightfall the Easter vigil was held. Although Egeria says little about this service, we know from other sources that it was a dramatic re-enactment of the resurrection. It included a service of light that celebrated Christ as the light of the world, and the annual baptismal service in which people were baptized into Christ’s dying and rising. (The early church practice of baptism by immersion was a graphic enactment of burial and resurrection.) And the glorious service that occurred on Sunday morning (after the all-night vigil) celebrated the resurrection of Christ through readings, antiphons, preaching, and the Eucharist.

Consider the involvement, the total immersion in the death and resurrection of their Lord that the worshipers must have experienced. For weeks they had prepared for this service. Then, throughout Holy Week, they had been exhausted by the intensity of following after the events in Jesus’ life that led to his death. Now, after another night of vigil and anticipation, the moment of Jesus’ resurrection came. Because these people had entered the tomb with him, they were able to experience his resurrection—in a way that would never happen apart from the dramatic journey they had taken.

Finally, Egeria tells us that Easter did not end on Easter day. It was followed by eight days of celebration. The worshipers’ fast was over. They identified no longer with death, but with resurrection and life. For eight days the Christians gathered in worship. These festive services were in sharp contrast to the sober preparations for the Passion. They extended the resurrection side of Easter even as fasting had prepared for the crucifixion.

Traditions For Today

For us today, the principle of re-enactment can guide the development of Easter traditions in our local churches.

First, regaining a full tradition of Easter—one that stretches back 40 days through Lent and forward 50 days to Pentecost—will help us mark time Christianly. Frozen foods, central heat, electric lights, and other modern marvels have robbed our lives of their daily and seasonal rhythms. A week in the office in bleak January is indistinguishable from a work week in budding April.

But this is hardly the biblical experience of time. Biblical time is marked by weekly and seasonal feasts and fasts and by a history full of significant events and signs of hope. In Holy Week the world leans into the future when Christ will return to establish his kingdom over all the earth. Thus, this week of weeks not only celebrates the past, but anticipates the future. It is the source from which all time proceeds.

Second, when we act out Easter as well as tell about it, we employ means of communication that both build on the strengths and repair some of the damage of the television age.

One strength of the television age is the restoration of visual communication. We remember what we see and hear so much better than what we merely hear. Of course, the written word will never and should never become passe, but the communications revolution of the twentieth century is restoring visual and action-oriented communication to its rightful place.

The curse of television has been to encourage passive attitudes and short attention spans. We have become content to sit and watch a stream of 30-minute sit-coms and 30-second commercials rather than to become engaged with ideas or to build relationships (as we do when we invest hours in a challenging book or practice the art of conversation—or even play parlor games). But participatory worship, especially the re-enactment of Easter and the other great Christian events, can help fight passivity and restraint and restore fervent faith.

We can enhance our worship by rediscovering the power of dramatic participation. Drama is no substitute for preaching and teaching. But it is another way of proclaiming the message. It not only says, it does. And it draws us into action. Dramatic participation in worship, like my adolescent memories of Montgomeryville Baptist Church, has staying power.

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