Remembering Easter Vigils

A Memory Book of Past Easter Vigils

“How blessed is this night when earth and heaven are joined, and man is reconciled to God.”  —Book of Common Prayer (Church Publishing 1979) p. 287.

I revisit this past Holy Week and remember especially some beautiful stories of the excitement of the Easter Vigil at each church where I served. I remember one priest telling us at his homily many years ago that our presence at the Vigil didn’t give us extra points with God. We weren’t getting more stars in our crown for being there. Being among the first ones at the empty tomb was a privilege to meet the risen Lord.

One of my favorite surprises was waiting to see how the Altar Guild would decorate my larger harp for the Easter Vigil.

Many congregations then follow the Vigil service with an elaborate reception or dinner late at night at church or someone’s home.

Once at Trinity Cathedral, as the deacon tilted the candle ever so slightly to light its wick from the first fire, oil ran out of the top of the candle, and the fire became surreal, like the tongues of fire described at Pentecost. At St. Margaret’s, we did the Vigil in the Columbarium garden, and I played a smaller lap harp as I chanted the Exsultet to stay on key. I cannot describe the exhilaration of shouting in the great outdoors, “The Lord has risen indeed!”

At St. Luke’s, a lector reading one of the Old Testament Lessons had difficulty seeing in the dark. In the middle of the long reading, my dear friend put her candle closer to the microphone at the lectern, catching the microphone’s foam covering on fire. She so elegantly promptly blew out the fire and didn’t miss a beat in the reading.

Also, at St. Luke’s, one of the fantastic teachers of the children’s ministries and her two children planned a flashlight egg hunt for older children after the Vigil. The young people searched outside around the church, which was a huge success and increased the number of people who came to the service!

If you look online at a virtual Vigil during the pandemic at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, the Easter fire looks like it is coming out of the air! Spectacular!

It is now more contained but still very moving.

We recently handed out bells for people to ring during the Great Alleluia. At the end of the service, our other deacon, Susan, and our associate priest, Patricia, spontaneously began ringing their bells whenever there was an Alleluia at the closing hymn, “Christ the Lord is Risen Today, Alleluia.” The congregation soon joined in ringing their bells. It was incredibly moving, since we could not sing because of COVID restrictions, but we could ring!

The Vigil is so unusual that it is easy for clergy to get caught up in the many tiny details of this once-a-year liturgy and view it as a performance rather than an offering. The Vigil is a service to be enjoyed and celebrated.

We can always count on the Vigil to bring surprises, as it did this year and the first Easter.

Joanna. joannaseibet@me.com

Servant Ministry and Diaconal Ministry

Charleston: Servant Ministry and Diaconal Ministry

 “This is not our first day on the job. I know many of you have been here for a long while, and even more of you have been working overtime. I wish I could tell you it is time to take a break. I wish I could say that the job is almost finished. But that’s not the case. In fact, it looks like we have even more work to do.

The task has gotten bigger, and the stakes have gotten higher. That means we must all work harder to create a culture of inclusion, clear a path to peace, develop a sustainable ecology, and repair the bonds of justice that hold us together. And one last note, we still get paid the same: zero dollars, but more smiles and hope than we can spend.”— Steven Charleston

deacons in Arkansas with Bishop Curry and Bishop Benfield around 15 years ago

Deacons know about zero dollars since ours is a non-stipend ministry. However, there is something gratifying about working for free if you can. It means the deacons may be retired or have another income from a reimbursed job, allowing them to work without compensation in their second job.

The diaconate is a ministry that keeps you in the world because that is where you are monetarily compensated. Deacons are called to be a bridge between the church and the world, bringing the needs of the world to the church and bringing the church to the world. They are directly under the leadership of their bishop.

The best recent book about the diaconate is Unexpected Consequences: The Diaconate Renewed by Susanne Watson Epting.

deacons 2024 with Bishop Harmon

The deacon stands beside others in ministry, cheering them on as they are called to the ministry. Frederick Buechner would  say this is where their “deep gladness” meets the “world’s great need.”

The deacon stands beside the priest at the Eucharist, alongside those working for inclusion, peace in this world, justice for all, and care for our ecology. The deacon stands for and supports others in servant ministry.

When people are discerning what kind of work to do, they are often told, “Choose the job you would do even if you were not paid for it.” Most people who do ministry in the church are not paid. However, the icon for this statement may be deacons who take a vow to be servant ministers.

Yesterday, I celebrated the privilege of being an ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church for twenty-four years.

Joanna  joannaseibert.com https://www.joannaseibert.com/

John Updike: Short Easter

John Updike: Short Easter
“The fact that the day is Easter means something to him—something he can neither name nor get out of his mind.” —John Updike, “Short Easter” in The Afterlife and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and The Penguin Group, 1994). Initially published in The New Yorker (3/19/1989).

John Updike wrote one of my favorite short stories about resurrection in The Afterlife and Other Short Stories called “Short Easter,” about a year when Daylight Saving Time begins on Easter Sunday. I first read the story in Volume 2 of Listening for God, a series of short stories selected by Paula Carlson and Peter Hawkins—Carlson then from the Department of English and Hawkins, a professor of Religion and Literature, both at Yale University.

The four-part series includes a DVD about the author of each contemporary short story, which can work well in a book group study using literature as an icon to hear and see God.

In “Short Easter,” this high holy day for Christians becomes one hour shorter when the clocks are moved forward, and we lose an hour of sleep. “Church bells rang in the dark.” Updike goes through the day of a well-to-do man named Fogel, who keeps wanting to attend church services on Easter Day but puts it off until—at the end of the day, he has never gone.

At the story’s end, Fogel wakes up from an afternoon nap “amid that unnatural ache of resurrection, the weight of coming again to life” and realizes that “although everything in his world is in place, there is something immensely missing.”

This is the moment of clarity that God continuously reveals to us. I regularly need to remind myself and my spiritual friends to be open to that moment, which is often as fearful for us as for Fogel. It is like the fear of the women at the empty tomb on Easter Day. It is resurrection. It always speaks to something more powerful than we can understand. We become aware of some love we cannot understand.

tomb cyprus

We have put something else in our “God hole,” and whatever it is—prestige, money, marriage, work, family, fame, beauty—it will never fill the emptiness inside us where only the God of love is large enough to live. This is the God who desperately loves us and relentlessly calls us to be part of his and our resurrection in this life and the life to come.

I would love to hear more of your resurrection stories this Easter Season. You can email them to me, or put them on Facebook, or on the website where this blog is posted. joannaseibert.com

https://www.joannaseibert.com/

Joanna