Easter Day 2013

I wish I could write about this week, this weekend.
I have tried, sitting here at the computer for the last hour as I ate my dinner.

I would like to write about the Great Vigil, and its hour-long telling of the Stories in semi-darkness with candlelight, of God looking at all He had made and seeing that it was Very Good, of the dove returning to Noah in the evening with an olive leaf in its beak, or of Abraham and his son, his only son whom he loved, and how God himself provided a Lamb for the offering. Or of the Children of Israel seeing the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

Watching a young family in the front row, it hit me how this service ought to work: their little girl was drifting off to sleep as one Story followed another, one Psalm after another. This is perhaps as it ought to be for a child, awakening later when all of a sudden it is Easter, all is alight, and the organ and congregation are roaring away as loud as they can go. If the child comes back the next year, and the next, these stories will eventually be woven into her soul. She will know in her bones that this is a night like no other.

In this service, the Gospel takes its place among these Stories, and feels very much at home in their context. As it is presented in the Lectionary, St. Luke's account of the Resurrection is to me the least satisfactory. With St. Matthew, we have the angel sitting on the stone after rolling it away (one of my favorite scenes); St. Mark has its raw unfinished urgency; St. John is as much about Mary Magdalene as it is about Jesus, and has the first-person account of the author himself looking inside the tomb and believing (20:8). But St. Luke? The pericope ends with St. Peter going home, puzzled (24:12). This is frustratingly incomplete, and misses what I think is St. Luke's point (24:36-39). One must read the entire chapter in which he builds up to this, the appearance of Our Lord in the upper room. On Easter Day (and at the Vigil, in the Revised Common Lectionary), we should, in my opinion. We spent ten minutes with Genesis 1; can we not do the same with Luke 24?

But all this is insufficient.

I could write of my own shortcomings. With the organ recital coming up on Wednesday, I practiced all day Saturday, and found that by the time of the Vigil, I could barely stand up. I had planned to stay at the conductor's stand throughout the Office of Readings, and I simply could not; I had to sit down during the Lessons. I should have had the nap that I normally take on Holy Saturday.

I could write of the choir, and its fine singing, and its patience with all that plainsong -- not just the psalms for the Vigil, but large quantities of chant for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

But I am tired, and I must go home.
And I must be back at the church tomorrow morning; there is another week of church bulletins to get out the door, and the Widor to play on Wednesday. Three days from now. And choir rehearsals that afternoon, and another Sunday after that, with Choral Evensong. I should write about that, too, and how I have tried to prepare the music for that weekend alongside this week's music and the Widor. I think I am on the right track with it.

Last night, I wanted the strength of the Story, of the great overarching Story that includes all of them that we heard at the Vigil, from the beginning of the cosmos to the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ and his continuing presence among us in Bread and Wine, to carry me through the next year. I saw as soon as the very next service, Easter Matins, that it need not; there is Manna at every stage of this journey.

When I am weak, He is strong.