April 12: He is Risen! Let Us Embrace One Another
♫ Music:
WEEK EIGHT
BRIGHT WEEK
RESURRECTION POWER
April 12 - April 18
“Christ is risen!” The culmination of the Gospel unfolds before us in this final week of our time together. We walk with Christ in His post-resurrection appearances and as He sends His Holy Spirit to comfort, fill, and empower believers to go throughout the world with the message of His salvation and ultimate transformation. Eastern Christian churches lay aside the entire week following Easter (Bright Week) to celebrate Christ’s victory over death and His glorious resurrection. The Nicene Fathers wrote, “For a whole week the faithful in the holy churches should continually be repeating psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, rejoicing and celebrating Christ, and attending to the reading of the Divine Scriptures and delighting in the Holy Mysteries. For in this way we shall be exalted with Christ; raised up together with Him.” In the West, the 50 days of Eastertide are celebrated as one continuously joyful feast, called the “Great Lord’s Day.” Fasting is forbidden as the faithful proclaim to the world that Christ has defeated the powers of darkness and opened wide the gates of Heaven. “Christ is risen!” “He is risen indeed, Alleluia!”
Day 47 - Sunday, April 12
EASTER SUNDAY
Hymn for Easter Sunday: It is the day of Resurrection; let us be radiant for the festival, and let us embrace one another. Let us say, O brethren, even to those that hate us: Let us forgive all things on this Resurrection Day; and thus let us cry: Christ is risen from the dead, by death He has trampled down death, and on those in the tombs He has bestowed life.
Scripture: Mark 16:1-8
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, so that they might come and anoint Him. Very early on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen. They were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” Looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled away, although it was extremely large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.’” They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Poetry:
Descending Theology: The Resurrection
by Mary Karr
From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in—black ice and squid ink—
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now
it’s your limbs he comes to fill, as warm water shatters at birth, rivering every way.
HE IS RISEN! LET US EMBRACE ONE ANOTHER
Today’s beautiful hymn reminds us of the two-fold celebration of Easter: the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and our communal response. Today, God fulfills his cosmic plan of redemption, so let us joyfully reconcile and embrace one another.
We often think of Easter Sunday as the crescendo of the church calendar—and rightly so, for on this momentous event rests our entire faith: “if Christ has not been raised, then … your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). But according to Scripture, the resurrection of our Lord was a surprisingly subdued event. It happened in secret and with the unlikeliest of witnesses, “Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome” (Mark 16:1). The women learned of their beloved Jesus’s resurrection in quiet, under cover of night—as imagined by the Russian artist Mikhail Nesterov in today’s art, also known as the “Myrrhbearing Women.”
A divine, supernatural event took place, and the world was none the wiser, just as it was when Jesus was born three decades prior.
As Stephen Scarlett puts it, “Satan, sin, and death have been conquered. The world has changed, but almost no one knows it.” This is because Easter is not about spectacle but about relationships.
Our ultimate Christian hope is not to ‘go to heaven’ but to experience bodily resurrection—when all of creation will be redeemed and restored.
On Easter, the church has a tradition of renewing baptismal vows (to renounce the devil, the world, and the flesh; and to walk in faith, with God’s help) as a way to participate in Christ’s resurrection life here and now. This, of course, is done relationally: our rootedness in the risen Christ becomes embodied as love, compassion, forgiveness, and restored relationships.
What does this relational celebration look like in April 2020, in a time of physical distancing? It might look like calling an old friend or estranged family member, sending a kind note to a coworker or neighbor, giving to the needy through a local charity, forgiving (once again) and praying for someone who hurt us, and otherwise reaching out and helping others not feel alone in these lonely times, as best we can.
Indeed, “let us embrace one another. Let us say, O brethren, even to those that hate us: Let us forgive all things on this Resurrection Day.”
Prayers:
Collect for Easter (from The Book of Common Prayer):
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee that, as by thy special grace … thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality (from The Book of Common Prayer):
O most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee unto thee for succour. Deliver us, we beseech thee, from our peril; give strength and skill to all those who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure; and grant that, perceiving how frail and uncertain our life is, we may apply our hearts unto that heavenly wisdom which leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Elmar Hashimov, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab
About the Art:
The Empty Tomb
Mikhail Nesterov
Oil on canvas
1889
Two dark figures ascend to the crest of the hill, where an angel dressed in a flowing white gown awaits, seated upright like a sentry on the stone that lays prone in front of the dark mouth of the empty cave, armed with a white-hot rod that seems almost alive. One carries a small lamp to light their way against the star-studded sky. The scene is hushed and still, with a solemn yet expectant air.
About the Artist:
Mikhail Nesterov (1862-1942) was a Russian and Soviet painter; associated with the Peredvizhniki (often called The Wanderers or The Itinerants in English, a group of Russian realist artists who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restrictions) and Mir Iskusstva (a magazine and movement to revolutionize and modernize Russian art). He was one of the first exponents of Symbolist art in Russia. His father was a merchant with a strong interest in history and literature. He studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. Nesterov managed to weather the great political upheavals and change of the final days of the Russian Tsars, the 1917 Revolution, and Soviet Stalinist rule and he received the Stalin Prize in 1941. It wasn’t until his first wife Maria’s death in childbirth in 1886 that he began to find his artistic voice. He wrote, "My love for Masha [Maria] and losing her made me an artist, brought substance into my art that had not been there before, gave it feeling and a living soul, in a word, everything that people came to value, and still value in my art." He returned to his religious roots and developed a distinctly Russian style that is equally humble and grand, direct and mystical, where the low northern light lends a somber yet expectant tone to the scenes. He is considered one of the last significant religious artists in Russia, painting everything from icons to murals, portraits, landscapes, and all manner of private commissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Nesterov
https://musings-on-art.org/nesterov-mikhail-nesterov
About the Music:
“Doxastikon of Pascha and Christ is Risen”
The Lyrics:
Glory to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Spirit.
Both now and ever,
And unto the ages of ages.
Amen.
This is the day of Resurrection;
Let us be radiant for the festival,
And let us embrace one another.
Let us say, O brethren,
Even to those that hate us:
Let us forgive all things on the Resurrection,
And thus let us cry:
Christ is risen from the dead;
By death hath He trampled down death,
And on those in the graves hath He bestowed life.
Christ is risen from the dead;
By death hath He trampled down death,
And on those in the graves hath He bestowed life.
About the Performer/Composer:
Unknown
About the Poet:
Mary Karr (b. 1955) is an American poet, essayist, and memoirist from Texas. She rose to fame in 1995 with the publication of her bestselling memoir The Liars' Club. She is the Jesse Truesdell Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University in Lima, New York. Her memoir The Liars' Club, which delves vividly into her deeply troubled childhood, was followed by two additional memoirs, Cherry and Lit: A Memoir, which details her "journey from blackbelt sinner and lifelong agnostic to unlikely Catholic." Karr won the 1989 Whiting Award for her poetry, was a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry in 2005, and has won Pushcart Prizes for both her poetry and essays. Her poems have appeared in major literary magazines such as Poetry, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic Monthly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Karr
https://www.marykarr.com/
About the Devotion Writer:
Elmar Hashimov, PhD
Associate Professor of English
Biola University
Dr. Elmar Hashimov is an associate professor of English at Biola, where he teaches and researches rhetoric, writing, philology, and film. He also directs the university writing center and coordinates writing across disciplines. Elmar has written for a variety of publications, such as The Atlantic, Technical Communication Quarterly, and 99% Invisible. He currently serves as the president of the Southern California Writing Centers Association.