Easter

Easter
G E N E R A L E D I T O R Robert B. Kruschwitz
A rt E di T O r Heidi J. Hornik
R e v ie w E ditor Norman Wirzba
p ro c la m ation E D I T O R William D. Shiell
A s s i s tant E ditor Heather Hughes

D e s igner Eric Yarbrough
P u b l i s h e r The Institute for Faith and Learning

Baylor University
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Contents
Introduction 8
Robert B. Kruschwitz
Celebrating Easter for Fifty Days 11
Mark D. Roberts
The Paschal Triduum 19
Michael P. Foley
“He Descended into Hell” 27
Keith L. Johnson
Raised to Walk in Newness of Life 35
Robert B. Kruschwitz
The Power of the Resurrection 44
Heidi J. Hornik
The Resurrection of Christ
Piero Della Francesca
Anticipation 46
Heidi J. Hornik
Saints Peter and John Running to Christ’s Tomb on
the Morning of the Resurrection (Les Disciples)
Eugène Burnand
Following the News of Mary Magdalene of the Resurrection
of Jesus, Simon Peter and John Come Running to the Tomb
Cristoforo de Predis
Other Voices 50
The First Day of Creation 53
David W. Music
Worship Service 56
David W. Music
On Beyond Easter 67
Milton Brasher-Cunningham
continued
The “Real Presence” in Footwashing 74
Bill J. Leonard
Between Easter Eggs and the Empty Tomb 77
Mark McClintock
Christ’s Last Words from the Cross 82
Arthur Boers
Charting the Christian Hope 88
Cameron Jorgenson
Editors 94
Contributors 96
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C elebrating E aster for F ifty D ays

There is no scriptural requirement for us to celebrate Easter for fifty days,
or even one day, for that matter. But there is nothing in the Bible that would
prohibit joyful remembrance of the resurrection for any length of time. In
fact, there is much to commend the practice of celebrating Eastertide.
T he P aschal T riduum
The Paschal Triduum, the last three days of Holy Week, originally was
geared toward catechumens being initiated into the faith on Holy Saturday
night. But the customs of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy
Saturday continue to hold great significance for the Church as a whole.
“H e D escended into H ell ”
In the Apostle’s Creed we affirm that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.”
Exactly what and where is this hell to which he descended? Why did he
have to go there? What did he do when he arrived in hell? And why are
his descent and our confession of it central to our faith?
R aised to W alk in N ewness of L ife
Christ’s resurrection guides us into “newness of life,” which is life here and
now, but with a new, eschatological dimension. It leads us to examine every-
thing we feel, think, and do from a new perspective that takes our present
bodies, our resurrectional bodies, and Christ’s body (which is the Church)
ever more seriously.
O n B eyond E aster
The power of Christ’s resurrection is realized most, not in our building of
monuments or institutions, but in the breaking of the bread, the quotidian
collecting of those whom we love around a table that nourishes us all, and
praying God would give us new eyes to see those who belong alongside us.
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8 Easter
Introduction
B y R obert B . K ruschwit z
How should the Church’s second cycle of preparation,

celebration, and rejoicing—Lent, Easter, and Pentecost—
mold our discipleship? Christ’s resurrection changes
everything. We explore the feast of Easter and the
season of Eastertide so we can celebrate them
faithfully and winsomely today.
T
his issue joins an earlier one, Lent, in exploring how the Church’s
second cycle of preparation, celebration, and rejoicing—Lent, Easter,
and Pentecost—should mold our discipleship.
In the feast of Easter Sunday and through the season of Eastertide we
celebrate Jesus Christ’s resurrection. That glorious event, as Kimberlee
Conway Ireton has reminded us, literally “changes everything.” First and
foremost, Gerald O’Collins has suggested, it causes us to ask different, probing
questions about our lives and their meaning: “Who are we as baptized persons
who profess faith in the resurrection? Who or what does the risen Christ want
us to become?” As our contributors explore answers to these questions, they
help us celebrate the Easter season faithfully and winsomely today.
In Celebrating Easter for Fifty Days (p. 11), Mark Roberts commends the
practice of marking the season of Eastertide. “The implications of the
resurrection lavishly overflow a one-day container,” he observes; we really
need the extra time to explore, savor, and grow into those amazing implications.
We may be innovative in doing this because Eastertide “is relatively
unencumbered by beloved customs and set expectations.” Milton Brasher-
Cunningham, a chef and writer, shares a good idea in On Beyond Easter (p. 67).
He observes that “Jesus started by doing something after the resurrection
he had not done before: he cooked. He endured the cross and the grave,
  Introduction 9
came back from the dead, and made breakfast.” This suggests that our eating
together is no small matter. Indeed, “the power of Christ’s resurrection is
realized most…in the breaking of the bread, the quotidian collecting of
those whom we love around a table that nourishes us all, and praying God
would give us new eyes to see those who belong alongside us.” Finally,
sharing the meaning of Christ’s resurrection with children can be difficult,
especially “amidst the glitter and gluttony” that adorn the secular holiday.
Mark McClintock’s Between Easter Eggs and the Empty Tomb (p. 77) shows
how crafting Easter worship with children in mind can give everyone,
including “adults steeped in church tradition, the opportunity to regain a
childlike wonder at the miraculous life, death, and new life of Jesus.”
The resurrection of Jesus is the surprise culmination of events that were
set in motion at his last supper with the disciples and through his betrayal
by Judas. Traditionally this narrative arc was honored in the Easter Triduum,
a period of three days from Maundy Thursday to Easter vespers. “In some
respects the Triduum was primarily geared towards catechumens, those
being initiated into the faith on Holy Saturday night,” Michael Foley writes
in The Paschal Triduum (p. 19). But he shows how the distinctive “ceremonies
and customs of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday also
held great significance for the Church as a whole.” For example, the early
catechumens imitated Jesus by washing twelve men’s feet during the Mass
on Maundy Thursday night. A ceremony of footwashing survives today
among certain Baptist groups, Bill Leonard explains in The “Real Presence” in
Footwashing (p. 74). In his experience, “The shear vulnerability of this
ceremony carries participants beyond its anticipated logistical awkwardness
to a palpable expression of servanthood.” Perhaps Holy Saturday is the
most misunderstood element of the Triduum. In “He Descended into Hell”
(p. 27), Keith Johnson examines three theological interpretations of the events
between Jesus’ death and resurrection. “Our limited information leaves us
speculating about what it truly means to say that Christ ‘descended into hell,’”
he concludes. But “we can say this much with confidence: to confess these
creedal words is to declare that we can face outward into the world, toward
the sometimes brutal and terrifying edges of human life, without fear.”
In Raised to Walk in Newness of Life (p. 35), I explore how the resurrection
of Jesus reorders our moral lives. The power of Christ’s resurrection not only
breaks our entrenchment in a rebellious way of life, it also instructs us in a
Christlike way of living, which the Apostle Paul calls “newness of life” or
“new creation.” We begin to “examine everything we feel, think, and do
from a new perspective that takes our present bodies, our resurrectional
bodies, and Christ’s body (which is the Church) ever more seriously.”
A long tradition in Christian art avoids depicting the moment of
Christ’s resurrection, since this event is not described in Scripture. Instead
there developed iconographic traditions around the biblical stories about
disciples discovering the empty tomb or seeing the risen Christ. In
Anticipation (p. 46), Heidi Hornik explores two treatments of the apostles
Peter and John racing to the empty tomb: a beautiful illumination from
10 Easter
the fifteenth-century Codex de Predis and the nineteenth-century realist

Eugène Burnand’s Les Disciples (on the cover). Piero della Francesca’s The
Resurrection of Christ is one of the most famous images that takes the opposite
tack of imagining the triumphant moment of resurrection itself. The cosmic
significance of the event is clear in this important work, as she explains in
The Power of the Resurrection (p. 44). “On the left side of Christ the trees in
the background are stark and dead, awaiting rebirth, while those on the
right are flourishing, symbolizing the rebirth of humanity.”
In his worship service (p. 56) for the dawning light of Easter morning,
David Music follows early Christian preaching in comparing Christ’s
resurrection to God’s creation of light on the first day. In his new hymn,
“The First Day of Creation” (p. 53), Music reminds us that in “The day of
resurrection / God once again turned night / to joyful adoration / and
anthems of delight.”
One popular form of Good Friday service since the late eighteenth
century has been meditation on the “seven last words” uttered by Jesus.
Arthur Boers reviews five contemporary takes on this tradition in Christ’s
Last Words from the Cross (p. 82). Echoes from Calvary: Meditations on Franz
Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, edited by Richard Young,
collects the brief reflections on the “words” offered by various preachers
and noteworthies to accompany performances of Haydn’s work by the Vermeer
String Quartet. William Willimon’s Thank God It’s Friday: Encountering the
Seven Last Words from the Cross, Stanley Hauerwas’s Cross-Shattered Christ:
Meditations on the Seven Last Words, and Peter Storey’s Listening to Golgotha:
Jesus’ Words from the Cross draw from the authors’ homilies. Richard John
Neuhaus’s Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last Words of Jesus
from the Cross offers more sustained theological reflection. “Though the Seven
Words practice constructs a coherent plot that none of the Gospel writers
intended, it has proven rich for Christians these last centuries,” Boers notes.
“The Seven Last Words of Christ, like the Lord’s Prayer, ably condense and
collapse into one set of short passages the essentials of our faith.”
“While modern spiritual sensibilities have led both Christians and
Jews to conceive of the afterlife in wholly ethereal terms, the radical claim
of both traditions is that at the end of history the dead will be raised in
bodily form,” Cameron Jorgenson explains in Charting the Christian Hope
(p. 88). He reviews Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson’s Resurrection:
The Power of God for Christians and Jews, N. T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope:
Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, and
Matthew Levering’s Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife,
and the Fate of the Christian. “Bodies renewed and transformed by the power
of Jesus’ resurrection—this is the news the Church has claimed as its gospel,”
Jorgenson concludes. “The structure of the Church’s hope is firmly fixed on
the promise of the risen Lord who comforts his people by saying, ‘See, I am
making all things new.’”
  Copyright © 2014 Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University 11
Celebrating Easter
for Fifty Days
B y M ark D . R oberts
There is no scriptural requirement for us to celebrate

Easter for fifty days, or even one day, for that matter.
But there is also nothing in the Bible that would
prohibit joyful remembrance of the resurrection for
any length of time. In fact, there is much to commend
the practice of celebrating Eastertide.
L
et me invite you to celebrate Easter for fifty days this year. If you
already swim in a stream of the Christian tradition that does this,
then my invitation is unnecessary; but I hope you will find something
of value below, perhaps a fresh perspective on why Christians do this or
new inspiration for your Easter celebrations.
However, if you are like most Christians I know, the idea of a fifty-day
Easter seems rather strange. I grew up in a church-going Protestant family.
I never once heard that Easter could be more than a one-day experience. I
did not feel any need to stretch out the holiday, either. As a young Christian,
I had no idea that some believers structured their year according to a calendar
based on the life of Jesus and the faith of the Church. I did not know about
something called the liturgical year, the church year, or the Christian year.
I knew of two major Christian holidays: Christmas and Easter. There were
minor holidays recognized in my congregation, including Palm Sunday,
Good Friday, Mother’s Day, Independence Day, and Thanksgiving. I had
some vague idea that my Catholic friends had to give something up during
the season of Lent. That always seemed to me like one more good reason to
remain a Protestant.
12 Easter
As a young adult, I sensed a call to ordained ministry in my Presbyterian

denomination. In preparation for ordination, I took a course in church polity
at Fuller Theological Seminary. There I learned, much to my surprise, that
many Presbyterians were guided in their worship by the liturgical year. In
fact, our official denominational guide to worship included it as standard
fare for all congregations. My professor was enthusiastic about the richness
and variety that come from structuring worship according to the seasons of
the church year. I was not convinced, however. But I did learn for the first
time that Easter was actually considered to be a fifty-day season rather than
just a special Sunday in the spring. I considered this fact to be curious, but
otherwise irrelevant to my life and worship.
Things changed in 1991 when I was called to be the senior pastor of
Irvine Presbyterian Church in Southern California. Soon after I arrived,
my worship director, a godly man named Loren, explained to me that
he ordered the worship of our church according to the liturgical year.
Because of my seminary class in church polity, at least I knew what he
was talking about. Included in Loren’s vision for our church’s worship
was celebrating Easter for fifty days, beginning on Easter Sunday and
ending the day before Pentecost. During this season of Easter, which Loren
called Eastertide, the congregation would continue to use the greeting we
used on Easter Sunday: “Christ is risen! / He is risen, indeed!” We would
sing Easter hymns. Our worship would glorify God in light of the resur-
rection of Jesus. Loren said he preferred that some of my preaching
during the season of Easter focus on resurrection themes, but he
understood if I had other priorities.
As I imagined stretching out Easter for seven Sundays, I felt somewhat
uncomfortable. It just seemed wrong to sing “Christ the Lord is risen
today” on any Sunday other than on Easter Sunday, even though I knew
that the “today” of this beloved hymn was just as true on the Sunday after
Easter as it was on Easter Sunday itself. Nevertheless, in spite of my
personal reservations I consented to Loren’s plan. So, in the spring of 1992,
I experienced my first seven-week Eastertide. I did not preach Easter
sermons that year beyond Easter Sunday. But we did sing Easter hymns
and use resurrection-themed Scripture readings in worship. I did greet the
congregation with “Christ is risen!” and they responded “He is risen,
indeed!” well into the month of May.
All of this felt peculiar to me. Yet it also felt surprisingly right. I
appreciated the chance to focus in worship on the resurrection for more
than just one Sunday a year. As I stood in front of my congregation and
proclaimed, “Christ is risen!” I was glad to remind them of this truth and
to be encouraged by their response, “He is risen, indeed!” I began to sense
unexpected value in having our Easter worship spill over into the weeks
after Easter. I wondered how this elongated celebration might influence
the soul of my church and even my own relationship with the Lord.
  Celebrating Easter for Fifty Days 13
In my remaining fifteen years at Irvine Presbyterian Church, we always

extended the celebration of Easter beyond Easter Sunday itself. We did not
feel bound to shape every service until Pentecost with strong Easter themes,
however. We were free to vary the menu because, in a sense, every Christian
gathering on Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. Besides, we did
not feel bound by the church year, as if we had put on a liturgical straitjacket.
The Christian calendar was more of a guide and inspiration. Yet, we regularly
sang Easter hymns during Eastertide, even as our readings and prayers
highlighted the resurrection and its implications. I believe our recognition
of the season of Easter enriched our worship. More importantly, it helped
my congregation and me to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection”
(Philippians 3:10) in new and deeper ways.
My experience and that of my church testifies to the value of a fifty-
day celebration of Easter. This story may be enough to convince you to
give it a try in your church or in your personal devotions. Or, perhaps my
story intrigues you, but leaves you with questions, such as: What reasons
are there for celebrating Easter for fifty days? What might we actually
do during the fifty days of Easter? In the rest of this article, I will try to
answer these questions.
So m e R ea s on s to Cele b rate E a s ter f or Fi f t y D a y s
Let me begin with what is not a reason for a fifty-day Easter. Scripture
does not instruct us to celebrate Easter for fifty days. (In fact, we do not
find a biblical imperative for any of our Christian feasts, fasts, or seasons,
though, of course, Scrip-
ture narrates the stories we
celebrate in these special
times.) Moreover, we Our recognition of the season of Easter
do not observe the first
followers of Jesus choosing
enriched our worship. More importantly, it
one Sunday of the year to
remember the resurrection
helped my congregation and me to “know
of Jesus. The fact that the Christ and the power of his resurrection”
earliest Jewish Christians
gathered on Sunday, in (Philippians 3:10) in new and deeper ways.
addition to Saturday, was
by itself a strong testimony
to and remembrance of the
resurrection. In a sense, every Sunday was Easter for the first-century believers,
as well as for Christians throughout the centuries.
If you look to Scripture as your primary guide for Christian faith and
practice, then there is no requirement for you to celebrate Easter for fifty
days, or even one day, for that matter. Conversely, there is also nothing in
the Bible that would prohibit joyful remembrance of the resurrection for
14 Easter
any length of time. In fact, there is much to commend this practice. Thus,
with respect to Easter worship, Christians are free to follow the dictates of
their consciences as we participate in the traditions of our churches. Or we
can worship creatively on the basis of Scripture, informed by the traditions
of other believers.
When it comes to church traditions, the last thirty years have inaugu-
rated an unprecedented sharing of Christian practices from throughout
history and throughout the world. As technology shrinks the world, it
is not unusual for believers in one country to use worship resources
developed on the other side of the world. Moreover, church leaders like
Robert E. Webber have encouraged us to worship in ways that are both
“ancient” and “future.” 1 Even in the United States, Christians have
begun to realize that doing whatever is new is not necessarily best when
it comes to worship. We have learned that our brothers and sisters
from earlier centuries still have much to offer to us today, both in their
teachings and in their practices.
Though we are not bound to celebrate Easter for fifty days just because
millions of Christians throughout history have done so and because millions
of Christians throughout the world continue to do so, we may be more
inclined today to be open to the possibility that others have something to
teach us. Our openness to learning from other believers may extend across
formerly sacrosanct lines in the sand. Protestants are discovering riches in
traditional Catholic practices, and vice versa. Some of us are even examining
the treasures of Eastern Orthodoxy.
Thus, one reason for a fifty-day season of Easter is the fact that this
practice is both ancient and widespread. (Eastern Orthodox Easter lasts for
forty days, ending with the celebration of the ascension of Jesus. Roman
Catholics and many Protestants throughout the world honor a fifty-day
Easter.) The roots of the Christian custom grow back into Jewish soil. The
first day of the Jewish Passover came seven weeks before the holiday of
Shavuoth, which is also known as the Feast of Weeks, or Pentecost. (“Pente-
cost” comes from the Greek word meaning “fiftieth day.”) So, even as Jews
connected Passover and Pentecost and gave special meaning to the days in
between, so did some Christians when it came to Easter and Pentecost. A
fifty-day celebration of Easter emerged in the first few centuries of the
Church’s existence.2
Another reason for celebrating Easter on the seven Sundays of Easter-
tide points to the enriching potential of the liturgical calendar. Though at
first I was skeptical of my seminary professor’s enthusiasm for the church
year, I have come to agree with him. As a pastor and worship leader, I
know how easy it is for the worship of a congregation to become stale.
The themes of our worship can reflect the narrowness of our own faith
rather than the breadth of biblical truth and the richness of Christian
practice through the ages.
If we follow the contours of the Christian year, however, it is likely

that our worship will be richer and truer than when we are left to our own
devices. For example, in Advent, our worship will be saturated with hope,
even if we tend not to be naturally hopeful people. Or, in the season of
Christmas (Christmas Day and the following eleven days), we will reflect
deeply upon the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God. When it
comes to the season of Easter, we will have the time and the encouragement
to probe the depths of the resurrection.
In my experience, one-day Easter celebrations usually focus on the story
of the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus. Sermons try to instill awe
and wonder, as well as to invite unbelieving visitors to receive Christ as
their Lord and Savior. I am not criticizing such practices. In fact, I have
described Easter Sunday worship and preaching in the church where I was
senior pastor for sixteen years. But, as important as it is to remember the
Easter narratives, this only begins to scratch the surface.
To be sure, the resurrection supplies a powerful rationale for accepting
the truth of the gospel. This truth often finds its way into Easter Sunday
preaching and rightly so. But, it turns out to be much more than simply
persuasive evidence for the truth of Christianity. Through the resurrection,
God “has given us new birth into a living hope,” a hope that sustains us
even in the midst of suffering (1 Peter 1:3-9). It was not just an event in
the past, but also the preface to a glorious future, our glorious future
(see 1 Corinthians 15)—something that reminds us embodied life
matters. It reveals the victory of God through Jesus and offers the promise
of our participation in
that victory (Ephesians
1:17-23). 3 The implications of the resurrection lavishly
From experience, I
know that you simply overflow a one-day container. We devote fifty
cannot squeeze all of this
into an Easter Sunday days to celebrating Easter because the God
worship service. The
implications of the resur- who raised Jesus from the dead deserves
rection lavishly overflow
a one-day container. Thus, such extensive attention.
one of the most persuasive
reasons for devoting fifty
days to its celebration is the
fact that it deserves such extensive attention. Or, perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that the God who raised Jesus from the dead deserves our
attention. Moreover, we deserve to have our faith stretched, deepened,
and renewed through a season of reflection upon and celebration of
the resurrection of our Lord.
16 Easter
E a s tertide and E p h e s ian s : A n E x a m p le

Let me provide an example from the letter to the Ephesians, which I
take to be written by the Apostle Paul. In the first chapter, Paul prays that
the readers might know
the immeasurable greatness of [God’s] power for us who believe,
according to the working of his great power. God put this power to
work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him
at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and
authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is
named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.
Ephesians 1:19-21
Notice that, in this text, the resurrection does not prove something about
Jesus himself. Rather, it illustrates the “immeasurable greatness of [God’s]
power for us who believe” (1:19). It would serve us well to spend the time
needed to understand this truth and experience it in our daily lives. In a
time when so many of us feel powerless, it would be wonderful to rediscover
the power of the resurrection. A fifty-day celebration of Easter encourages
us to discover how the truth of Easter can touch our lives today.
Another feature of Paul’s prayer is the close connection between the
resurrection and the ascension of Jesus. They are portrayed here as two
parts of one sweeping action of God. As a result of the resurrection-ascension,
Jesus now reigns above all cosmic authorities. It would be hard to develop
this theme in one Easter Sunday sermon and is worth examining during
the whole of Eastertide. In fact, the ascension of Jesus is part and parcel of
Eastertide traditions. In some streams it is celebrated on Ascension Day
(the fortieth day after Easter, always a Thursday). In others, it is celebrated
on the following Sunday.
In the next passage of Ephesians, the theme of resurrection appears once
again, this time in a most unexpected manner. According to the first verses
of Ephesians 2, we are dead through our trespasses and sins, and living in
bondage to worldly and demonic powers, not to mention our sinful passions
(2:1-3). Yet, the bad news of our present death introduces good news:
But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he
loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made
us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and
raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly
places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show
the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in
Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
In a stunning use of the metaphor of resurrection, this passage envisions us

as already having been raised with Christ and exalted with him to heaven.
Yet, we still look forward to “the immeasurable riches” of God’s grace that
will be showered upon us in the future.
Ephesians 2 is rarely used for Easter Sunday preaching. I never used it
during my tenure as a preaching pastor. Yet, if preachers and teachers had
the time to exposit this text and spell out its amazing implications, to craft a
worship service that begins with our death-like state and ends by celebrating
our resurrection with Christ, they could provide a wonderful opportunity
for renewed worship. A fifty-day season of Easter welcomes this kind of
preaching and worship.
A n I n v itation to Creati v it y d u ring E a s tertide
What might we actually do during the fifty days of Easter? I assume
that we have the freedom to be creative in the worship of Eastertide, based
on biblical themes associated with resurrection. Certain days and seasons
of the Christian year are already laden with traditions. Eastertide, on the
contrary, is relatively unencumbered by beloved customs and set expecta-
tions for many Christians, though some possible practices are obvious. A
fifty-day Easter would allow your church to sing a wider variety of Easter
hymns than can be jammed into one Sunday. If you use the standard liturgical
colors, Easter white and gold will represent hope, purity, light, and glory.
You could certainly join mil-
lions of Christians through-
out the world by celebrating
the ascension of Jesus during
the Easter season.
What might we actually do during the fifty
But, Eastertide invites
us to be creative, both in
days of Easter? Certain days and seasons
personal devotions and of the Christian year are already laden
corporate worship. Church
teachers, musicians, evange- with traditions. Eastertide, on the contrary,
lists, children’s workers, and
artists can work together on is relatively unencumbered by beloved
questions like: How can we
lead our people to worship customs and set expectations.
God in light of the resurrec-
tion? How can we teach our
people its broader and deeper
implications? How can we craft worship services so that our people might
know the power of the resurrection in their lives? How might they experience
the reality of their own resurrection from death to life through the grace
of God in Christ? How might we live for fifty days—and beyond—as
resurrection people?
18 Easter
NOTES
1 See, for example, Robert E. Webber, Ancient-Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting
God’s Narrative (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2008). This is part of the Ancient-Future
Series of writings by Webber that began with his influential Ancient-Future Faith:
Rethinking Evangelicalism for a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999).
2 For more on the origins of Easter, see Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson, The
Origins of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical
Press, 2011).
3 For more on the meaning of the resurrection, I recommend two books by N. T. Wright.
The first is his massive study, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the
Question of God, volume 3 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003). If you are not ready for
740 scholarly pages, I would recommend Wright’s much shorter volume, The Challenge of
Easter (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009).
Mar k D . R o b ert s
is the Executive Director of the Digital Media and the Theological & Cultural
Steward for the H. E. Butt Foundation in Kerrville, Texas.
The Paschal Triduum

B y M ichael P . F oley
The Paschal Triduum, the last three days of Holy

Week, originally was geared towards catechumens,
those being initiated into the faith on Holy Saturday
night. But the customs of Maundy Thursday, Good
Friday, and Holy Saturday continue to hold great
significance for the Church as a whole.
A
t the heart of the Christian gospel is what came to be known as
the Paschale sacramentum or “Paschal Mystery”—the saving passion,
death, resurrection, and ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pope
St. Leo the Great (d. 461) was not alone in thinking of the Paschal Mystery
as that in which “all the mysteries of our religion come together.” 1 This
sacramentum is no mere series of past historical events but an ongoing,
life-giving reality into which we are called to enter every day of our lives
and especially during its annual commemoration. In one of his Lenten
sermons, Leo admonished the congregation: “Because the entire Paschal
Mystery was instituted for the remission of sins, let us imitate what we
hope to celebrate.”2
A key part of what Leo and his flock were hoping to celebrate was
the Triduum, the last three days of Holy Week, from Thursday evening to
Sunday evening, which mark what the early church called (and what the
Eastern churches continue to call) the Passover or Pasch of the Crucifixion
and the Pasch of the Resurrection. In some respects the Triduum was
primarily geared towards catechumens, those being initiated into the faith
on Holy Saturday night. But as we shall see, the ceremonies and customs
of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday also held great
significance for the Church as a whole.
20 Easter
L enten Ba c k dro p
The Triduum is best seen against the backdrop of the season of Lent, and
Lent is best seen through the eyes of an early Christian catechumen. For
someone entering the Church in the fourth century, Lent was an extraordinary
boot camp for the soul. Catechumens were frequently interrogated about
their knowledge of the faith at events called “Scrutinies,” often during all-
night vigils that left them
exhausted. At one Scrutiny
The Triduum is best seen against the back- (at least in St. Augustine’s
diocese of Hippo), they had
drop of Lent, and Lent is best seen through to stand on a goatskin, sym-
bolizing sin and the animal
the eyes of an early Christian catechumen. clothing of Adam and Eve,
while the bishop or an
For someone entering the Church in the exorcist would breathe and
hiss into their face, adjuring
fourth century, Lent was an extraordinary the Devil to depart. It was
also during Lent that
boot camp for the soul. catechumens learned the
Apostles’ Creed and the
Lord’s Prayer, which they
had to memorize and publicly recite on Holy Saturday afternoon (see below).3
In addition to fasting from sunrise to sunset, candidates for baptism had
to abstain from conjugal relations and from bathing for the whole of Lent.
They were finally able to visit a Roman bathhouse in preparation for the
Triduum on the Thursday of Holy Week. On the same day, the bishop would
prepare for the catechumens’ reception into the Church with a special
“Chrism Mass” during which he would bless the holy oils to be used for
their initiation on Holy Saturday night.
Another group that bears mention is the public penitents—those Christian
sinners whose notorious or especially scandalous trespasses elicited
conspicuous penance. Like the catechumens, the penitents fasted, abstained
from bathing, and did penance for forty days. Dressed in sackcloth and ash,
they were also forbidden from shaving, wearing shoes, or sleeping in their
own beds. The public penitents’ ordeal ended on Maundy Thursday during
a “Mass of Remission.” The bishop would take the unwashed, unshod,
sackcloth-wearing penitents into the church where, after the reading of the
Gospel, he would absolve them of their sins. After Mass, they would hurry
home to bathe, shave, and return to their normal lives. This practice ended
centuries ago, but it has left one mark on our language: the period of the
penitents’ exclusion was sometimes called a “quarantine,” from the medieval
French word for forty days.4
Over time, as the faithful reflected on their own need for repentance in
preparation for the Paschal Mystery, they came to adopt some of these
  The Paschal Triduum 21
ascetical practices. The forty-day fast of Lent (known in the East as the Great
Fast) may, as the Orthodox churches claim, be a practice of apostolic origin,
but it may also be the application of the catechumenal fast to the already-
baptized flock. Similarly, some Christians began to abstain from certain
forms of carnal pleasure and bodily hygiene in imitation of the penitents
and catechumens, leaving behind a curious linguistic imprint. In English,
Maundy Thursday was originally called “Shere Thursday” (meaning sheer
or clean), and in Scandinavian it is still called Skaertorsdag, 5 presumably
because the Thursday of Holy Week was the appointed day to shave and
bathe. Even the Lenten fast was relaxed on this day to give the faithful the
strength to freshen up.6 And, of course, the ashes worn by public penitents
survive today in the customs of Ash Wednesday.
Ma u nd y T h u r s da y
The Mass of Remission is a memory of the distant past, but the Chrism
Mass is still celebrated the morning of Holy Thursday in the Catholic
Church and in the Anglican communion, and so too is the third service
handed down from antiquity, the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. Celebrated in
the evening, it consists of several memorable ceremonies, including the
washing of twelve men’s feet by the celebrant and the stripping of the altars
in preparation for the sorrowful austerity of Good Friday. The former custom
is the inspiration behind the term Maundy Thursday, “Maundy” coming
from the Mandatum novum or “new commandment” that Christ gave his
Apostles as he washed their feet: “I give you a new commandment, that you
love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for
one another” (John 13:34-35). Our Lord’s gesture was clearly one of service,
which is why Christian monarchs once washed the feet of the poorest of their
subjects on Holy Thursday in a separate ceremony.7 But the foot-washing
can also be seen as an analogical presentation of the Eucharist in John’s
Gospel8 and as a purification of the ordained priesthood into which Christ
had just initiated his Apostles, for the freshly-minted institution had been
polluted moments earlier by Judas’ perfidy.9
The ceremonies of Holy Thursday in the Roman rite taught not only by
addition but also by subtraction. Prior to the Second Vatican Council (1962-
1965), the Kiss of Peace was omitted during the Mass of the Last Supper,
since the image of Judas’s despicable manner of identifying Jesus in the
Garden of Gethsemane was too vivid in the minds of the faithful to be
imitated on this sacred night.10
T ene b rae
Another form of traditional worship associated with Holy Thursday is
Tenebrae, from the Latin word for “darkness.” Tenebrae is the Office of
Matins and Lauds celebrated in the pre-dawn hours of Maundy Thursday or
the night before,11 but with one distinction. The service involves the use of a
22 Easter
“hearse,” a triangular candelabrum holding fifteen candles. 12 After the

chanting of each psalm or canticle, a candle from the hearse is extinguished
until the entire church is enveloped in almost total darkness. Only the
topmost candle remains lit, which is then hidden by the side of the altar.
Worshippers then make a banging noise, usually with their books on the
pews, for several moments; after silence is restored, so too is the lit candle
to its place on the hearse.
The extinction of the four-
Ever since the Church emerged from the teen candles calls to mind
the holy men mentioned in
catacombs and most likely even before the Bible who, from the
foundation of the world to
that, Good Friday has been kept as a day the threshold of Christ’s
ministry, were slain by their
of “bitterness” and fasting. Ironically, own brethren (see Matthew
23:35). Similarly, the hiding
special foods also came to be associated of the fifteenth candle signi-
fies the crucifixion of Jesus
with Good Friday. Christ and his burial in the
tomb; the banging noise
commemorates the confusion
of nature when its Creator died (Matthew 27:51); and the restoration of the
candle anticipates Christ’s glorious resurrection.
Tenebrae was popular in Catholic parishes before Pope Pius XII changed
the rules governing Holy Week in 1955,13 and lately different versions of it
have begun to reemerge in some Catholic parishes. Some Lutheran,
Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Anglican and Episcopalian
communities (especially the latter two) also celebrate a form of Tenebrae.
G ood Frida y
Ever since the Church emerged from the catacombs and most likely
even before that, Good Friday has been kept as a “day of lamentation and
not festivity”14 and a day of “bitterness” and fasting.15 In the second century
the faithful kept an intense forty-hour “Passion Fast” that began at the hour
when Christ died on the cross and ended on the hour that he rose from the
dead. 16 Even after the forty-day Lenten fast became universal, believers
would observe Good Friday with added rigor. In Ireland, Catholics would
often keep a “Black Fast” in which nothing was consumed, except perhaps
for a little water or plain tea, until sundown.
Ironically, special foods also came to be associated with Good Friday.
The once-widespread custom in Catholic countries of marking every new
loaf of bread with the sign of the cross took on a special meaning on Good
Friday. In Austria, Karfreitaglaib, bread with a cross imprinted on it, was
served on this day. And in England, hot cross buns, which first appeared
in 1361, would only be distributed on Good Friday. The hot cross bun was
such a familiar feature of the English Lent that it continued after the
Reformation as a seasonal food—and as an occasion for superstition. Hot
cross buns were kept throughout the year for their curative properties; if
someone “fell ill, a little of the bun was grated into water and given to the
sick person to aid his recovery.”17 Some believed that eating them on Good
Friday would protect their home from fire, while others wore them “as
charms against disease, lightning, and shipwreck”!18
The centerpiece for most Christians on Good Friday is some form of
worship. Historically, these services developed gradually. In the Latin
West, Good Friday worship was the coalescence of three different practices:
a Roman synaxis, a kind of prayer meeting with biblical readings; the
adoration or veneration of the cross, borrowed from the ancient liturgy of
Jerusalem; and the “Mass of the Presanctified,” in which Holy Communion
(consecrated from a previous Mass) was distributed.19
Roman tradition also backhandedly led to the creation of Passion Music.
In the traditional Roman rite, all four Gospel narratives of the Lord’s Passion
are chanted during Holy Week: the Passion according to St. Matthew on
Palm Sunday, the Passion according to St. Mark on the following Tuesday,
the Passion according to St. Luke on Spy Wednesday, and the Passion
according to St. John on Good Friday. The music for these Gospels is an
outstanding example of the power and beauty of Gregorian chant; under-
standably, then, it left a deep impression on the Western imagination even
after the Reformation in large part did away with the liturgical setting of
Holy Week. Nature abhorring a vacuum, composers soon began writing
Passion oratorios to replace the music of solemn liturgy, the most famous
of which are Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Saint John Passion” and “Saint
Matthew Passion” in the eighteenth century.20
The Three Hours’ Devotion, or “Seven Last Words of Christ,” is another
popular Good Friday service. Begun in 1732 by Father Alphonso Messia,
S.J., in Lima, Peru, it quickly spread to all other countries in Central and
South America and from there to Italy, England, and America, where both
Catholics and Protestants embraced the devotion. The service, which alter-
nates between homilies on the seven last statements of the crucified Christ
and various hymns and prayers, has also inspired the composition of
memorable music, including “The Seven Last Words of Christ” by Franz
Joseph Haydn (1787), “Les Sept Paroles de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ sur
la Croix” by Charles Gounod (1855), and “Les Sept Paroles du Christ” by
Théodore Dubois (1867).
Hol y Sat u rda y
“From evening until the cock-crowing, stay awake,” the fourth-century
Apostolic Constitutions declares. “Assemble together in the church: watch
and pray and entreat God. When you sit up all night, read the Law, the
24 Easter
Prophets, and the Psalms until the cock-crowing, and baptize your catechumens.
Read the Gospel with fear and trembling, and speak to the people such things
as tend to their salvation. And put an end to your sorrow.”21
In the early church, the Easter Vigil service that began late Holy Saturday
night and ended Easter Sunday morning was a remarkable experience.
Thomas Finn writes that the North African liturgies of Lent and the Triduum
in St. Augustine’s day were
the “spectacula christiana—
the new theatre, the new
From the shenanigans of herring-hating racetracks, and the new
boxing ring. It is difficult to
boys of Poland to the writings of the greatest overestimate the impact of
this long-extended ritual
authors of the West, the Paschal Mystery of drama on convert and
community alike.”22 This
our redemption has been deeply felt through was especially true for Holy
Saturday, not only in North
the ritual worship of the Church. Africa but throughout
Christendom. At the Basilica
of St. John Lateran in Rome,
the service would begin with
the blessing of the fire, the blessing of the Paschal candle, the proclamation
of twelve Old Testament prophecies, and the blessing of the baptismal
font (in a baptistery separate from the basilica). Stripped down, catechumens
would descend into the font where they were baptized (women were
anointed and baptized separately by a “deaconess,” a non-ordained
woman appointed for this purpose). Rising out of the font, they would be
clothed in white robes, symbols of their new purity and having “put on
the Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 13:14); they would then be confirmed or
“chrismated” by the bishop. Next, the neophytes would enter the church
carrying a lit candle as the congregation chanted the Litany of the Saints.
As the dark church gradually filled with sparkling light, the Mass for
Easter would begin. 23
Officially, the daylight hours of Holy Saturday would be spent in rest
and prayer as the faithful kept spiritual vigil at the tomb of our Lord. One
exception to this rule was the final interrogation of catechumens that took
place in the afternoon. The bishop would question them one more time,
exorcise them, touch their ears and nostrils in imitation of Mark 7:34 and
John 9:1-3 and in order to symbolize their opening up to the graces and
Word of God, and hear their pledge of conversion. The catechumens would
face the West, point to the sunset, and renounce Satan and all his empty
works before turning to the East and affirming their belief in Jesus Christ.
Each recited the Creed memorized during Lent and was then dismissed to
spend their last few hours before baptism in prayer.24
Unofficially, there would be much activity the day before Easter as families
prepared their homes and kitchens for an Octave of Paschal feasting (during
Easter and the following week). The blessing of Easter foods by a priest,
which in the Middle Ages often took place on Holy Saturday day, was a
cherished custom in both the Latin West and Greek East, and it is still
cherished by Eastern-rite Christians today. In Poland, boys would not only
look forward to the new fare but say good riddance to the old. Taking a
dead herring, which they had eaten in abundance during Lent, they would
ritually execute it by hanging it from a tree and then bury it with glee in a
mock funeral, all in celebration of their emancipation from the tiresome food.25
Con c l u s ion
Perhaps the most intriguing testimony to the power of the Triduum is
its impact on the literary imagination. In the Commedia Dante famously
begins his journey into Inferno on Holy Thursday and reaches Purgatorio on
Easter Sunday morning. Before Dante’s Comedy the Caedmonian Exodus26
and the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf were both inspired by the Triduum:
Beowulf’s descent to the monsters’ underwater lair, for instance, is deliberately
evocative of Christ’s harrowing of Hell, a scene that comes after a culminating
series of Old Testament allusions recapitulating the Holy Saturday liturgy.27
Even the various parts of St. Augustine’s Confessions may be surmised in
terms of the Triduum: the autobiography of his past in books 1-9 recounts
his catechumenate and baptism on Holy Saturday, the autobiography of his
present in book 10 hearkens to the Eucharist he received as a neophyte and
his current vocation to the priesthood, and the commentary on the opening
verses of Genesis in books 11-13 recalls his period of instruction during the
Easter Octave as well as his duties as bishop to instruct the newborn “infants”
in the Faith. 28 From the shenanigans of herring-hating boys to the writings
of the greatest authors of the West, the Paschal Mystery of our redemption
has been deeply felt through the ritual worship of the Church.
NOTES
1 Leo the Great, Sermon 47.1. All translations are mine.
2 Leo the Great, Sermon 50.3.
3 See William Harmless, S.J., Augustine and the Catechumenate (Collegeville, MN:
Liturgical Press, 1995).
4 The original use of the word “quarantine” was Jesus’ forty-day fast in the desert; it
was applied to periods of penance before it was eventually applied to the temporary
isolation of those with contagious diseases (see “Quarantine, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary,
second edition).
5 Francis X. Weiser, S.J., Handbook of Christian Feasts and Customs (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, and World, 1958), 193 and 173.
6 See Augustine, Epistle 54.7.9-10.
7 It was the custom in England, for instance, for the monarch to wash the feet of as many
people as they themselves were years old and to give to each as many coins. After the Reforma-
tion, the foot-washing was eventually dropped and only the giving of coins was retained.
Today, the coins used are specially-minted commemorative pieces called “Maundy money.”
26 Easter
8 Rev. Msgr. Anthony A. La Femina, “The Footwashing—Jesus Christ Establishes the

New Covenant before Calvary,” Adoremus 12:1 (March 2006), www.adoremus.
org/0306Footwashing.html (accessed November 18, 2013).
9 For the connection between priestly consecration and bodily washing, see Leviticus 8:6
and Exodus 30:17-21. For the interpretation of Christ’s foot-washing as a moral purification
and sanctification, see Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.22.
10 Michael P. Foley, “The Whence and Whither of the Kiss of Peace in the Roman Rite,”
Antiphon: A Journal for Liturgical Renewal 14:1 (2010), 45-94.
11 The Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours, consists of seven or eight designated times
during the day in which the faithful chant or recite psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles.
12 A hearse is a harrow, which is a spiked, rake-like tool used for tilling the ground. The
candelabrum is so named because of its resemblance to the harrow, while the coffin bier
and funeral vehicle take their names from the candelabrum, not the other way around.
13 See Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, where a verse from Tenebrae, Quomodo sedet
sola civitas / How lonely sits the city (Lamentations 1:1), is a motif.
14 Apostolic Constitutions 5.18.
15 St. Ambrose, Epistle 23.12.
16 Weiser, 201.
17 Katherine Burton and Helmut Ripperger, Feast Day Cookbook (Montreal, QC: Catholic
Authors Press, 2005), 52.
18 Weiser, 206.
19 Dom Gaspar Lefebvre, O.S.B., Saint Andrew Daily Missal (Saint Paul, MN: E. M.
Lohmann Co., 1953), 490.
20 Weiser, 91 and 203–204.
21 Apostolic Constitutions 5.19.
22 Thomas M. Finn, “It Happened One Saturday Night: Ritual and Conversion in
Augustine’s North Africa,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 58:4 (1990), 595.
23 Lefebvre, 519 ff., and 553.
24 The various exorcisms, interrogations, and rituals of the catechumenate during the
Patristic era were preserved and compressed into a single rite of baptism kept by the
Church of Rome and used for all baptismal candidates, infant and adult, until 1969.
25 Weiser, 208.
26 J. W. Bright, “The Relation of the Caedmonian Exodus to the Liturgy,” Modern
Language Notes 27:4 (April 1912), 97-103.
27 Allen Cabaniss, “Beowulf and the Liturgy,” in Lewis E. Nicholson, ed., An Anthology
of Beowulf Criticism (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 1963), 223-232.
28 Angela Pearson, “The Unity of the Confessions and the Octave of the Infants,” Baylor
University, December 2005, unpublished; Michael P. Foley, “The Sacramental Topography
of the Confessions,” Antiphon 9:1 (Spring 2005), 30-65.
m i c h ael P . Fole y
is Associate Professor of Patristics in the Great Texts Program at Baylor
University.
“He Descended into Hell”

B y K eith L . J ohnson
In the Apostle’s Creed we affirm that Jesus Christ

“descended into hell.” Exactly what and where is this
hell to which he descended? Why did he have to go
there? What did he do when he arrived in hell? And
why are his descent and our confession of it central
to our faith?
W
henever my church prints the Apostle’s Creed in the Sunday
worship bulletin, one phrase has an asterisk attached to it: “he
descended into hell*….” An explanation is provided at the bottom
of the page: “hell refers to the realm of the dead rather than the place of
punishment.” I have long found the presence of this asterisk and explanation
disheartening. After all, if John Calvin is right that the Apostle’s Creed
contains “a summary of our faith, full and complete in all details,” then
doesn’t our need to asterisk the Creed signify that we do not truly understand
what we believe?1 Wouldn’t better catechesis be a more fitting solution? On
my better days, however, I can hardly blame my church leaders for making
the addition, because I know that they are simply trying to address a real
point of confusion in my church and others like it. Many sincere Christians
recite the Apostle’s Creed every week without knowing what it means to
confess that Jesus Christ “descended into hell.” What are we affirming
when we say this phrase? Exactly what and where is this hell to which Jesus
descended? Why did Jesus have to go there? What did Jesus do when he
arrived in hell? Whom did he meet? And why are his descent and our
confession of it central to our faith?
28 Easter
C h ri s t ’ s D e s c ent in S c ri p t u re
Scripture provides limited resources to directly address these questions.
The passage most often cited in relation to Christ’s descent is 1 Peter 3:18-22.
In the midst of a summary of the saving effects of Christ’s death and
resurrection, Peter states that Christ “went and made a proclamation to
the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey” (vv. 19-20a). This
statement seems vague on
its own, but readers often
We have to think through Scripture to trace have interpreted it in light
of the subsequent claim that
out what must be true about Christ’s “the gospel was proclaimed
even to the dead, so that,
descent into hell in light of everything though they had been judged
in the flesh as everyone is
Scripture says about God, Christ, and salva- judged, they might live in
the spirit as God does”
tion. As the Church has engaged in this (1 Peter 4:6). Read together,
these verses are taken to
task, three approaches have emerged. mean that Christ proclaimed
the gospel to the dead who
existed in a distinct realm,
often identified with the Old Testament Sheol or Greek Hades. The timing
of this proclamation is clarified by appeals to Romans 10:6-7 and Ephesians
4:8-10, both of which employ the motif of Christ’s ascending and descending.
These passages have been thought to imply that Christ descended into the
“lower parts of the earth” to reside with “the dead” in the period between
his crucifixion and resurrection. This idea is connected to Acts 2:27,
which cites Psalm 16 to indicate that God would not abandon his people
to Hades or let his “Holy One experience corruption.” Viewed as a whole,
these passages have led interpreters to posit the following scenario: in the
time between his death and resurrection—the time identified with Holy
Saturday, the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday—Christ
descended into the realm of the dead in order to preach the gospel to
the dead who resided there.
This statement marks the limits of what Scripture might be said to
explicitly support when it comes to Christ’s descent into hell, and my
church’s explanation of its asterisk stands in line with this content. The
problem, however, is that if we are going to say this much about Christ’s
descent, then we also must be willing to say a lot more. Doctrines can never
just be affirmed; they also have to be put to work. And just as it would do
little good to say that God is a Trinity without being able to explain how the
Father, Son, and Spirit are one God, it does little good to say that Christ
descended to the dead without being able to explain why he did so and what
this descent actually means for our life of faith. This sort of explanation
  “He Descended into Hell” 29
requires theological reasoning that goes beyond the letter of Scripture into
the realm of faithful speculation. We have to think through Scripture by
following its trajectory to trace out what must be true about Christ’s descent
into hell in light of everything else Scripture says about God, Christ, and
salvation. As the Church has engaged in this task over the centuries, three
primary approaches to the descent have emerged.
C h ri s t t h e T ri u m p h ant King
The first approach is the traditional position: Christ descended into hell
as a triumphant king to proclaim his victory over sin, death, and the devil
to the saints who had died before him. The descent takes place as a glorious
display of Christ’s power and his status as the one who now holds “the keys
of Death and of Hades” (Revelation 1:18). As Irenaeus puts it in the second
century, “the Lord descended into the regions beneath the earth to preach
his advent and to proclaim remission of sins for all who believe in him.” 2
This act fulfills Christ’s earlier promise that “the dead will hear the voice
of the Son of God, and those who hear will live” (John 5:25). It also stands
in line with God’s prior work in salvation history. Christ does not offer
salvation to all the dead, as if God’s covenant had been revised and now
everyone had a second chance at salvation. Rather, Christ proclaims
salvation only to the righteous dead, including figures like David, Samuel,
the prophets, and John the Baptist. 3 This means that Christ’s descent
vindicates rather than revises God’s promises, and it takes place as the
first movement of his Easter triumph.
The key for assessing this approach is to consider what it implies about
the nature of Christ’s saving work. Specifically, if Christ enters hell as the
triumphant king, then Christ’s death on the cross must have been sufficient
to free humans from the power of sin and death. For most the church
fathers, this indicated that the physicality of Christ’s death was the very
point of his saving work. Christ came to save human beings, and humans
are not merely souls but embodied souls. The salvation of an embodied soul
must be a physical salvation. For them, this meant that Christ saved us on
the cross not primarily by fulfilling the standards of divine justice or accepting
the fullness of God’s wrath. Rather, he saved us by embracing the physical
death that comes as a consequence of our sin (Genesis 2:17). This embrace
of death was the entire point of the incarnation: Christ took a physical body
upon himself precisely so that he could die in it as God. As a result, death’s
power “fully expended” on him, leading to the “dissolution of death” and
the resurrection of the faithful.4 This is what Paul is talking about when he
says, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54). As
the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ defeated death by dying a human death
on the cross, and everything that happens after the cross—including his
descent and his resurrection from the dead—works out the implications of
this victory for our salvation.
30 Easter
C h ri s t t h e Cr u c i f ied Ser v ant

The second approach is held by John Calvin (1509-1564) and much of
the Reformed tradition after him, including Karl Barth (1886-1968). Calvin
affirms that Jesus Christ “descended into hell,” but he rejects the claim that
Christ literally descended to the realm of the dead to preach to the saints.
Such an idea, he says, “is nothing but a story” containing “childish” elements
with no basis in the biblical narrative. 5 In reality, Christ could not have
descended into hell to proclaim salvation to the righteous dead because
there are no righteous dead: “all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power
of sin, as it is written, ‘There is no one who is righteous, not even one’…for
‘no human being will be justified in his sight’ by deeds prescribed by the
law” (Romans 3:9-10, 20). This means, Calvin says, that Peter’s claim that
Christ “made a proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Peter 3:19) should
not be interpreted literally. Rather, it is meant to indicate that the power of
Christ’s death “penetrated even to the dead” so as to highlight their already
determined destiny: the faithful knew that “the grace which they had only
tasted in hope was then manifested to the world,” and the wicked “realized
more clearly that they were excluded from all salvation.”6
Our confession of Christ’s descent gives us similar clarity, Calvin
thinks, because it helps us grasp the true nature of his suffering. While
he agrees that Christ’s death on the cross was sufficient for salvation, he
insists that this suffering must have been spiritual as well as physical
because God’s judgment against sin included spiritual as well as physical
consequences. “If Christ had died only a bodily death,” Calvin says, “it
would have been ineffectual. No—it was expedient at the same time for
him to undergo the severity of God’s vengeance, to appease his wrath and
satisfy his just judgment.” 7 Here we see the influence of Calvin’s doctrine
of the atonement upon his interpretation of the descent. If the con sequences
of the Fall include God’s wrath against sin, then this wrath must be
satisfied in order for salvation to take place. And if the cross is sufficient
for salvation, then the cross must have been the place where this wrath
was satisfied. For Calvin, the confession that Christ “descended into hell”
points us to this very fact, because it helps us recognize the true nature of
Christ’s suffering. In addition to his physical suffering, Christ endured an
“invisible and incomprehensible judgment” and paid “a greater and more
excellent price in suffering in his soul the terrible moments of a condemned
and forsaken man.” 8 The implication is this: when Christ takes the full
weight of sin upon himself, he is taking the penalty of God’s wrath against
sin as well. This means, as Barth puts it later, that Christ experienced the
horrors of hell on the cross: “We must not deny that Jesus gave Himself up
to the depths of hell not only with many others but on their behalf, in their
place, in the place of all who believe in Him.”9 Christ’s descent still marks
his victory over sin and its consequences, but the nature of this victory is
seen differently: instead of taking place as a triumph over death, Christ’s
victory takes place in and through his death. The descent thus signifies the
moment on the cross when Christ willingly bears the full burden of human sin
and its consequences.
C h ri s t t h e G od f or s a k en
The third approach, associated most prominently with Catholic theologian
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), combines elements from each of the
previous two views. With the tradition, Balthasar affirms that Christ literally
descended into hell in the period between his death and resurrection. Yet,
with Calvin and Barth, he holds that the descent indicates the depth of
Christ’s suffering rather than his triumph. Balthasar’s approach is governed
by his commitment to the Patristic principle that “only what has been
endured by Christ is healed and saved.”10 He takes this principle to mean
that Christ must suffer the full consequences of sin and death in order to
overcome them, which means that he must endure a spiritual death as
well as his physical one. He moves beyond Calvin and Barth on this point,
however, by affirming that this suffering happens in hell rather than strictly
on the cross. As he sees it, to say that Jesus Christ “descended into hell” is
to confess that Christ descended to the place of punishment in order to
experience the Godlessness of hell on our behalf. “And so it is really God,”
Balthasar says, “who assumes what is radically contrary to the divine, what
is eternally reprobated by God, in the form of the supreme obedience of
the Son towards the Father.”11 Christ’s suffering in hell marks his second
death, one that extends the suffering of the cross into a new dimension. The
difference between the first and second death is located in Christ’s posture
toward it. On the cross, Christ actively embraces the burden of human sin
and God’s wrath against it; in hell, Christ passively exists in solidarity with
the dead by accepting the absolute rejection of God.
Although often criticized on this point, Balthasar himself does not think
that his approach means that Christ’s death on the cross was inadequate or
incomplete, as if an additional saving work had to be done in order to secure
humanity’s salvation.12 Rather, he sees Christ’s suffering in hell as the necessary
continuation and perfection of the suffering that began on the cross. “His being
with the dead,” he says, “is an existence at the utmost pitch of obedience.”13
The perfection of Christ’s obedience includes the display of Christ’s lifeless
body. This is what Balthasar thinks Peter’s statement about Christ preaching
to the spirits in prison indicates. It does not occur as the active proclamation
of a triumphant king, but rather, it takes the form of a visible, embodied
word as the eternal Son, united to a condemned human corpse, that assumes
the fullness of God’s curse on our behalf.14 This visible proclamation marks
the point at which the Sheol of the Old Testament—the shadowy realm of
the dead—becomes the hell of the New Testament. “Hell is a product of the
Redemption,” Balthasar argues, “a product which henceforth must be
‘contemplated’ in its own ‘for itself’ by the Redeemer, so as to become, in
32 Easter
its state of sheer reprobation that which exists ‘for him’: that over which, in
his Resurrection, he receives the power and the keys.” 15 In other words,
Balthasar believes that Christ has power over death and hell precisely
because he suffered the fullness of death and hell, but then prevailed over
them. As a result, hell is determined and defined by Christ himself, because
the possibility of hell becomes a reality through his work.
C h ri s t t h e
L i v ing L ord
What if we explained the descent differently? How are we to sort through
these three approaches to
Instead of importing the events of Sunday Christ’s descent? One place
into Saturday, or Saturday into Friday, or to start is with their distinct
accounts of the consequence
extending Friday into Saturday, what if we of sin and Christ’s actions
to overcome it. Those who
interpreted Christ’s descent primarily in hold to the traditional
approach see sin primarily
light of the living Jesus Christ himself? in terms of the death that
results from it, and they
believe the cross is sufficient
to save us because death’s
power is exhausted on Christ. As a result, they import Christ’s Easter triumph
into Holy Saturday and view the descent as the first movement of Christ’s
victorious reign. Those who follow Calvin’s approach see sin primarily in
terms of God’s wrath against it, and they hold that the cross is sufficient
to save us because it is where Christ’s bears this wrath. Accordingly, they
import the events of Holy Saturday into Good Friday and view the cross
through the lens of the descent. Balthasar sees sin in terms of both death
and wrath, and he thinks we are freed from them because Christ suffered
both on the cross and in hell. He thus extends Good Friday into Holy
Saturday, joining them together as two stages of suffering necessary for the
sake of our redemption.
The clear differences among these three approaches mask a common
similarity: they each interpret Christ’s descent through the lens of another
event. The traditional view sees the descent in light of the resurrection;
Calvin interprets it as a gloss on the crucifixion itself; and Balthasar sees it
as the extension and perfection of the crucifixion.
But what if we explained the descent differently? Specifically, instead
of importing the events of Sunday into Saturday, or Saturday into Friday,
or extending Friday into Saturday, what if we interpreted the meaning of
Christ’s descent primarily in light of the living Jesus Christ himself? The
Apostle’s Creed, after all, is a confession of faith, and the primary object of
our faith is the God who has come to us in Jesus Christ. He is not in hell but
lives and reigns here and now through his Holy Spirit. And one of the ways
he does so is through us: “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives
in me” (Galatians 2:20). When we confess that Christ “descended into hell,”
we are not merely making a claim about an event that happened in the past;
we are making a claim about the One who lives in and through us in the
present. To make this confession is to say that the Christ who dwells in us is
the same Christ who did not regard the borders of death and hell as barriers
blocking him from saving us.
This insight adds a distinct dimension to Christ’s statement that the
“gates of Hades shall not prevail” against his Church (Matthew 16:18). In
one sense, he means that the Church has nothing to fear from any external
enemy, even death and hell. As Paul puts it, “Who will separate us from
the love of Christ?” (Romans 8:35). Yet might Christ not also mean that
death and hell pose no barrier for the Church? That is, because Christ
crossed the borders of death, are we not free to do so as well? Doesn’t
Christ’s saving work allow us to follow him wherever he may lead, even if
doing so means “becoming like him in his death” (Philippians 3:10)? Is not
the Church able to go to any place in this world and face any horror because
we know that Christ has been to the “darkest valley” and faced our enemies
before us (Psalm 23:4-5)?
Perhaps these ideas can direct us to the work that the confession of
Christ’s descent actually does for the Church. Our limited information
leaves us speculating about what it truly means to say that Christ
“descended into hell.” For everything that we cannot know about the
descent, however, we can say this much with confidence: to confess these
creedal words is to declare that we can face outward into the world, toward
the sometimes brutal and terrifying edges of human life, without fear. To
say this phrase is to declare that we the Church—the people who exist in
and with Christ—are free to cross any border, confront any evil, and take
upon ourselves any suffering as we seek to obey the commission Christ
gave us. We can do so with full confidence that Christ himself, “the pioneer
and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), has gone before us into the
depths and goes with us still.
Where can I go from your spirit?

Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
Psalm 139:7-8
In short, to say these words is to declare that we are free—free to love our
enemies, to face sin in its stark reality, and to embrace the world without
fear of the cost.
34 Easter
NOTES
1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.16.8. All translations by Ford Lewis
Battles, edited by John T. McNeill, in Library of Christian Classics, volume 20 (Philadel-
phia, PA: Westminster Press, 1960).
2 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.27.2, translated by James R. Payton Jr., in Irenaeus on the
Christian Faith: A Condensation of Against Heresies (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications,
2011), 125.
3 For this point, see Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 4.11. Aquinas later explained
that Jesus did not descend to the hell of the damned because he does not have fellowship
with darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14). See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, III, Q. 52, A. 2.
4 On this point, see the remarks by Athanasius in On the Incarnation, §§ 8, 10, translated
by John Behr, Popular Patristics Series (Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011),
57 and 60.
5 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.16.9.
6 Ibid.
7 Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.16.10.
8 Ibid.
9 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics II/2 (Edinburgh, UK: T&T Clark, 1957), 496.
10 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, Volume III: The Dramatis Personae: Persons in
Christ, translated by Graham Harrison (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1978), 238-239.
11 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, translated by
Aidan Nichols, O.P. (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1990), 51-52.
12 For example, see Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the
Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Co., 2007), 206.
13 Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale, 174.
14 Ibid., 150-151.
15 Ibid., 174; emphasis in the original.
Keit h L . J o h n s on
is Associate Professor of Theology at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.
Raised to Walk
in Newness of Life
B y R obert B . K ruschwit z
Christ’s resurrection guides us into “newness of life,”

which is life here and now, but with a new, eschatological
dimension. We examine everything we feel, think, and
do from a new perspective that takes our present
bodies, our resurrectional bodies, and Christ’s body
(which is the Church) ever more seriously.
M
y dad asked quietly, “Are you ready?” It was the signal for me
to draw a deep breath and pinch my nostrils shut with my right
hand. Then he intoned “Buried with him by baptism into death”
as he lowered me back and under the water’s surface where I could not
breathe. “Raised to walk in newness of life” he announced in a louder voice
as he pulled me, gasping for air, back out. Because being baptized as a
believer into the body of Christ is the most publicly vulnerable thing I have
ever done (and, I suspect, that anyone could ever do), I remember it well
fifty years later.
The baptismal formula my father used, drawing from Romans 6:3-4,
portends that discipleship involves participating ever more fully in Christ’s
death and resurrection. In this article I will explore how Christ’s bodily
resurrection gives distinctive shape to the Christian moral life—which is to
say, how believers ought to feel, think, and act in regard to one another,
other created things, and God.
There is much mystery in that baptismal formula. The first part—being
buried with Christ—entails that believers have “died to sin” (Romans 6:2).
When they allow the “old self [to be] crucified” with Christ in baptism, the
36 Easter
Apostle Paul explains, they no longer welcome sinful “passions” or willingly

yield themselves to be “instruments of wickedness” (6:6, 12-13). Of course
believers keep messing up their lives through culpable ignorance, weakness,
and inattention—we see this in our own experience as well as in the deplorably
messy lives of the baptized Christians Paul was addressing—but, never-
theless, they have turned an important corner. Since believers are no longer
“enslaved” partners with those distorted desires and sinful habits, they now
can actively resist them; they have been “freed” to “present [themselves] to
God as those who have been brought from death to life” (6:7 and 13b).1 This
new orientation toward their sinfulness is not their own accomplishment,
but something so amazing that it reveals “the glory of the Father” in the
same way Christ’s resurrection does (6:4). And that is why the baptismal
formula goes on to proclaim, with Paul, that believers have been raised “so
that [they] might walk in newness of life” (6:4).
This line of causation that runs from the event of Christ’s bodily
resurrection to the divinely empowered life of his disciples is sometimes
called “the spiritual resurrection of believers.”2 Paul describes it as “the
power of [Christ’s] resurrection” which enables him to “press on toward
the goal for the prize of the heavenly [or, literally: upward] call of God in
Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:10, 14). The central idea is that resurrectional
power does not merely give believers a jump start for discipleship by freeing
them from sin and making it possible for them to resist their distorted
practices and desires, it also enables and guides their growth into Christlike
virtues throughout their lives. The power of Christ’s resurrection not only
breaks their entrenchment in a rebellious way of life, it also instructs them
in a Christlike way of living.
In this article I will briefly explore three ways that this resurrectional
power gives a distinctive shape to the Christian moral life: it calls believers
to take their present bodies seriously, to take their resurrectional bodies
seriously, and to take Christ’s body (which is the Church) seriously. Why do
I focus on these themes? I think it is no accident that God’s power to enliven
believers spiritually is ‘channeled’ to them (so to speak) through the bodily
resurrection of Jesus. Indeed, Christ’s resurrection sets the pattern for
discipleship; and, therefore, the act of believer’s baptism, because it is a
dramatic sign of our participating in Christ’s resurrection, becomes an
augury of the entire Christian moral life.3 That is what I want to explore.
It will be clear in what follows that it is Christ’s resurrection—not his
resuscitation, revivification, or reanimation—that informs the Christian
moral life in distinctive ways. God did not bring Jesus back to (more of the
same) life, as when Elijah revived the Zarephath widow’s son (1 Kings
17:17-24) or Jesus resuscitated his friend Lazarus (John 11); rather, God
raised Jesus to new life of an eschatological order, to life that reflects God’s
ultimate purpose for creation. Furthermore, it is important that it is Christ’s
resurrection. By this I mean that the resurrection event is not self-interpreting,
  Raised to Walk in Newness of Life 37
but gets its layers of meaning from the fact that it is Israel’s Messiah, or
Christ, whom God raises to new life. For that reason we can discern
how resurrectional power shapes the moral life only when we interpret the
resurrection within the narrative of God’s work through the people of Israel
and the Church.
T a k ing Pre s ent Bodie s Serio u s l y
It is interesting that one of the briefest and, therefore, possibly earliest
of the Christian baptismal confessions says only this:
I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
and in his only begotten Son
our Lord Jesus Christ,
and in the Holy Spirit,
and in the resurrection of the flesh,
and in the holy catholic church.4
After professing the Trinitarian God, the catechumen proclaims belief
“in the resurrection of the flesh.” This is not a proclamation of Christ’s
resurrection, though surely that historical event would be in the
catechumen’s mind and be believed. Rather it is a claim that rising from
the dead—both Christ’s resurrection which has occurred already and the
believer’s own resurrection which is promised for the eschatological
future—is not to existence as
a disembodied soul, but to
life with a body. This clear
affirmation of the impor-
tance of the human body
Christ’s resurrection sets the pattern
in the economy of God’s for discipleship; and, therefore, the act of
redemptive plan is common
in early Christian baptismal believer’s baptism, because it is a dramatic
formulas, worship liturgies,
and theological writings. sign of our participating in Christ’s resurrection,
Kevin Madigan and
Jon Levinson describe the becomes an augury of the entire Christian
political implications that
early Christians and rab- moral life.
binical Jews drew from their
belief in the resurrection of
the flesh. Precisely because it meant that the human body “would be a
locus of redemption,” they could believe “the redeemed life began in the
here and now, with the life of discipleship (Christians) or the life of Torah
(Jews), and would come to its spiritual fulfillment with the general
resurrection and the eternal life that resurrection would inaugurate.” 5 On
a practical level this meant that some believers were drawn more closely
38 Easter
together into communities to care for one another’s physical needs.

Amazingly, the early Christians in Jerusalem were willing to share their
possessions (even if only for a short time) so that “there was not a needy
person among them” (Acts 4:34). Luke explains that this miraculous
spirit of fellow feeling unfolded during a time when “with great power
the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,
and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33). Furthermore, whenever
wayward religious structures, cultural practices, or political regimes
threatened God’s intentions for embodied life together “in the here and
now,” the people of God had reason to stand up to those “principalities
and powers” and to be fearless of death at their hands. We can glimpse this
political dynamic in the running controversy over resurrection between the
Pharisees (who were the forebears of rabbinical Judaism and were politically
closest to the early Jesus movement) and the Sadducees (Acts 23:6-8 and
24:20-21; cf. Acts 4:1-3 and Matthew 22:23-33//Mark 12:18-27//Luke 20:27-
40). Belief in the resurrection of the flesh “was embraced and expounded
by the Pharisees, a popular-level pressure-group insisting on law-based
reforms” in the society, N. T. Wright explains, but it “was rejected by the
Sadducees, the Jerusalem based aristocracy” who had much to gain by
truckling to the Roman authorities.6
So, here is the first way that resurrectional power gives distinctive shape
to the Christian moral life: it calls believers to treat their own and other
human bodies with the great respect and care they deserve as a prime locus
of God’s redemptive work. For many disciples this takes the form of providing
urgent or long-term care directly to particular human bodies in need—for
instance, to those who are unborn, very young, disabled, sick, or dying.
But it also involves their working to correct the broken social systems that
endanger many human bodies—such as material poverty, unjust and
unhealthy food production, disordered constructions of sexuality, or
predatory warfare. Not all of their work will be corrective or defensive, as
those examples might suggest; some disciples will employ the creative arts,
literature, teaching, or counseling to encourage a rightly ordered appreciation
of the human body. These are just a few ways that believers honor and care
for present human bodies. They realize that precisely because the resurrection
of the flesh is (in N. T. Wright’s words) “about the Creator God reclaiming,
judging, and renewing the created world,” their “working for God’s kingdom
in the present is…‘not in vain’ (1 Corinthians 15:58).”7
T a k ing re s u rre c tional b odie s Serio u s l y
When early Christians professed belief “in the resurrection of the flesh,”
they were not thinking that their rotting, dismembered corpses would simply
be revived, but hoped that in some mysterious way those physical bodies
would be involved in God’s raising to life their resurrectional bodies. Where
did they get this notion?
The Gospels report Jesus saying very little about the general resurrection
or about resurrectional bodies, but what he says is intriguing. During the
final week of his life some Sadducees approached him with a trick question:
if a certain woman has been married in sequence to seven brothers in this
life (according to the laws of levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:5 ff.),
which one will be her husband “in the resurrection” (Matthew 22:23-33//
Mark 12:18-27//Luke 20:27-40)? Jesus answers that resurrected human
beings “neither marry nor are given in marriage” because they are “like
angels.” We do not know much about angelic life, and probably there is
not much that Jesus could tell us about it that we would understand.
Nevertheless, his cryptic comment suggests that while the woman and the
brothers would be in the same place and recognize one another (i.e., “in
the resurrection”), their needs, desires, and (therefore) caring relationships
would be different. This is consistent with Paul’s teaching that while resur-
rectional bodies will be continuous in some way with present bodies, they
will be quite dissimilar from present bodies in their needs, desires, and
powers—something like mature plants that have far outgrown their origin
as seeds (1 Corinthians 15:37-38). Resurrectional bodies will be “heavenly,”
“spiritual,” “imperishable,” and filled with appropriate “glory” and “power”
(15:40-44), as God wants them to be.8 These teachings by Jesus and Paul fit
well with the descriptions of Jesus’ resurrected body. It was dissimilar to
his earthly body in having unusual powers (like appearing and disappearing
very suddenly in the entombment garden, a locked room, or the open
countryside) and not being immediately recognized by his closest disciples.
Nevertheless, Jesus could
easily reveal his identity to
them through the stigmata Resurrectional power gives distinctive shape
and some characteristic
bodily gestures—like to the Christian moral life: it calls believers
blessing and serving their
dinner bread (Luke 24:30), to treat their own and other human bodies
calling them by name (John
20:16), and graciously with the great respect and care they deserve
supplying their needs (John
21:6-7)—by which he had as primary locus of God’s redemptive work.
expressed his love for them
over the years.
A new perspective on
the human body emerges from these scriptural teachings and stories. On the
one hand, how believers treat present human bodies—how they honor and
care for them, and develop in them habits of love—becomes even more
important because one day their resurrectional bodies will be informed in
appearance, habits, and loving gestures by the embodied lives that they are
living now. On the other hand, preserving their present bodies at great cost
40 Easter
becomes much less important because believers are promised resurrectional

bodies that will be wonderfully different—more glorified and powerful, and
totally incorruptible. This is why Jesus can say rather bluntly to some disciples
who are shying from the “wolves” who twist political and social systems to
persecute them: “Do not fear those who can kill the [present human] body
but cannot kill the soul” (Matthew 10:28; cf. Luke 12:4).
So, here is a second way that resurrectional power gives distinctive
shape to the Christian moral life: it calls believers to take their resurrectional
bodies seriously, which permits them to revalue their present bodies from
a fresh, eschatological perspective. Within the larger story of God’s redemptive
purposes, believers can see their present embodied lives as wonderful gifts
from God which they, in turn, can donate to one another and back to God.
Indeed, the primary value of their present bodies is to be “seeds” that
become formed in the ways of receiving and giving love in this life, so that
they may serve as embryonic platforms for more glorious forms of love and
intimacy with God and one another “in the resurrection.” When they look
at their present bodies from this perspective, modern-day disciples will be
empowered to resist the ways that culture sexualizes young bodies,
denigrates aging ones, siphons off medical resources to preserve advantaged
persons’ lives with extreme measures, and so on. And in those places where
“wolves” of social and political persecution still roam, disciples will be
empowered to courageous acts of service to others and even to martyrdom.
As believers embrace this eschatological perspective, they do not value their
present bodies less than they should, but value them rightly because they
have taken their resurrectional bodies seriously.
T a k ing C h ri s t ’ s Bod y Serio u s l y
The final statement of the brief baptismal confession cited above is
belief “in the holy catholic church,” which is the unity of Christian believers
across all times and places. I do not know why the early catechizers coupled
that doctrine with a belief in the resurrection of the flesh, but the close pairing
of them is certainly consonant with the Apostle Paul’s view on the matter.
For instance, when he instructs the Roman disciples who have been raised
from the waters of baptism to “consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to
God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:11), he is using a phrase—“in Christ Jesus”—
that is his favorite designation for believers’ membership together in the
Church. He calls the Corinthian disciples “the church (ekklesia) of God in
Corinth…who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1
Corinthians 1:2); and he instructs them that since they have been “called in
the Lord” (7:22),9 they are now “the body of Christ and individually members
of it” (12:27).10 Paul is certainly not applauding the believers in Rome and
Corinth for constructing warm and supportive communities; indeed, in his
correspondence to them he harps on the fractured nature of their lives
together. Rather, with these designations—“sanctified in Christ Jesus,”
“called in the Lord,” and being in “the body of Christ”—Paul is reminding

these believers of their true identity and urging them to live into it. Luke
Timothy Johnson explains, “It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that
Paul’s understanding of the church involves a deep and mystical identity
between the community and the risen Jesus mediated by the Holy Spirit.”11
In other words, the believers’ identity in Christ is not their own choice or
accomplishment, but an effect of the power of Christ’s resurrection through
their incorporation by baptism into Christ’s body, the Church.
Here, then, is a third way that resurrectional power gives distinctive
shape to the Christian moral life: it calls believers to take seriously their
identity and growth as members in Christ’s body. They must no longer
regard their other identities of family heritage, nationality, race, and
gender (cf. Galatians 3:28, Colossians 3:11)—and we might add to the
Pauline list such things as wealth, social status, and political affiliations—
as establishing the ultimate norms for their behavior, but they should
examine all of these with a wary eye. Furthermore, through “the holy
catholic church” Christ is resurrectionally present to believers as he
instructs and corrects them, and his Spirit empowers them to walk in
newness of life. Or, as Frederick Dale Bruner puts it, “Jesus has everything
the Father has to give, and he gives us this everything in the unlikely place
called baptism in the church.”12
This should not lead believers to withdraw from the world—that is, to
learn only from other church
members or to serve the
world only through church
institutions—because God’s As members in Christ’s body, believers must
Spirit can work in their lives
through channels other than no longer regard their other identities of family
the Church. However, the
Church remains the funda- heritage, nationality, race, gender, wealth,
mental locus of their moral
lives in the following ways: social status, and political affiliations as
only through its worship
and practices can believers
establishing ultimate norms for their behavior,
learn to inhabit their true
identities, and only in
but should examine these with a wary eye.
concert with other members
can they form the specific
commitments and habits that enable them to discern and embrace the work
of God in the world. As believers embrace this ecclesial perspective, they
do not value their other identities and morally formative relationships less
than they should, but value them rightly because they have taken the body
of Christ seriously.
42 Easter
Con c l u s ion
The results of our exploration into how Christ’s bodily resurrection
gives distinctive shape to the Christian moral life—that is, how it informs
believers’ feelings, thoughts, and actions toward one another, other created
things, and God—can be summarized in the familiar formula of believer’s
baptism, “raised to walk in newness of life.”
First, through the power of Christ’s resurrection believers have already
been “raised” after their death to sin. They have received a new identity in
Christ, which means, in part, that they no longer ‘identify’ with their sinful
habits and desires, but are empowered to grow in Christlike virtues.
Second, the power of Christ’s resurrection guides believers into “newness
of life,” which is life here and now, but with a new, eschatological dimension.
This involves scrutinizing everything they feel, think, and do from a new
perspective that takes their present bodies, their resurrectional bodies, and
Christ’s body (which is the Church) ever more seriously.
N ote s
1 In another context Paul says the baptized “have died” and “have stripped off the old
self with its practices and have clothed [themselves] with the new self” (Colossians 3:3, 9).
They have been “raised with Christ” (3:1). Nevertheless, he urges believers to “put to
death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and
greed (which is idolatry)” (3:5). We see the same pattern: the orientation of the old self is
destroyed in the waters of baptism, but the new self struggles to resist the flotsam of bad
habits, stratagems, and desires left behind.
2 Richard N. Longenecker, “Resurrection,” in Joel B. Green, Dictionary of Scripture and
Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 677-680, here citing 679. Longenecker
cites Romans 6:4-17 and Colossians 2:12 as descriptions of the present spiritual resurrec-
tion of believers. Two other types of resurrection statements in the New Testament look
backward to the bodily nature of Christ’s resurrection (e.g., Romans 6:9) or forward to
physical resurrection of believers from death to new life (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:52).
3 For more on believer’s baptism as a sign of Christ’s death and resurrection, and,
therefore, as an augury of the entire Christian life, see Eric Howell, “How the Tomb
Becomes a Womb,” Death, Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics, 48 (Waco,
TX: The Center for Christian Ethics at Baylor University, 2013), 11-18.
4 Quoted in D. H. Williams, Tradition, Scripture, and Interpretation: A Sourcebook of the
Ancient Church (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 81. While admitting “the exact
date of the confession is unknown,” Williams believes “its simplicity suggests sometime
in the second century.”
5 Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D. Levenson, Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and
Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University, 2008), 236-237.
6 N. T. Wright, “Resurrection of the Dead,” in Kevin J. VanHoozer, et al., eds., Dictionary
for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2005), 676-678,
here citing 677.
7 Ibid., 678.
8 When we read these teachings by Jesus and Paul in their contexts, it is clear why each
one chooses to emphasize some important discontinuities between resurrectional bodies
and earthly bodies. Jesus is correcting the Sadducees’ mistaken assumption about
marriage relations following the general resurrection, and Paul is assuring the Corinthian
believers that through the resurrection they will be preserved by God from every ruler,
authority, and power in the universe—and especially from death (1 Corinthians 15:24-28).
But we should not lose sight of the fact that Jesus and Paul assume believers will enjoy
resurrectional bodies, rather than the sort of ethereal figments that populate some popular
movies and novels. Perhaps Paul calls these resurrectional bodies “spiritual” because (at
least) they will be fully attuned to God’s life-giving Spirit and “heavenly” because (at
least) they will fully share in the life of God.
9 Cf. Galatians 5:10, where Paul refers to the community of baptized believers as “you in
the Lord.” One modern translation, the Good News Bible, puts it this way: “Our life in
union with the Lord makes me confident….”
10 Cf. Romans 12:5, Colossians 3:15, and Ephesians 4:12, et al.
11 Luke Timothy Johnson, “Paul’s Ecclesiology,” in James D. G. Dunn, ed., The
Cambridge Companion to St. Paul (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003),
199-211, here citing 207.
12 Frederick Dale Bruner, The Christbook: A Historical/Theological Commentary on Matthew
1-12 (Dallas, TX: Word, 1987), 94, quoted in Stanley Hauerwas and Samuel Wells, “The
Gift of the Church and the Gift God Gives It,” The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics
(Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, Ltd., 2004), 13-27, here citing 15.
R o b ert B . Kr u s c h w it z
is Professor of Philosophy and Senior Scholar in the Institute for Faith and
Learning at Baylor University.
44 Copyright © 2014 Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University
Due to copyright restrictions, this

image is only available in the print
version of Christian Reflection.
The resurrection itself appears nowhere in the Gospels,

but Piero della Francesca creatively portrays the
event as a timeless truth, condensed to its essentials.
Piero Della Francesca (1410/20-92), The Resurrection of Christ (1463-65). Fresco. Museo Civico
Sansepolcro. Credit: Alfredo Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY. Used by permission.
  Easter in Christian Art 45
The Power of
the Resurrection
B y H eidi J . H ornik
T
he commanding figure of the Risen Christ is one of the most enduring
images of Christian victory in Western art.1 Piero della Francesca’s
fresco heightens the drama of the subject by juxtaposing Christ’s
perfectly proportioned body, which stands triumphantly emerging from
the tomb (presented here as a classical sarcophagus) in the center of the
composition, with the four guards slumped at his feet in the foreground.
On the left side of Christ the trees in the background are stark and dead,
awaiting rebirth, while those on the right are flourishing, symbolizing the
rebirth of humanity.
The composition of the painting demonstrates why Piero is considered a
master of perspective—it is balanced and symmetrical, framed by Corinthian
columns on a classical portico (which were trimmed when the fresco was
moved to its current location). Piero chose a viewpoint corresponding to the
viewer’s position and depicted the architectural frame at a sharp angle from
below.2 While working in Florence during the 1430s, Piero was sure to have
encountered the perspectival studies of the artists Masaccio (1401-1428)
and Brunelleschi (1377-1446) as well as the writings of Leon Battista Alberti
(1404-1472), but he also wrote his own books on theory and perspective,
emphasizing geometry, volume, space, and form.
Piero painted The Resurrection of Christ fresco during the middle of the
fifteenth century for the Sala dei Conservatori (official chambers of
government) in his hometown of Borgo San Sepolcro. As the art historian
Marilyn Lavin has noted, Christ’s placement in the commune’s council hall
“both protects the judge and purifies the judged.”3 This civic symbolism
combined with the city’s namesake, the Holy Sepulcher, further enhances
the power of this image.4
NOTEs
1 Frank Dabell and J.V. Field, “Piero della Francesca,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art
Online (Oxford University Press), www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/
art/T067465 (accessed December 12, 2013).
2 Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art through the Ages (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2014), 466.
3 Marilyn Aronberg Lavin, Piero della Francesca (London, UK: Phaidon, 2002), 244.
4 The town takes its name from the presence of two relics of the Holy Sepulcher carried
by two pilgrims in the ninth century.

Eugène Burnand portrays John and Peter’s dawning

hopes and deep concerns through his realistic
depiction their anxious race to Christ’s tomb.
Eugène Burnand (1850-1921), Saints Peter and John Running to Christ’s Tomb on the Morn-
ing of the Resurrection (Les Disciples) (1898). Oil on panel. 82 x 134cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
Photo: Gianni Dagli Orti / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY. Used by permission.
Anticipation
B y H eidi J . H ornik
A
fter Mary Magdalene ran to tell Peter and “the disciple whom Jesus
loved” that the stone had been removed from the entrance to Jesus’
grave on Easter morning, the two men raced back to the garden tomb
to see for themselves. The other disciple (traditionally understood to be the
Apostle John) outran Peter and looked into the sepulcher first (John 20:1-5).
This ‘race to the tomb’ does not indicate competition, Raymond Brown notes,
because “throughout the Gospel, Peter and the Beloved Disciple are portrayed
as friends and not as rivals.”1 Rather, their running expresses the disciples’
concern upon hearing Mary Magdalen’s report.2
There is a traditional depiction of this event in the fifteenth-century Codex
de Predis. As is characteristic of Renaissance compositions, the figures in
Following the News of Mary Magdalene of the Resurrection of Jesus, Simon Peter and
John Come Running to the Tomb (1476) are represented in solid or local colors;
their bodies are proportional and movement across the foreground is conveyed
through their body positions. In keeping with both literary and visual
traditions, John is shown in the lead and he appears young and clean-shaven.
Notice that his facial features indicate anticipation with directed gaze and open
lips; his hands are open and his arms are moving forward. Peter, bearded and
grey, seems more complacent and calm with both feet firmly on the path. An
indication of movement can be found in his gold mantle extending behind him
and his arms moving out in front of his body. Despite the late date of this image,
the halos are painted flat against the sides of the apostles’ heads. One-point
linear perspective had been codified four decades earlier in 1435 by Leon
Battista Alberti and was certainly known by the illustrator of this codex.
The three empty crosses on Golgotha and the pink Jerusalem cityscape are
visible in the background against the blue sky.
The Codex de Predis, a manuscript book of the New Testament which is
signed and dated April 6, 1476, was illuminated by the Milanese artist Cristoforo
de Predis (c. 1440-1486).3 This artist’s oeuvre remains debated amongst scholars.
In the earliest archival documentation of his life, which occurs in a notarial act
of September 1467 concerning the division of his paternal inheritance, he is
described as “mutus” (mute). The artist worked for the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo
Maria Sforza, the Borromeo family, and the Bishop of Piacenza, Fabrizio Marliani.4
This miniature was most likely patronized by a noble family in Milan. Cristoforo
was influenced by the retardaire miniature style of France and Flanders, which
may explain the lack of perspective for the halos discussed above.
The Swiss painter Eugène Burnand (1850-1921) offers a modern interpretation
of the same event in Saints Peter and John Running to Christ’s Tomb on the Morning
48 Easter

Cristoforo de Predis (c. 1440-1486), Following the News of Mary Magdalene of the Resurrec-
tion of Jesus, Simon Peter and John Come Running to the Tomb, illustration from the Codex de
Predis (1476). Royal Library, Turin, Italy. Photo: Album / Art Resource, NY. Used by permission.
of the Resurrection (1898). The disciples are seen running through a Swiss-inspired
landscape on a cold morning. John’s facial expression and body language
indicate worry as he wrings his hands. Peter’s eyes show fear and anxiety.
Burnard was intrigued by the newest publishing techniques especially
as they applied to photography. As a Realist, he challenged the avant-garde
painters of the time known as the Impressionists. Like them, however, he
was inspired by nature in his homeland. He studied in Geneva at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts with Barthélemy Menn before he went to Paris and joined
Jean-Léon Gérome’s studio in 1872. He decided to stay in residence in Paris
after a trip to Rome in 1876-1877. Along with the young French artists of
the time, Burnand was exposed to discussions about the aesthetic aspects of
positivism and the tradition of recording modern rural and urban life under
the rubric of naturalism.5
Soon the artist created his signature style of landscape painting that is seen
here. His ability to convey the rural beauty of Switzerland was rewarded
with several works being included in the Paris Salon. He was awarded a
medal in the Paris Salon of 1882, a gold medal in the Exposition Universelle
of 1889 in Paris, and another in 1900.6
Burnand was influenced by the realism and sociological concerns found

in the paintings of Jean-Francois Millet (1814-1875) and Gustave Courbet
(1819-1877). After learning the technique of engraving from Paul Girardet
(1821-1893), Burnand produced numerous illustrations for newspapers
such as L’Illustration and Tour du monde. Not only did these works in the
graphic arts allow Burnand to earn a living, they earned him quite a
reputation. Because he could work quickly and accurately, he was often
hired to illustrate popular working people: collectors of coal, sowers in
the fields, and penitent woodsmen praying at a roadside cross.7
An interesting mixture of realism and religious symbolism are woven
through this composition. For instance, the biblical figures of John and Peter
are depicted as rugged “working types.” They are running away from the three
crosses on the lower right of the composition and towards the light of the dawn.
The liturgical colors of both Easter and Lent (purple, gold, and white), found
on the horizon and through the sky, are reflected by John’s robe. As the art
historian Gabriel Weisberg explains, “The artist’s ability to capture the light
and atmosphere of Switzerland showed how Burnand’s vision of the [realist]
landscape was integrated with progressive developments while also suggesting
that the landscape itself could contain religious symbolism.”8
Beginning in the 1860s, the writings of the French historian and philoso-
pher Ernest Renan (1823-1892) had highlighted the importance of Christ’s
humanity. 9 Burnand, as a naturalist, was also determined to show in his
religious compositions only what could be tangibly understood. Weisberg
writes, “Such paintings as Les Disciples (1898), in focusing on two figures in
the foreground plane, reveals religion through the recording of human
conduct and passion. There is little that is supernatural in this or in his
other works.” Documentary photographs of the artist’s models reveal how
he painted in his studio to achieve the realist effects seen here.
NOTEs
1 Raymond Brown, The Gospel according to John XIII-XXI, Anchor Bible 29A (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), II, 1006.
2 Ibid., 1007.
3 R. Passoni, Il Codice Varia 124 della Biblioteca Reale di Torino e Cristoforo De Predis, in Il
Codice Varia 124 della Biblioteca Reale di Torino, miniato da Cristoforo De Predis (Milano, 1476),
edited by A. Vitale-Brovarone (Turin, Italy: 1987), 85–113.
4 Enrica Banti, “Predis, de,” Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online (Oxford University Press),
www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T069308pg1 (accessed December 12, 2013).
5 Gabriel Weisberg, “Review of Philippe Kaenel, Eugène Burnand (1850-1921), peintre
naturaliste (Exhibition catalogue, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne and Editions 5
Continents, Milan, March 12-May 23, 2004), in Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide,
www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/autumn04/290-eugene-burnand-18501921-peintre-natu-
raliste-by-philippe-kaenel (accessed December 17, 2013).
6 A. Daguerre de Hureaux, “Burnand, Eugène,”Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online (Oxford
U.P.), www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T012567 (accessed December 12, 2013).
7 Weisberg, ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
K Other Voices k
There is no form of early Christianity known to us—though there

are some that have been invented by ingenious scholars—that does
not affirm at its heart that after Jesus’ shameful death God raised him
to life again. Already by the time of Paul, our earliest written witness,
the resurrection of Jesus is woven into the very structure of Christian
life and thought, informing (among other things) baptism, justifica-
tion, ethics and the future hope both for humans and for the cosmos.
N . T . Wrig h t , The Challenge of Easter (2009)
I have no wit, no words, no tears;

My heart within me like a stone
Is numbed too much for hopes or fears.
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief
No everlasting hills I see;
My life is in the falling leaf:
O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf,
My harvest dwindled to a husk:
Truly my life is void and brief
And tedious in the barren dusk;
My life is like a frozen thing,
No bud nor greenness can I see:
Yet rise it shall—the sap of spring;
O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl,
A broken bowl that cannot hold
One drop of water for my soul
Or cordial in the searching cold;
Cast in the fire the perishing thing;
Melt and remold it, ‘til it be
A royal cup for Him, my King:
O Jesus, drink of me.
C h ri s tina R o s s etti , “A Better Resurrection,” Goblin Market and Other
Poems (1865)
  Other Voices 51
Surely Christian ethics should ask different questions: Who are we as

baptized persons who profess faith in the resurrection? Who or what does
the risen Christ want us to become?
G erald O ’ Collin s , S . J . , Believing in the Resurrection (2012)
Resurrection changes everything. Everything. The reality of Easter—Christ

risen, death defeated, sins forgiven, evil overcome, no consequences—is so
incredible, in the original sense of the word, that it’s beyond believable.
This is why I need more than just Easter Day. If Easter were only a single
day, I would never have time to let its incredible reality settle over me, settle
into me. I would trudge through my life with a disconnect between what I say
I believe about resurrection and how I live (or fail to live) my life in light of
it. Thanks be to God, our forebears in faith had people like me in mind when
they decided that we simply cannot celebrate Easter in a single day, or even
a single week. No, they decided, we need 50 days, seven Sundays, to even
begin to plumb the depths of this event. They knew that the riches of this
most important event in all of history cannot be exhausted in a single day.
Ki m b erlee Con w a y I reton , “The Red Balloon,” A Deeper Church blog (2013)
I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days

keeping Lent, pondering what it means, preaching about self-denial, being
at least a little gloomy, and then bringing it all to a peak with Holy Week,
which in turn climaxes in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday…and then,
after a rather odd Holy Saturday, we have a single day of celebration.
… Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of
Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard
to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any
wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply
the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s
long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in church, at
home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means
rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up.
N . T . Wrig h t , Surprised by Hope (2008)
Before Jesus entered into his passion, “when he knew that he had come
from God and was returning to God, he took a towel, and began to wash his
disciples’ feet” (John 13:5). The Word became flesh so as to wash my tired
feet. He touches me precisely where I touch the soul, where earth connects
with my body that reaches out to heaven. He kneels and takes my feet in his
hands and washes them. Then he looks up at me and, as his eyes and mine
meet, he says, “Do you understand what I have done to you? If I, your
Lord and Master, have washed your feet, you must wash your brothers’
and sisters’ feet” (John 13:13-14).
52 Easter
As I walk the long, painful journey toward the cross, I must pause on
the way to wash my neighbors’ feet. As I kneel before my brothers and sisters,
wash their feet, and look into their eyes, I discover that it is because of my
brothers and sisters who walk with me that I can make the journey at all.
Henri N o u w en , Walk with Jesus (1990)
Good Friday is not just one day of the year. It is a day relived in every
day of the world, and of our lives in the world. In the Christian view of things,
all reality turns around the “paschal mystery” of the death and resurrection
of Christ. As Passover marks the liberation from bondage in Egypt, so the
paschal mystery marks humanity’s passage from death to life. Good Friday
cannot be confined to Holy Week. It is not simply the dismal but necessary
prelude to the joy of Easter, although I’m afraid many Christians think of it
that way. Every day of the year is a good day to think more deeply about
Good Friday, for Good Friday is the drama of the love by which our every
day is sustained.
R i c h ard J o h n N e u h a u s , Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the
Last Words of Jesus from the Cross (2001)
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did beginne:

And still with sicknesses and shame
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine
And feel this day thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
G eorge Her b ert , “Easter-Wings” (1633)
  Worship 53
The First Day of Creation

D avid w . music
The first day of creation

God said, “Let there be light!”
and by this proclamation
the darkness put to flight.
The morning stars together
in melody gave voice
to sing of their Creator
and in God’s name rejoice.
The day of resurrection

God once again turned night
to joyful adoration
and anthems of delight;
for Christ from death ascended,
the stone was rolled away;
the reign of death was ended
on that first Easter day.
In glad anticipation
of Easter’s dawning bright
we wait night’s transformation
to resurrection light.
Rejoice in celebration,
your voices all as one,
to sing the new creation
in Christ, God’s risen Son.
©2014 The Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University

54 Easter
The First Day of Creation

D avid W . M usic S amuel s . W esley ( 1 8 6 4 )
  Worship 55
Text © 2014 The Institute for Faith and Learning Tune: AURELIA
Baylor University, Waco, TX 7.6.7.6.D
Worship Service
B y D avid W . M usic
Celebrating the Light

An Easter Sunrise Service
Instrumental Prelude
Welcome and Instructions for the Service1
Opening Sentence: Psalm 30:4-5 (ESV)2

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment,
and his favor is for a lifetime.
Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
Hymn of Response
“When Morning Gilds the Skies” (stanzas 1, 2, and 4)
When morning gilds the skies,
my heart awaking cries,
may Jesus Christ be praised!
Alike at work and prayer,
to Jesus I repair;
The night becomes as day,
when from the heart we say,
The powers of darkness fear,
when this sweet song they hear,
  Worship 57
In heaven’s eternal bliss

the loveliest strain is this,
Let earth, and sea, and sky
from depth to height reply,
German (c. 1800); translated by Edward Caswall (1858), alt.
Tune: LAUDES DOMINI
Prayer
The First Day
Light is an amazing phenomenon. By it we see the wonders of nature, illuminate
our homes, measure the distance to far stars and galaxies, and gain warmth
and heat. In anticipation of the light of dawn on this Easter Sunday, we reflect
upon the origin of this marvelous creation that made possible the first day.
Old Testament Reading: Genesis 1:1-5 (ESV)

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth
was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
And God said, ”Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw
that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was
evening and there was morning, the first day.
Responsive or Antiphonal Reading: Psalm 148

Praise the Lord!
Praise the Lord from the heavens;
praise him in the heights!
Praise him, all his angels;
praise him, all his hosts!
Praise him, sun and moon,
praise him, all you shining stars!
Praise him, you highest heavens,
and you waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of the Lord!
For he commanded and they were created.
And he established them forever and ever;
he gave a decree, and it shall not pass away.
Praise the Lord from the earth,
you great sea creatures and all deeps,
fire and hail, snow and mist,
stormy wind fulfilling his word!
58 Easter
Mountains and all hills,

fruit trees and all cedars!
Beasts and all livestock,
creeping things and flying birds!
Kings of the earth and all peoples,
princes and all rulers of the earth!
Young men and maidens together,
old men and children!
Let them praise the name of the Lord,
for his name alone is exalted;
his majesty is above earth and heaven.
He has raised up a horn for his people,
praise for all his saints,
for the people of Israel who are near to him.
Praise the Lord!
Commentary
The first of all visible beings that God created was light; not that by it he
himself might see to work (for the darkness and light are both alike to him),
but that by it we might see his works and his glory in them, and might work
our works while it is day. The works of Satan and his servants are works of
darkness; but he that does truth and does good, comes to the light, and
covets it, that his deeds may be made manifest.
Light is the great beauty and blessing of the universe. Like the first-born,
it does, of all visible beings, most resemble its great Parent in purity and
power, brightness and beneficence; it is of great affinity with a spirit, and is
next to it; though by it we see other things, and are sure that it is, yet we
know not its nature…. By the sight of it, let us be led to and assisted in the
believing contemplation of him who is light, infinite and eternal light, and
the Father of lights, and who dwells in inaccessible light.
In the new creation, the first thing wrought in the soul is light: the blessed
Spirit captivates the will and affections by enlightening the understanding;
in this way it comes into the heart by the door, like the good shepherd to
whom the sheep belong, while sin and Satan, like thieves and robbers, climb
up some other way. Those who, by sin, were darkness, by grace become
light in the world.
The light was made by the word of God’s power. He said, “Let there be
light”; he willed and appointed it, and immediately there was light—such a
copy as exactly answered the original idea in the Eternal Mind. O the power
of the word of God! He spoke, and it was done, done really, effectually, and
for perpetuity, not in show only, and to serve a present turn, for he commanded,
and it stood fast: with him it was dictum, factum—a word, and a world.
The light that God willed, when it was produced, he approved of: God
saw the light that it was good. It was exactly as he designed it, and it was fit
  Worship 59
to answer the end for which he designed it. It was useful and profitable; the
world, which now is a palace, would have been a dungeon without it. It was
amiable and pleasant. Truly the light is sweet; it rejoices the heart.
…What God commands, he will approve and graciously accept; he will
be well pleased with the work of his own hands. That is good indeed which
is good in the sight of God, for he sees not as we see. If the light is good,
how good is he that is the fountain of light, from whom we receive it, and to
whom we owe all praise for it and all the services we do by it!
God divided the light from the darkness, so put them asunder as that
they could never be joined together, or reconciled; for what fellowship has
light with darkness? And yet he divided time between them, the day for
light and the night for darkness, in a constant and regular succession to each
other. Though the darkness was now scattered by the light, it was not
condemned to a perpetual banishment, but takes its turn with the light, and
has its place, because it has its use; for, as the light of the morning befriends
the business of the day, so the shadows of the evening befriend the repose
of the night, and draw the curtains about us, that we may sleep the better.
God has thus divided time between light and darkness, because he would
daily remind us that this is a world of mixtures and changes. In heaven there
is perfect and perpetual light, and no darkness at all; in hell, there is utter
darkness, and no gleam of light. In that world between these two there is a
great gulf fixed; but, in this world, they are counterchanged, and we pass
daily from one to another, that we may learn to expect such vicissitudes in
the providence of God, peace and trouble, joy and sorrow, and may set the
one over-against the other, accommodating ourselves to both as we do to
the light and darkness, bidding both welcome, and making the best of both.
God divided them from each other by distinguishing names: he called
the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” He gave them names,
as the Lord of both; for the day is his, the night also is his. He is the Lord of
time, and will be so, till day and night shall come to an end, and the stream
of time be swallowed up in the ocean of eternity. Let us acknowledge God
in the constant succession of day and night….
This was the first day’s work, and a good day’s work it was. The evening
and the morning were the first day. The darkness of the evening was before
the light of the morning, that it might serve for a foil to it, to set it off, and
make it shine the brighter. This was not only the first day of the world, but
the first day of the week. I observe (to the honor of that day) that the new
world also began on the first day of the week, in the resurrection of Christ,
as the light of the world, early in the morning. In him the day-spring from
on high has visited the world; and happy are we, forever happy, if that
day-star should arise in our hearts.
Matthew Henry (1662-1714)3
60 Easter
Hymn of Response
“We Sing the Mighty Power of God” (stanza 1)
We sing the mighty power of God
that made the mountains rise,
that spread the flowing seas abroad
and built the lofty skies.
We sing the wisdom that ordained
the sun to rule the day;
the moon shines full at his command,
and all the stars obey.
Isaac Watts (1715), alt.
Suggested Tunes: ELLACOMBE or FOREST GREEN
The Eighth Day

The early Christians often called Sunday “the eighth day” because it marked
a new act of creation—the provision of salvation for humanity through the
resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Just as God rested from his labors on
Saturday, the last day of the original creation week, so Jesus rested in the
tomb on Saturday, the last day of the original Holy Week. But the next
day literally made “all the difference in the world,” as God raised Jesus
and began a new creation.
Gospel Reading: Matthew 28:1-9

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week,
Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold,
there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from
heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance
was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the
guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the
women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was
crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place
where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from
the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see
him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with
fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met
them and said, ”Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet
and worshiped him.
Commentary
Let those who are devout and love God rejoice in this beautiful, radiant Feast.
Let those who are grateful servants be glad and enter into the joy of the Lord.
  Worship 61
Let those who have fasted now receive their wages.

Those who have labored since the first hour
may now accept their just reward.
Those who arrived at the third hour
may join in the festival with thankfulness.
Those who came at the sixth hour should not doubt,
for they too shall lose nothing.
Those who tarried until the ninth hour should not hesitate,
but should come also.
And those who did not arrive until the eleventh hour
should not fear because of their delay.
For God is merciful and welcomes those who came last,
as well as those who came first.
The Lord provides rest to those who come at the eleventh hour
even as he does to those who labored from the first hour.
The Lord gives favor to one person as well as to another.
He accepts their work and rewards their faith.
He recognizes what they have done and why they have done it.
Let us all come into the joy of the Lord!
The first and the last receive the same reward;
You who are rich and you who are poor, be glad together!
Industrious and lazy, rejoice in this day!
You who have fasted and you who have not,
Be glad on this day, for the Lord’s table is full of good things!
Come! Partake of the fatted calf at this royal feast!
Do not go away hungry!
Come! Drink the cup of faith!
Enjoy all the bounty of the Lord!
No one should be ashamed because they are poor,
for the eternal kingdom has been brought to light.
No one should grieve because they have sinned repeatedly,
because pardon has risen from the tomb.
Do not fear death; the Savior’s death has brought freedom.
He endured death and thus destroyed it.
He descended into Hell and destroyed it.
Even as Hell tasted his flesh he threw it into chaos.
All this was foretold by Isaiah, who said,
“Hell below is moved to meet you at your coming.” [Isaiah 14:9]
Hell was in chaos because it was annihilated.
It was in chaos because it was cheated.
It was in chaos because it was done away with.
It was in chaos because it was defeated.
It was in chaos because it was led away captive.
62 Easter
Hell swallowed humanity and discovered divinity.

It swallowed earth and experienced heaven.
It swallowed the visible
and was defeated by the invisible.
O death, where is your sting?
O grave, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and death is destroyed!
Christ is risen, and the powers of Satan are defeated!
Christ is risen, and the angels celebrate!
Christ is risen, and life has been set free!
Christ is risen, and the grave has given up the dead,
for Christ, in his resurrection,
has become the first-fruits of those that sleep.
To him be the glory and the power throughout all eternity. Amen.
John Chrysostom (c. 347-407)4
Hymn of Response
“We Welcome Glad Easter”
We welcome glad Easter when Jesus arose
and won a great victory over his foes.
Then raise your glad voices, all Christians, and sing,
bring glad Easter praises to Jesus, your King.
We tell how the women came early that day
and there at the tomb found the stone rolled away.
Refrain
We sing of the angel who said: “Do not fear!
Your Savior is risen and he is not here.”
Refrain
We think of the promise which Jesus did give:
“That he who believes in me also shall live!”
Refrain
Anonymous
Tune: ST. DENIO
The Eternal Day

For early Christians, the eighth day also was symbolic of the new creation,
the infinity that will begin when Jesus returns in glory and those who
believe will enter everlasting life. The order that began on that first day
with the creation of light will be swept away and we will be with the Lord
forever and ever, world without end.
  Worship 63
New Testament Reading: Revelation 21:1-5a, 22-26

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy
city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a
bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne
saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with
them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as
their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be
no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for
the former things have passed away.”
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all
things new.”
And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the
Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine
on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its
light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory
into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night
there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But
nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable
or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Commentary
It is the purpose and intention of the Lord Jesus to make this world
entirely new. You recollect how it was made at first—pure and perfect. It
sang with its sister-spheres the song of joy and reverence. It was a fair world,
full of everything that was lovely, beautiful, happy, holy. And if we might
be permitted to dream for a moment of what it would have been if it had
continued as God created it, one might fancy what a blessed world it would
be at this moment. Had it possessed a teeming population like its present
one, and if, one by one, those godly ones had been caught away, like Elijah,
without knowing death, to be succeeded by pious descendants—oh! what a
blessed world it would have been! A world where every person would have
been a priest, and every house a temple, and every garment a vestment, and
every meal a sacrifice, and every place holiness to the Lord, for the tabernacle
of God would have been among them, and God himself would have dwelt
among them! What songs would have hailed the rising of the sun—the birds
of paradise caroling on every hill and in every dale their Maker’s praise!
What songs would have ushered in the stillness of the night! Ay, and angels,
hovering over this fair world, would oft have heard the strain of joy breaking
the silence of midnight, as glad and pure hearts beheld the eyes of the Creator
beaming down upon them from the stars that stud the vault of heaven.
But there came a serpent, and his craft spoiled it all. He whispered into
the ears of a mother Eve; she fell, and we fell with her, and what a world
64 Easter
this now is! If people walk about in it with their eyes open, they will see it
to be a horrible sphere. I do not mean that its rivers, its lakes, its valleys, its
mountains are repulsive. Nay, it is a world fit for angels, naturally; but it is
a horrible world morally. …
But Jesus Christ, who knew that we should never make this world
much better though we do what we would with it, designed from the very
first to make a new world of it. Truly, truly, this seems to me to be a glorious
purpose. To make a world is something wonderful, but to make a world
new is something more wonderful still.
When God spoke and said, “Let there be light,” it was a fiat that showed
him to be divine. Yet there was nothing then to resist his will; he had no
opponent; he could build as he pleased, and there was none to pluck down.
But when Jesus Christ comes to make a new world, there is everything
opposed to him. When he says, “Let there be light,” darkness says, “There
shall not be light.” When he says, “Let there be order,” chaos says, “Nay, I
will maintain confusion.” When he says, “Let there be holiness, let there be
love, let there be truth,” the principalities and powers of evil withstand him,
and say, “There shall not be holiness, there shall be sin; there shall not be
love, there shall be hate; there shall not be truth, there shall be error; there
shall not be the worship of God, there shall be the worship of sticks and stones;
people shall bow down before idols which their own hands have made.”
And yet, for all that, Jesus Christ, coming in the form of a man, revealing
himself as the Son of God, determines to make all things new; and be
assured, brothers and sisters, he will do it. Even though he pleases to take
his time, and to use humble instrumentalities to effect his purposes, yet do
it he will. The day shall come when this world shall be as fair as it was at
the primeval Sabbath; when there shall be a new heaven and a new earth,
wherein shall dwell righteousness. The ancient prophecy shall be fulfilled
to the letter. God shall dwell among humanity, peace shall be domiciled on
earth, and glory shall be ascribed to God in the highest. This great work of
Christ, this grand design of making this old world into a new one, shall be
carried into effect.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)5
Hymn of Response
“The First Day of Creation”
The first day of creation
God said, “Let there be light!”
and by this proclamation
the darkness put to flight.
The morning stars together
in melody gave voice
to sing of their Creator
and in God’s name rejoice.
  Worship 65
The day of resurrection

God once again turned night
to joyful adoration
and anthems of delight;
for Christ from death ascended,
the stone was rolled away;
the reign of death was ended
on that first Easter day.
In glad anticipation
of Easter’s dawning bright
we wait night’s transformation
to resurrection light.
Rejoice in celebration,
your voices all as one,
to sing the new creation
in Christ, God’s risen Son.
David W. Music (2013)
Tune: AURELIA (pp. 53-55 of this volume)
Benediction
The Dismissal
Closing Sentence: Romans 13:12 (ESV)6
The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works
of darkness and put on the armor of light.
NOTES
1 Give these first three instructions to the congregants. (1) Explain that each scripture
passage will be followed by a portion of a commentary or sermon by a historic figure.
(2) Explain how the psalm will be read (responsively/antiphonally) and how the sung
response (if used) will work. (3) Practice any congregational songs that might be unfamiliar.
The following notes are for worship leaders as they prepare the service. This order is designed
as an Easter sunrise service, with an emphasis on the light of morning at creation, the
Lord’s resurrection, and the parousia. Because a regular Easter Sunday worship service
will take place later in the morning, such items as an offering, a sermon, and standard
Easter hymns are not included. Of course, these items may be added to or substituted for
other elements of the service in order to adapt it for a regular Easter Sunday service or
an Easter vigil.
Apart from the opening and closing sections, the service is divided into three principal
parts: “The First Day” (creation), “The Eighth Day” (Christ’s resurrection) and “The
Eternal Day” (unending life with God). Each section contains an opening comment, a
scripture passage, a commentary on the passage from a historic Christian figure, and a
congregational song; the first section also includes a psalm reading. At least three
different persons should be employed for the various readings; use both men and
women, and perhaps multi-age readers as well. The longer commentaries may be broken
66 Easter
up among the different readers. The readers should be given their assignments well in
advance, should practice them, and should receive coaching in reading them effectively
from appropriate persons before the day of the service. If a sermon is included it should
come after the singing of “The First Day of Creation” and should serve to summarize the
three “days.”
Determine how the psalm will be read, whether responsively (one person reading the
plain type and the group responding with the bold print) or antiphonally (one group
reading the plain print and another group responding with the bold print). If antiphonal
reading is used, the congregants may be divided by right and left sides, by front and back
of the worship space, by men and women, or by choir and congregation.
If the service is held out of doors where a piano is not available, most of the congregational
hymns may be sung a cappella or accompanied by a guitar or other transportable instruments.
2 Scripture quotations marked (ESV) are from The Holy Bible, English Standard
Version® (ESV®), Copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News
Publishers. All rights reserved.
3 This passage is adapted from the notes on Genesis 1:3-5 in Matthew Henry’s Commen-
tary on the Whole Bible, available online at www.biblestudytools.com/commentaries/matthew-
henry-complete/genesis/1.html (accessed December 4, 2013).
4 This passage is adapted from John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon, available online at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschal_Homily (accessed December 4, 2013).
5 This passage is adapted from Charles Haddon Spurgeon, “A New Creation,” Sermon
3467, based on Revelation 21:5, available online at www.spurgeon.org/sermons/3467.htm
(accessed December 4, 2013).
6 An option for the dismissal is for the choir to sing Felix Mendelssohn’s “The Night is
Departing” from his Lobegesang [Hymn of Praise], No. 7, which is based on Romans 13:12.
There are several editions of this work; a free downloadable score is available at www.
free-scores.com/download-sheet-music.php?pdf=7491 (accessed December 4, 2013). If desired,
the piece can conclude at measure 66 (the entire work is 215 measures long).
D a v id W . M u s i c
is Professor of Church Music at Baylor University.
On Beyond Easter
B y M i l t o n B r a s h e r - C u n n i n g h a m
The power of Christ’s resurrection is realized most, not

in our building of monuments or institutions, but in the
breaking of the bread, the quotidian collecting of those
whom we love around a table that nourishes us all, and
praying God would give us new eyes to see those who
belong alongside us.
T
he morning my father died, I drove to the nursing home where he
was in hospice care soon after sunrise, trying to make sense of what
had happened. When we left the building after we had said goodbye,
all we knew to do was go eat together. Grief does strange things to the
mind, not the least of which is to make random connections. For me, that
goes from an egg hunt in the graveyard, to a hospice bed, to a children’s
book, and then a couple of lines from an old sermon I heard a long time
ago. Bear with me.
When we lived in New England, my wife Ginger pastored North
Community Church in Marshfield, Massachusetts, which originally broke
off from the First Church of Plymouth — as in “The First Church.” That’s
right: Pilgrims and all. It was a white clapboard building with big clear
windows, very few decorations except for the driftwood cross that hung at
the front of the sanctuary, and a tall steeple, in keeping with good Puritan
tradition. Next to it was a cemetery whose tombstones bore the names of
folks who lived and died before the Revolutionary War and on down.
One of my favorite traditions at our church was the Easter Egg Hunt,
which followed our Easter Sunday worship service. The young people came
early to hide the eggs and then the little ones came bursting out of the
sanctuary after the benediction to find the eggs—among the tombstones.
Since we were just south of Boston, some of those early Easters meant they
68 Easter
found the eggs lying in the snow as well. The whole scene was a marvelous
picture of the resurrection: the children running and laughing among the
silent granite slates, some with names we remembered and some long
forgotten. It was not uncommon to find one of the little gatherers perched
on a gravestone stuffing her face with as much candy as possible before
one of her parents caught on.
The juxtaposition of cold stones and vibrant children reminds me that
the transition from Good Friday to Resurrection Morning is not ‘either/or’
but ‘both/and’. We proclaim the resurrection in the middle of the cemetery
that is our grief-colored existence, losing loved ones even as we welcome
new people into our hearts. We are the walking wounded, the disconsolate,
as the old hymn calls us, the ones who need to be reminded there is a love
that will not let us go. For those who have had loved ones die, Easter is
less certain, even as it is more necessary. “He is not here” carries both a
tone of palpable absence and enduring hope.
Y
My dad died last summer. He was almost eighty-five, so I suppose I
should have seen it coming, but it was still a surprise. One day he was
there, and then he was not. Now there is a stone in a cemetery that carries
his name, just as I do. This Easter, I think about resurrection differently
because my father is not alive. His grave is filled. He is not here and I do
know where they put him. My wife’s father died a little over two years
ago. In the days that followed both deaths, we said more than once that
we needed to get in touch with our friends whose parents died before
ours and simply say, “I’m sorry. I thought I was being helpful but I had
no idea how this feels.”
In the days between my dad’s death and his funeral, we told stories.
One of my favorites came when I asked my mother why there were three
or four bags of little white donuts in the pantry. “Oh,” she said, “we got up
every morning at seven and I fixed coffee and we had a couple of donuts
and talked about what we wanted for breakfast.” The story made my heart
smile, because my father was one who was already thinking about the next
meal any time he sat down to eat. Every gathering over food was an
opportunity to dream about what was to come.
One of the Dr. Seuss books I remember best from my childhood because
of how much my father loved it was called On Beyond Zebra. The story
centers around one boy telling his younger friend how much more he could
imagine if he refused to be confined by the prescribed alphabet: there were
words and worlds to discover if one kept going “on beyond zebra.” Dad
read it as a metaphor of faith. He was on to something.
“In the places I go there are things that I see
That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z.
  On Beyond Easter 69
I’m telling you this ’cause you’re one of my friends.

My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!”†
Y
I do not often remember sermons. I remember snippets, but rarely the
whole arc. Some of those snippets have hung with me for years in a deeply
meaningful way. A couple of decades ago, the senior pastor at our church in
Winchester, Massachusetts, used the opening sentence of Mark’s gospel as
his text: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
“This sentence,” he said, “is not as much an introduction to the book as
it is a title. The story of Jesus’ life is the beginning of the gospel; it continues
with us.” Easter proves his point. Jesus’ resurrection is not the culmination
of the story, but the beginning.
The way the Gospel writers offer us the chance to see on beyond Easter,
and the way they tell the story, Jesus started by doing something after the
resurrection he had not done before: he cooked. He endured the cross and
the grave, came back from the dead, and made breakfast (John 21). The meal
is no small matter. Jesus had made three or four other appearances to those
whom he loved. He spoke with Mary in the grave yard (John 20:11-18),
walked with two disciples along the Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-35), and
showed up twice in the room where everyone was gathered (John 20:19-29).
Each time, including our
fishing story, they did not
recognize him at first.
Things were not as they The way the Gospel writers tell the story,
had been before his death.
He was alive, yes, but they Jesus started by doing something after the
were not hanging out or
taking trips together. He resurrection he had not done before: he
was not with them all the
time. And Easter had not cooked. He endured the cross and the
erased the grief. They were
all indelibly marked by his
grave, came back from the dead, and made
crucifixion and all that had breakfast. The meal is no small matter.
happened around it. Judas
was dead. They were con-
fused, at best. When Peter
said, “I’m going fishing,” he was grasping for some sense of normalcy: I’ll
go do what I know how to do. The ritual of daily work—the stuff in their
bones—offered a way to try and make some sense of all that was swirling
around them. They fished all night, casting their nets into the dark waters.
Who knows why they did not catch anything. Maybe they should not
have been out there at night. Maybe they were just going through the
70 Easter
motions and were not doing it well. Maybe the fish were asleep. The futility
of their enterprise is excruciating. They were out in the middle of the night
slinging nets into the darkness, as though that will somehow make things
better, just as they had tried hiding in the room together and who knows
what else. Nothing worked. Things were not as they had been and they
could not be fixed. It was never going to be like that again. There was before;
this was after. They did not yet have the rituals of the Church to comfort
them. There were no chapels to go to, no Communion to share. They only
knew of their last supper with him and that things had not been right since.
They had run out of letters in their alphabet of hope. So they went fishing.
Then they heard a voice call out from the shore, asking if they had
caught anything. When they reported their failure, he told them to cast the
net on the other side of their little boat. They had nothing to lose, so they
followed the instructions that came out of the fading darkness and the
breaking dawn and came up with a net so full as to almost capsize their
vessel. Peter said, “It’s the Lord.” No one, it seems, had recognized who
was calling out to them until that moment. He dropped his net and put
on his tunic and swam to shore, where he found Jesus cooking fish on the
beach over an open fire.
Mark noted that Peter had been fishing naked; now he was stripped
bare by Jesus’ questions: “Simon, do you love me?” “Simon, do you love
me?” “Simon, do you love me?”
Maybe it did matter that the last time a charcoal fire showed up in the
story, Peter was in the courtyard denying that he had anything to do with
Jesus; or, perhaps, he had been around one of those fires at every meal
since. Maybe it did matter that Jesus served bread and fish, much like the
lunch the little boy had offered when they ended up feeding over five
thousand people and had baskets and baskets of leftovers; or, perhaps,
they ate fish at most every meal. Maybe it mattered that they caught one
hundred and fifty three fish; or, perhaps, they just caught as many as the
net would hold. Maybe it mattered that Jesus asked Peter if he loved him three
times—as many times has Peter had betrayed him; or, perhaps, it mattered,
mostly, that Jesus made breakfast and fed his friend who had disowned
him, offering him the grace to know his betrayal was not the last word.
There was something on beyond the courtyard, the cross, and the cemetery,
even on beyond the fretful and fruitless night they had just lived through.
Y
The Gospel writers offer us two incredibly important meals that happen
within a week of each other. One we mark regularly; the other gets less
notice. The Last Supper became the Lord’s Supper and has become for many
Christians both primary meal and metaphor. It is the one thing that happens
across denominational and cultural divides. We have come to the Table in
an unbroken line since that night when Jesus first broke the bread and
poured the wine and said, “As often as you do this, remember me.”
“Remember.” In this case let us hear the word not as the opposite of
forget, but as the opposite of dismember: we come to the table to put
ourselves back together in Jesus’ name. We re-member the Body of Christ
as we share the bread and wine, which is an ongoing and difficult task. As
the story unfolded that last night when Jesus and the disciples gathered
together in the upper room, they fell apart almost before supper was over.
Judas went to tell the authorities how to find Jesus; Peter ended up in the
courtyard, doing his best to follow Jesus, but then denied even knowing
who Jesus was; the others scattered, leaving the women standing with him
at the end. For all the parables and promises, the future looked bleak. The
disciples were overcome with grief and shock. They were alone and unsure,
wondering, perhaps, if they had spent their lives on the wrong person.
In much the same way I did not understand grief until my father died, I
am not sure we can truly feel the weight of that week between the last supper
and that last breakfast. Our Lenten observances take us through solemn
services and vigils from Thursday night to Saturday, but we have already
hired the trumpeters for Sunday morning and have the eggs dyed and
decorated. We are not grieving, we are observing and waiting. We know
what’s coming. They did not. Even after they knew the tomb was empty,
they were sitting in the dark, alone and afraid with no idea what to do
next. Jesus was not anywhere to be found. He spoke to Mary in the
graveyard and made a couple of visits to the upper room, but things were
not like they had been. And then Jesus met them on the beach, asking them
to remember once more. In both meals, Jesus is the host: he served the
Supper and he cooked the breakfast. He was the one creating the space,
setting the table, feeding his friends, offering what they needed most. If
Communion remembers his death—“we proclaim his death until he
comes”—then might the breakfast on the beach proclaim his resurrection?
And, if so, what does it proclaim?
A glance through a few commentaries on John’s telling of that meal
on the beach, and it is apparent we are digging for meaning in most every
detail: from the Greek verbs Jesus used for love, to the last time there was
a charcoal fire, to the number of fish they caught. We have had a couple of
millennia to parse most every turn of phrase. If we get too close to the
painting, however, we may miss the big picture and see only brush strokes.
With all the days together, it seems safe to say they ate together as much
as they did anything else. Some of the meals made the Gospels, but most
were just daily bread: the sharing of sustenance as they went about their
lives and work.
In the specific person of Jesus, God says, “Me, too” in a way that had
not been said before. The stories in the Gospels are full of specifics: Jesus
making particular movements, though not spectacular ones, to offer
72 Easter
compassion and healing. He stopped when the woman with the hemorrhage
touched his coat. He asked Zacchaeus if he could come over to the house.
He wrote in the sand to take the attention off the adulterous woman for at
least a moment. He offered Peter breakfast.
Y
The first building blocks of our faith were around tables, over meals—
and all the messing meaning that implies. We are called to feed one another,
to heal one another, to come together right now over food. By the time we
see the beginnings of the Church in Acts, sharing food and eating together
has become central to their identity and practice.
Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they
broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by
day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.
Acts 2:46-47
Our faith calls us to go on beyond Communion, on beyond the cross, on
beyond the empty tomb, to meet each other for breakfast, lunch, and dinner
to re-member to keep looking for new words and worlds to describe the
indefatigable love of God that breathed us into being, holds us as we walk
through these days, and welcomes us when we move beyond this life. We
are called to come to the same table. We take our turn as we feed one
another, and as we feed the world. The early church gathered for their
love feasts, sharing food from house to house, as Acts points out. Whatever
they had to do, they knew they had to eat, and so they fed one another.
“As often as you do this” might mean more than simply observing the
Lord’s Supper. What if Jesus had in mind that we would re-member every
time we broke bread or sat down at the table together? What if Jesus was
calling us to widen our sense of every table to include those who harvested
the crops and raised the animals, and to make sure they are paid fairly
and treated justly?
Here is the story of the Easter breakfast: Jesus was back at work,
remembering those whom he loved, feeding them, forgiving them, and
calling them to go and do likewise. Paul admonished the Corinthians to
come to the Lord’s Table clear in heart and mind. If there were things that
needed to be set right, set them right before supper. What if all our meals
were markers—altars of forgiveness and belonging? We don’t do well to
digest all that we carry around. Come to the table. Lay down your burdens.
Offer forgiveness. Ask for it, too. And bring anyone else you can find.
Christ is risen!—pass the potatoes.
The power of Christ’s resurrection is realized most, not in our building
of monuments or institutions, not in our grand schemes and fantastic
programming, but in the breaking of the bread, the quotidian collecting of

those whom we love around a table that nourishes us all, and praying God
would give us new eyes to see those who belong alongside us. How do we
expand the Communion table to include every table? How do we make
sure everyone has a table and food to put on it? How does every meal
become part of the story of our redemption, our sustenance? How do we
hear the call to feed the sheep?
If Communion is the meal that galvanizes us, then perhaps the breakfast
on the beach is the meal that reminds us who we are and who we are called
to be, and reminds us Easter is the beginning of the Gospel, not the final
chapter. Go out into the highways and byways of life, to the bars and the
beaches, go out on beyond Easter and compel them to come to breakfast.
“Feed my sheep”—even Jesus used the meal as a metaphor: you know
what it feels like to completely screw up; you know what it feels like to
feel hungry for hope; you know what it feels like to be fed by grace, to be
loved back into being. Now go do that for someone else. Get cooking.
NOTE
† Dr. Seuss, “On Beyond Zebra!” (New York: Random House, 1955), 5.
m ilton Bra s h er - C u nning h a m

is a writer in Durham, North Carolina.
The “Real Presence”

in Footwashing
B y B ill J . L eonard
I have never participated in a footwashing service that did

not transcend the moment. Somehow I always forget how
overpowering an event it can be. The shear vulnerability
of it carries participants beyond its anticipated logistical
awkwardness to a palpable expression of servanthood.
I
n a wonderful documentary on the Old Regular Baptists of Appalachia
entitled In the Good Old Fashioned Way, a female member of the Little
Dove Baptist Church declares: “I wouldn’t take the bread and the wine if
I didn’t wash feet.” The film then moves to a Communion and footwashing
service, women on one side of the church, men on the other. Members
“gird themselves” with a towel, kneel and participate in what they often
call the “third sacrament,” as the preacher chants, “Oh, them feetwashing
Baptists; we’ll be here till the Lord comes again.”† The practice characterizes
numerous Baptist traditions.
I have never participated in a footwashing service that did not transcend
the moment. Somehow I always forget how overpowering an event it can
be. The shear vulnerability of it carries participants beyond its anticipated
logistical awkwardness to a palpable expression of servanthood.
My first footwashing experience began as an experiment. I began teaching
at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (SBTS) in Louisville, Kentucky
in the fall of 1976, and was required to teach the two-semester church history
course required of every Master of Divinity student. Because most students
were Baptists, a substantial part of the second semester course focused on
Baptist history. As we approached the Lenten season, it dawned on me that
neither I nor most of my students had ever participated in a footwashing.
So on Maundy Thursday, 1976, I convened the first ever footwashing on the
  The “Real Presence” in Footwashing 75
SBTS campus. Everyone was asked to bring a towel and I scrounged up

some Tupperware basins. We read the John 13 passage in which Jesus
washes his disciples’ feet and declares: “I give you a new commandment
(mandatus novum), that you love one another. Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another” (13:34). Noting that the Holy Week
designation of Maundy Thursday came from that Latin phrase, we sang
and prayed together, and washed feet. To everyone’s surprise the service
got beyond us; it took us into spiritual territory that few of us had occupied
before. And suddenly SBTS had a new tradition. From 1976 to 1991 (my last
Lent at SBTS), I helped with the annual Maundy Thursday footwashing. (I
think my colleague Dr. Molly Marshall kept it going a few years longer, and
I have often wondered what might have happened in the Southern Baptist
Convention if “moderates” and “conservatives” had washed each other’s
feet in the 1980s and 90s.)
In the spring of 1980, I joined my church history colleague Dr. Timothy
George in reorganizing the service and adding Holy Communion, a rather
scandalous practice in those days since many Southern Baptist seminaries
eschewed on-campus Communion, insisting that it was to be administered
only as a “local church ordinance.” Timothy George and I have been friends
for forty years. Our views sometimes (but not always) occupy diverse ends
of the theological spectrum, yet we have washed each other’s feet literally
and figuratively for a long, long time, a gift for which I am forever grateful.
When the Maundy Thursday footwashing/Communion services were an
annual tradition at the seminary, several hundred students, faculty, and
staff members participated in the occasion, with music guided and gifted
by folksinger Darrell Adams and his lyrical guitar. The memories of those
moments remain deep and clear.
I have also washed feet in Appalachia, a most appropriate place for
such an observance. For almost a decade I was privileged to teach in the
summer program of the Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource
Center (AMERC), held on the campus of Berea College in Berea, Kentucky.
Founded by Presbyterian minister, Mary Lee Daugherty, AMERC is a
consortium of theological schools that in the 1980s and 90s brought
students for a month-long experience of study on the Berea College
campus and internships in churches and small farms throughout the
region. Because the students came from a variety of denominations—
Catholic, Mainline Protestant, and Evangelical—Daugherty knew that
Holy Communion could be problematic; so, she utilized footwashing
as a concluding ritual to the summer experience.
Once again, the powerful services transcended the specific moment. I
shall never forget the night in the Danforth Chapel at Berea College when
we washed feet with a group of men and women that included a Byzantine
Franciscan in his rough brown robe, assorted ordained Protestant women,
and a serpent-handling preacher whose revival service we had attended the
76 Easter
night before. The preacher, Arnold Saylor, washed the feet of his young son
and then gently kissed them. When it was over I do not think there was a dry
eye in the chapel. Reverends Daugherty and Saylor have “gone on to glory”
now, as they both would have said, and I doubt if any of us who washed
feet in the Danforth Chapel that night will ever forget that moment, till we
“go on to glory” too. Walking back to the dorm that night Brother Saylor told
me: “You know, Brother, in our services the men and women do not wash
each other’s feet unless they are married. Some of our wives don’t believe in
cutting their hair, so it is very long. Sometimes they wash their husband’s
feet and dry them with their hair, like that woman did for Jesus.” “Brother
Saylor,” I responded, “that sounds a little sexy to me.” He just laughed.
Perhaps Brother Saylor was on to something. If at Christ’s table we repeat
his words, “this is my body given for you,” in footwashing we declare to
one another: “these are our bodies,” broken, bruised, and vulnerable. So if
footwashing is not a sacrament, perhaps it is at least sacramental, an outward
and visible sign of an inward and spiritual confession of common humanity
and uncommon grace. Perhaps it represents the “real presence” of persons
who belong to the body of Christ and thus to each other, a mandatus novum
to love each other in Jesus’ name: flesh and Spirit, towel and basin, the
water and the Word.
NOTE
† In the Good Old Fashioned Way, directed by Herb E. Smith (Whitesburg, KY: Appalshop,
1973)
Bill J . L eonard
is James and Marilyn Dunn Professor of Baptist Studies and Professor of
Church History at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-
Salem, North Carolina.
Between Easter Eggs

and the Empty Tomb
B y M ark M c C lintock
The best outcome of crafting Easter worship with children

in mind is that everyone in the congregation may hear the
Easter story in a new way. For adults steeped in church
tradition, the opportunity to regain a childlike wonder at
the miraculous life, death, and new life of Jesus is good
news indeed.
I
f you ask children in the United States which holiday is their favorite,
the top answer (by a landslide) will be Christmas. It will likely be
followed by Halloween, with Valentine’s Day and Easter vying for third
place. A 2011 Harris poll indicates that adults favor the holidays in a similar
order (with the addition of Thanksgiving sliding into second).1
The secular trappings and sweet treats that adorn these celebrations
allure people of all ages, even those who practice little religious allegiance.
Bunnies and chicks are cute and cuddly, unlike a crucifix or an empty tomb,
and candy-filled eggs provide an immediate gratification that the promise
of a future resurrection lacks. Amidst the glitter and gluttony of the holiday
marketplace, how do we communicate to children the sacred nature and
narrative of Easter in a meaningful way?
I m agine T h at !
Christianity has incorporated elements of the prevailing cultures
throughout its history. For instance, early celebrants of Christmas and
Easter adopted popular traditions, including evergreen trees and decorated
eggs, from pagan festivals that predate Jesus’ birth but coincide with the
two Christian holidays. German Lutheran immigrants in the late nineteenth
century brought to America the myth of the Osterhase, a hare (that venerable
78 Easter
harbinger of fertility) that brings colored eggs on Easter Sunday for

well-behaved children. Over the years these imported symbols of the
seasons have made their way into Sunday school, children’s sermons,
and church decorations.
Before we set out on an icon-bashing spree, let us agree that it is not our
job to purge our congregants’ homes of bunny baskets any more than to
strip away Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or unicorns. The Puritans and
Quakers tried to do so by omitting the celebration of Easter altogether,
preferring to emphasize the atoning death of Jesus or the equal sanctity of
every day of the year. Myth is not the enemy of truth, however. Young
children build their understanding of the world through a blend of personal
experience and fantasy. Imagination, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, is the
precursor of reason. I would add that imagination is the precursor of faith.
James Fowler calls it the stage of “Intuitive-Projective faith.” 2 Children
who can envisage a friendly though unseen bunny who shares joy
through gifts can begin to contemplate a divinity whose nature is love
and who delights in sharing.
T h at Wa s c all y Wa b b it
Fun and fancy are well and good (they help awaken children to the
excitement of the Easter season), but leave the baskets at home. The Church
should avoid mixing magical creatures with the message we proclaim as
reality. Why? Preschoolers naturally weave together different narrative
strands, and on the ride home from church may explain to a bemused parent,
“Jesus died in a hole in the hill, and every year the Easter bunny comes out
of the hole with eggs for everyone.” In the postmodern age that sees all
truth as relative, it is important that children be able to distinguish between
the biblical and the secular.
Resist the temptation to add to the confusion by introducing a live rabbit
at church—or worse, a person in an Easter bunny costume, which will surely
distract (and may frighten) little ones from the Bible story. Children need to
hear the gospel clearly and distinctly as the central theme of our faith that
defines our identity and our values.
W h i c h Ca m e Fir s t — t h e Cro s s or t h e E gg ?
Eggs are a still more ubiquitous image of the holiday. If your congregation’s
Holy Week traditions include an egg hunt, plan for a location other than
the church property and, ideally, not on Sunday. Gimmicks for incorporating
eggs into children’s sermons and Sunday school lessons abound on the
Internet, but the relevance of eggs to the resurrection account requires a
level of symbolic thinking that young children have not yet developed.
Preteens may connect the emergence of a bird from a hatched egg
with Jesus’ departure from the tomb. Unlike fledglings and chicks, which
are part of the natural order, Jesus’ resurrection transcends nature and
transforms the status quo. Early Christians grasped the topsy-turvy irony
  Between Easter Eggs and the Empty Tomb 79
of the event, that Jesus overcame not only death but the entrenched systems
of injustice that condemned him.3 Elementary school children, for whom
fairness is a priority, will resonate with the victory of justice. Be sure that
an object lesson with eggs does not overshadow the transformative power
of the Bible story.
T h e C h ildren ’ s Hero
Instead of symbols and substitute objects, let the story speak for itself,
both in the telling and the modeling. Children learn through experience and
example. Jesus is their hero, and the people at church who demonstrate
Jesus’ character and deeds make their hero real and approachable. When
children hear that Jesus, who loves and heals “the vulnerable and afflicted
children,” is mistreated by bullies, they identify with him for being
“vulnerable to the ruling powers, threatened with death, and reliant upon
God.” 4 When children receive forgiveness from adults at church, they
understand the importance of Jesus’ forgiveness from the cross. And when
Jesus rises in spite of abuse, they rejoice that good has triumphed over evil.
D y ing to Sin
Of course, resurrection presupposes death—a topic few adults enjoy
contemplating, much less explaining to children. Rather than avoid the
subject, church leaders should interpret Jesus’ death in ways that are
relevant. Children understand primarily what they physically sense and
emotionally feel. For those
youngsters who have had a
family member or friend die,
death means a broken rela- Instead of symbols and substitute objects, let
tionship with someone they
love. Even infants grieve the Easter story speak for itself. Children
when someone to whom
they are attached goes away. learn through experience and example. Jesus
Children will intuitively
grasp the disciples’ sadness is their hero, and the people at church who
when Jesus died and their
joy when he surprised them demonstrate his character make their hero
by returning.
Take care in describing real and approachable.
the reasons for Jesus’ death.
Sin is an abstract term, and
as soon as we try to give concrete examples, we run the risk of making the
concept too small. Sin is more than stealing, lying, and killing. Sin is, in
part, thinking that what I want is more important than what God or anyone
else wants. Young children can comprehend that some people did not like
what Jesus taught; they did not want Jesus to change things, and so they
put him on a cross to die.
80 Easter
Avoid the grisly details. One of my worst experiences in ministry was

hearing an evangelist describe to a sanctuary full of families the trial and
crucifixion in ways that made Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ seem tame. To
make matters worse, he insisted that everyone in the room was responsible for
the execution because of our sin. Terror and guilt may produce a desired
behavior (or inhibit an undesirable one), but they seldom inspire the change
of heart or the lifelong commitment Jesus calls his followers to make. Scary
manipulation can subvert children’s belief in the loving nature of God and
actually lead to protective, secretive, self-absorbed behaviors—quite the
opposite of what Jesus teaches.
A h a ’ s and A llel u ia s
Children need to know about Jesus’ death in order for Easter Sunday’s
celebration to make sense. His resurrection was a surprise! No one expected
the man buried in a tomb to become alive again. Children enjoy the thrill of
making new discoveries, and there are many to be made on the holiday. The
change in paraments and clerical vestments, the use of bells or special musical
instruments, and the larger crowd in the worship service—all of these
experiences are still a novelty for young children. Tap into their excitement
by teaching them about the amazement of the people who met Jesus when
he had risen. The disciples were themselves like astonished children for whom
everything is new—a new way to know that God loves us, a new message
to share, and a new job (to tell everyone the good news of God’s love).
Plan Easter worship that engages children in the celebration. If you
have refrained from using “Alleluia” during Lent, urge the children to
sing and shout the word in song and litany. Give each child a bell to ring
whenever an “Alleluia” is proclaimed. Have children help decorate a cross
with flowers from congregants’ gardens. The aroma, the visual splendor,
and the feel of the soft petals will enrich the jubilation of the day. For
churches that follow the Revised Common Lectionary, Carolyn C. Brown’s
Sharing the Easter Faith with Children provides a treasure trove of ideas for
interpreting the readings, hymns, and other elements of liturgical worship
in child-friendly ways.5
In sum, here are some guidelines to keep in mind as you share the
Easter story with children: avoid mixing secular traditions with the sacred
space of worship and Bible study; focus on the biblical narrative; engage
children’s senses; pay attention to the feelings in the story—fear, surprise,
sadness, and especially joy; and include children in your worship rituals
and plan a few surprises.
The best outcome of crafting Easter worship with children in mind
is that everyone in the congregation may hear the Easter story in a new
way. For adults steeped in church tradition, the opportunity to regain a
childlike wonder at the miraculous life, death, and new life of Jesus is
good news indeed.
  Between Easter Eggs and the Empty Tomb 81
NOTES
1 Samantha Braverman, Sr., “Happy Holidays! Christmas Is Americans’ Favorite
Holiday,” The Harris Poll #107 (October 12, 2011), www.harrisinteractive.com/NewsRoom/
HarrisPolls/tabid/447/ctl/ReadCustom%20Default/mid/1508/ArticleId/878/Default.aspx
(accessed September 27, 2013).
2 James W. Fowler, Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for
Meaning (New York: HarperCollins, 1981), 133-134.
3 Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach
About Jesus’s Final Days in Jerusalem (New York: HarperCollins, 2006), 161-162.
4 Sharon Betsworth, “The Child and Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew,” Journal of Childhood
and Religion, 1:4 (Sopher Press, June 2010), 11-12. Available online at www.childhoodandreli-
gion.com (accessed November 25, 2013).
5 Carolyn C. Brown, Sharing the Easter Faith with Children: Helping Children Observe Lent
and Celebrate Easter (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006). Brown has also written Forbid
Them Not: Involving Children in Sunday Worship (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1992-
1994), a three-volume guide for leaders of churches that follow the Revised Common
Lectionary. Her helpful blog is at worshipingwithchildren.blogspot.com.
Mar k M c c linto c k
is Children’s Coordinator at PASSPORT, Inc., in Birmingham, Alabama.
Christ’s Last Words

from the Cross
B y A rthur B oers
Though the Seven Words practice constructs a coherent

plot that none of the Gospel writers intended, it has proven
rich for Christians these last centuries. The Seven Last
Words of Christ, like the Lord’s Prayer, ably condense and
collapse into one set of short passages the essentials of
our faith.
A
s a pastor I have had a number of experiences with people who were
dying and with those close to them. In this richly rewarding work a
significant challenge was to help people think through their last
words to each other. Where possible, I encouraged folks to part on a note of
blessing. Final messages count—quite a lot.
The Gospel writers were aware of this when they each gave their own
versions of Jesus speaking from the cross. Gradually, these various accounts
were drawn into “seven last words” devotionals. (Biblically, seven is often
a holy number: days in a week, seven-day festivals and weddings, golden
lampstands in Revelation, petitions in the Lord’s Prayer.) The gathered
Seven Last Words approach was first developed by a Jesuit Priest in seven-
teenth century Peru but eventually was embraced by nineteenth century
British Protestants and has since become a mainstay of Good Friday
services. This theme continues to inspire many choral works, following
the earlier famous ones by Franz Joseph Haydn, Charles Gounod, César
Frank, and Théodore Dubois.
In some ways, constructing a coherent plot that none of the Gospel
writers intended was an artificial move; it resembles the bringing together
of nativity stories that sometimes puts the shepherds and the Magi in the
  Christ’s Last Words from the Cross 83
same place at the same time. (In such harmonization genres we might
include the observance of the Stations of the Cross.) Nevertheless this Seven
Words practice has proven rich for Christians these last centuries. Proof of
its on-going fruitfulness includes the rich array of books that continue to be
published using the motif.
While the five volumes reviewed here come from a number of theological
perspectives (Methodist, Roman Catholic, Anabaptist/Anglican), there are
striking similarities and overlaps among them. All clearly indicate that
these final words are vitally important and all agree on the order of their
pronunciations: “Father, forgive them”; “Today you will be with me in
Paradise”; “Woman, here is your son…”; “My God, my God…”; “I thirst”;
“It is finished”; and “Into your hands….”
More than that, most show that a comprehensive summary of Christian
faith can be derived from and based on these seven short sayings. We
encounter not only predictable Good Friday themes of forgiveness,
reconciliation, redemption, and atonement but also theologies of incarnation,
mission, and hospitality. Several books draw explicit Trinitarian implications
from the accounts, showing how the events of that day exhibit the close
collaboration of Father, Son, and Spirit. The Seven Last Words of Christ, like
the Lord’s Prayer, ably condense into one set of short passages the essentials
of our faith.
Y
The most unusual, but least satisfying, volume is Echoes from Calvary:
Meditations on Franz Joseph Haydn’s T he S even L ast W ords of C hrist (New
York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005, 244 pp., $26.95). The editor,
Richard Young, is a violist in the Vermeer String Quartet, which has often
performed Joseph Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ, inviting articulate
preachers (from the famous to the not-so-famous) to reflect for up to two
minutes each on Christ’s final words in between the various musical movements.
One can imagine that this creative project drew many intrigued listeners to
performances. The book includes reflections from such noteworthies as
Martin Marty, Raymond Brown, Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Peter Gomes, as
well as homily excerpts from works of Martin Luther King and Billy Graham.
The volume is accompanied by two compact discs—one with samples of the
meditations and another with musical excerpts of Haydn’s haunting piece. I
found the CDs uneven and incomplete.
The book has several strengths. There is an impressive theological range,
with entries from conservative evangelicals to mainline liberals, as well as
theological mavericks; a rabbi and a Mormon even offer reflections. There
are contributions by Latino and African American voices. A number of the
short pieces reflect on contemporary social justice issues. Young notes that
the meditations fall into three categories: the “intellectually (theologically)
84 Easter
stimulating,” the “spiritually uplifting and prayerful,” and “those that have
contemporary relevance and challenge our modern-day values” (p. 22).
Part of the problem is the two-minute limit to the pieces. While the
reason for such a guideline is understandable, the result is that many
orations have almost a clichéd feel; there is only time to repeat well-worn
ideas. And the other problematic aspect is that since there are so many
different orators, there is never a sense of a narrative arc, of the contri-
butions building on one another. The reader is left with an unsatisfying
episodic impression.
Y
I have long been a fan of William Willimon and thus was thrilled to
explore his take on Jesus’ final words in Thank God It’s Friday: Encountering
the Seven Last Words from the Cross (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2006,
104 pp., $15.00).
This book is full of critiques of American culture and American versions
of Christianity. Early on, Willimon asserts that the U.S. is “one of the most
violent cultures ever” (p. x). He has tough analyses about over-reaction to
September 11 and, more than once, he specifically criticizes George W.
Bush. Then he goes on to disparage various sacred cows, including the
promotion of “family values” (a refrain for Hauerwas too), the celebration
of “happy church,” and the transformation of Christian worship into
consumerism. He dislikes Mel Gibson’s take on the Passion. Willimon
dismisses the scholar who considers the crucifixion divine “child abuse”
as an “alleged theologian.” All of this is fitting for him because he believes
Christian faith to be deeply countercultural, even and especially in a
country that so often professes to be Christian. Willimon wants us to
have a sense of the shocking disruption that the words of Jesus bring into
the lives of his hearers.
As usual, Willimon weaves together trenchant theological reflections
with his experiences as a bishop, a pastor, an academic dean, and a reflective
Christian in American society. While many of his stories certainly pack a
punch—Willimon is known for witty anecdotes—some left me perplexed. I
did not get the relevance of some of the stories and occasionally felt as if he
was just trying to get a laugh. The latter factor contributed to an occasional
feeling of flippancy, a feeling only heightened by the book’s title.
Willimon is engaging and always worth reading, but this volume is not
his strongest work, nor is it the best selection reviewed here.
Y
With Stanley Hauerwas’s Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven
Last Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2004, 108 pp., $15.00) we move
into substantial theological reflection on the Last Words. To be sure there
was theological exploration in the previous volumes, but Hauerwas raises

such considerations to whole new levels. This is all the more noteworthy as
the book grew out of his Good Friday homilies at a church, rather than
graduate-level lectures.
The remarkable and evocative title comes from a poem by John F. Deane,
a contemporary Irish writer. The meditations are evocatively amplified by
wood block line drawings by Rick Beerhorst, in themselves easily worth the
price of the book. In some ways this is an unfamiliar Hauerwas. We do not
find here his usual biting humor and prophetic polemics. Rather, he writes
with deep reverence and tries to overcome the sentimentality that we too
often encounter on Good Friday.
Hauerwas strives to keep the focus off of us and on the work of the Triune
God. He criticizes atonement theories that make it “really very simple: Jesus
had to die because we needed and need to be forgiven.” The problem is
that “such a focus shifts attention from Jesus to us” (p. 27). Good Friday
observances then can become a form of narcissism.
This book captures an essential aspect of Good Friday: the otherness of
God as revealed in that perplexing, mysterious event. Hauerwas wrestles
with uncertainty in the best tradition of Biblical lament. This is a book worth
reading and re-reading, at least once every year. It, along with the next two
reviewed, is among my favorites.
Y
Peter Storey, a former
Methodist bishop in South
Hauerwas keeps the focus on the work of the
Africa and currently a
professor emeritus of
Triune God. He criticizes atonement theories
Christian ministry at Duke that make it “really very simple: Jesus had
Divinity School, also has
written a small but brilliant to die because we needed and need to be
book on the Seven Words.
His reflections in Listening to forgiven,” because this “shifts attention from
Golgotha: Jesus’ Words from
the Cross (Nashville, TN: Jesus to us.” Good Friday observances then
Upper Room Books, 2004,
93 pp., $12.00)—the book is become a form of narcissism.
so short that it could be
considered a pamphlet—
are derived from his preaching at the Duke University Chapel. The volume
is movingly illustrated with charcoal illustrations by Jan L. Richardson.
Much of what Storey writes is informed by almost forty years of ministry
during the South African apartheid era. (As bishop, his responsibility
included Soweto.)
86 Easter
Across South Africa’s cruel political landscape of that period, Holy

Week was always a strengthening time for the hurting victims of
apartheid. The poor and oppressed and the people of faith trying
to offer resistance seemed to know instinctively that in that pain-
drenched narrative, their own struggles would be embraced and
given meaning by the sorrow of God. (p. 10)
Storey gives a particularly insightful reading of Good Friday as having
numerous social justice implications. Both his words and experiences easily
make this book the most prophetic of all those considered here.
Storey writes with a clarity that communicates dense theological ideas
in concepts that we can readily comprehend.
When we allow Calvary’s forgiving stream to permeate all the way
to the primal places of our failure, it heals us…. It makes the differ-
ence in otherwise defeated lives. Ordinary people touched by the
power of the Cross can become extraordinary in their capacity to
love and forgive. (pp. 19-20)
This is a short book. But its spare style speaks volumes.
Y
Richard John Neuhaus’s Death on a Friday Afternoon: Meditations on the Last
Words of Jesus from the Cross (New York: Basic Books, 2000, 272 pp., $15.95) is
not only the longest in this collection, it is by far the most substantial. If I
only had time to read one book on the Seven Words, this is the one that I
would choose. Neuhaus was the author of many books and founder of First
Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life. He was originally a
Lutheran pastor, but then converted to Catholicism and became a priest.
This book is in a league all its own—the most comprehensive I know of
on the Seven Last Words. Like several others considered here, this one grew
from preaching the three-hour Good Friday service for a congregation.
They must have been long sermons.
Neuhaus does the best and most thorough job of summarizing Christian
faith through the Seven Words. He is particularly adept at explaining Roman
Catholic theology. There are discourses here on the paschal mystery,
veneration of the cross, and “offering it up” devotional practices. His chapter
on Mary—in connection with the words of Jesus to his mother—is so brilliant
that I shall consult it whenever need clarification on how Catholics understand
her role. But there is plenty of other theological substance as well, with
reflections on sacrifice, theodicy, forgiveness, redemption, dereliction, faith,
and atonement. His chapter on “I thirst” is a comprehensive exploration of
the meaning and motivation of mission.
Neuhaus writes with a magisterial, occasionally almost pompous, style
that will not appeal to all readers. As you engage him, you know that here is
a man who has absorbed great swathes of theological history and integrated
them with extensive knowledge of art, literature, politics, and history. Even
if you do not agree with all his conclusions, you will learn a lot.
For me the most astonishing chapter had to do with the penitent thief.
Neuhaus sees this as a way of entering questions of salvation, judgment,
and hell. Just to be sure that we do not mistake any of his convictions for
sentimental namby-pambyism, he quotes H. Richard Niebuhr’s complaint of
those who believe that “A God without wrath brought men without sin into
a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without
a cross.” Nonetheless, Neuhaus himself advocates a near universalism. He
contends with conviction that not only does God desire that all will be saved,
it is possible that finally this will be the case.
More than any of the other authors considered here, Neuhaus carefully
and probingly explores the rich implications of the Seven Last Words. The
statements at the end of the life of Jesus still have the promise to lead us to
eternal life today.
A rt h u r Boer s
is a priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and holds the R. J. Bernardo
Family Chair of Leadership at Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario.
Charting the Christian Hope

B y C ameron J orgenson
The authors of three recent books reviewed here agree

that if Christians (and Jews) lose their understanding of
the resurrection, then they will lose the central conviction
that gives shape to the hope they proclaim, and they will
lose sight of the God in whom they have trusted.
A
few years ago I attended a lecture by the New Testament scholar
N. T. Wright on the resurrection of Christ. Wright contended that
the contemporary Church had veered way off course, preferring
spiritualized concepts of the afterlife to the emphatic materiality of both the
Easter event and the Christian hope. With our imaginations shaped more
by Plato than by Jesus, we pine for the release of our souls from the
prison-house of our bodies, a point he illustrated by quoting an American
folk-hymn: “when I die, hallelujah, by and by, I’ll fly away!” I winced.
Wright’s critique did not miss the mark.
There are plenty of saintly men and women waiting to “fly away” to
heaven, escaping the limits of a physical body through their personal
death or a collective “rapture,” without realizing how significantly this
picture departs from both the Christian scriptures and the ancient
confessions of faith. This is precisely what worries Wright, and he is not
alone in his concern.
The three books reviewed here, one of which grew out of the lectures
just mentioned, address the resurrection using the tools of biblical
studies, history, and theology. The common thread that unites them
is the authors’ shared belief that if Christians (and Jews) lose their
understanding of the resurrection, then they lose the central conviction
that gives shape to the hope they proclaim, and they lose sight of the
God in whom they have trusted.
  Charting the Christian Hope 89
Y
In Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 2008, 304 pp., $24.00), Kevin J. Madigan and Jon D.
Levenson make the case that while modern spiritual sensibilities have led
both Christians and Jews to conceive of the afterlife in wholly ethereal
terms, the radical claim of both traditions is that at the end of history the
dead will be raised in bodily form.
Levenson, a professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard University, is the
highly regarded author of an earlier and more technical study, Resurrection
and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (2006). The
co-authored project builds on the foundation of that study, expanding
its scope by way of a partnership with Madigan, a Church historian at
Harvard University’s Divinity School, to include the origins of Christian
understandings of resurrection.
Rather than working chronologically forward from the earliest
glimmers of resurrection hope in Jewish thought, Madigan begins with
familiar territory for Christians: Jesus and Paul. He reminds us that, “we
need to relate the Christian sources affirming resurrection specifically to
the context of late Second Temple Judaism,” because it is only when we
hear the message of Jesus in historical context that we can appreciate its
richness and complexity (p. 4). He contends that Jesus’ message was
consistent with the “restoration eschatology” of his day and that Jesus was,
essentially, an apocalyptic prophet announcing that God’s work to combat
evil and to restore scattered Israel was finally at hand. Similarly, Paul—
the faithful Pharisee who became the Apostle to the Gentiles—is best
understood against his own theological backdrop. Because resurrection was
the quintessential doctrine of the Pharisees, it is no surprise that a pharisaic
rabbi like Paul would proclaim resurrection, or that he would make it the
centerpiece of his theology. The distinctly Christian shape of his account,
however, is that “the God of Israel had acted to redeem his people in
Christ’s death and resurrection. That act had triggered the dawning of the
new age. All of God’s people would soon be redeemed, nature recreated,
and God’s faithful rescued from death” (p. 27).
With the context for Christian claims in place, Levenson proceeds to
describe how, despite a paucity of explicit claims about the afterlife in the
Hebrew scriptures, pharisaic convictions regarding the resurrection
developed. He begins by delving into the murky conceptions of Sheol, the
amorphous realm of the dead, resisting the temptation to speculate where
the text is silent. He urges the reader to “respect the uninterest, viewing it
as characteristic of the nature of Israelite religion as it is reflected in the
Hebrew Bible…[for] the focus of that book is not on the world of the dead
but that of the living” (p. 66). Using similar care, the authors explore other
themes that are pregnant with meaning for Jewish eschatology: the close
90 Easter
identification between heaven and the Temple, the counteraction of death

through the continuation of a family line, and the powerful narratives of
divine intervention in matters of childlessness, slavery, famine, and death.
These themes lay the foundation for the hope in God’s power to overturn
human mortality, a conviction that only becomes fully articulated in the
second century b . c . All of this demonstrates an important conclusion:
“When the belief in resurrection finally makes an unambiguous appearance
in Judaism, it is thus both innovation and a restatement of a tension that has
pervaded the religion of Israel from the beginning—the tension between the
Lord’s promise of life, on the one hand, and the reality of death, on the
other” (p. 200). Indeed, life has the last word.
In the final few chapters of the book, Levenson and Madigan turn their
attention to the contemporary importance of belief in resurrection. They
lament the modernizing and Gnosticizing tendencies that have jettisoned
the resurrection and they suggest ways that Christians and Jews, despite
persistent differences, may see the resurrection as part of their shared
confession about God.
I found it difficult to appreciate some aspects of Madigan’s account of
Christian convictions, primarily because some critical perspectives were
uncritically embraced. For example, Madigan offers a creative back-story
for the Gospel of John’s portrayal of “Doubting Thomas,” asserting that
early Christians were divided about the resurrection. He says, “whatever
the historical truth of this story, John put it in his gospel in order to affirm
belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus,” and to combat “the ‘Thomas
Community,’ that produced, among other things, the Gospel of Thomas”
(p. 221). Although Madigan admits, “we know little about this community,”
he continues this line of speculation, saying, “John uses Thomas in order
to speak to this community and to persuade them to surrender their doubts.
One of his cleverest moves was to put the proclamation of belief in the
physical resurrection on the lips of Thomas, the very apostle around whom
the opposed…community was formed” (p. 222). These are far reaching
claims concerning John’s motives and his interaction with a community
about which we know so little!
Despite this reservation, I think Madigan and Levinson do inestimable
good in this book by clarifying the central convictions of the two sibling
traditions of Christianity and rabbinic Judaism.
Y
Among the thinkers who have called for a renewal of Christian
understandings about resurrection and the afterlife, no one has captured
the imagination of both academics and church-goers as successfully as N. T.
Wright, formerly the Anglican Bishop of Durham, England, and currently a
research professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrew’s
University in Scotland. This coming together of popular and scholarly

sensibilities is evident in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection,
and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008, 352 pp., $24.99).
On the one hand it is a well-researched work of biblical theology, advocating
for a particular understanding of the afterlife (and its implication for our
daily lives) by way of careful scholarship; on the other hand, it is a feisty
engagement with popular misconceptions and current events with the
page-turning flavor of a best-selling work of non-fiction.
The argument of Surprised by Hope unfolds in three parts. The first,
“Setting the Stage,” covers the same biblical background as Levenson and
Madigan, but pays greater attention to modern examples of eschatological
confusion—particularly the way that the language of “Heaven” has often
supplanted the concrete language of resurrection. Beyond reviewing
biblical sources and critiquing contemporary misunderstandings, Wright
goes one step further to anticipate the sorts of philosophical and historical
questions that arise when one makes a strong claim for the resurrection in
an age of skepticism. In this way he plays the role of apologist in addition
to that of the scholar.
After establishing the biblical and historical claim that Christ is risen,
Wright evaluates a wide range of Christian conceptions of the future in part
two, “God’s Future Plan.” Briefly, here is the heart of Wright’s eschatology.
In keeping with 1 Corinthians 15, he asserts the centrality of the resurrection
of Christ as the firstfruits of God’s intended resurrection of all humanity.
Furthermore, according to Romans 8, the scope of the resurrection includes
the entire cosmos, enabling
the wedding of heaven
and earth. Wright, there- While modern spiritual sensibilities have led
fore, rejects spiritual or
otherworldly conceptions both Christians and Jews to conceive of the
of heaven; rather, he
envisions eternity as the afterlife in wholly ethereal terms, the radical
unfolding work of the
kingdom of God: “the claim of both traditions is that at the end of
redeemed people of God
in the new world will be history the dead will be raised in bodily form.
the agents of his love going
out in new ways, to
accomplish new creative
tasks, to celebrate and extend the glory of his love” (p. 105).
In the final part of the book Wright takes up the theme “Hope in
Practice: Resurrection and the Mission of the Church.” He makes concrete
suggestions for how the Church today, as the body of Christ, can begin to
live into the new order of reality ushered in at Easter. These practical
concerns are essential precisely because resurrection was “an event within
92 Easter
our own world, [so] its implications and effects are to be felt within our
own world, here and now” (p. 191). The resurrection guarantees that there
is enduring significance to human activity in the world; works of justice,
beauty, and evangelism become essential signs of God’s kingdom. Specifically,
Wright recommends that believers refocus the proclamation of the Church
on the triumph of life over death; spend at least as much energy and
attention in the practice of Easter as in the practice of Lent; consider the
importance of sacred spaces for connecting people to the transcendent;
reclaim a sense of time, the value of tradition, and the hallowing of a day
of worship; and rally around the Lord’s table and receive nourishment
from the Eucharist. These practices are ways that we can joyfully participate
in the already unfolding transformation of God’s beloved creation.
Y
Matthew Levering’s Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife,
and the Fate of the Christian (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012, 240
pp., $29.95) makes a significant contribution to recent literature about the
shape of the Christian hope. Levering, a professor of theology at Mundelein
Seminary of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake, is a prolific writer
who excels at contextualizing ancient and medieval theologians in order
to address modern questions. In this work he commends recent efforts to
recover the centrality of the resurrection, yet he believes that some recent
proposals, especially Wright’s, err by overemphasizing materiality as it is
presently experienced.
Unfolding in two parts that examine “The Passage of Jesus Christ” and
“The Passage of Christ’s People,” Levering covers the now familiar ground
of the connection between the work of Christ and the future hope of Christians,
but from a Catholic perspective. This book provides more than ecumenical
balance, however. Arguably, Levering’s most helpful contribution is his
critique of a key assumption made by Wright, Madigan, and Levenson:
namely, that most talk of “heaven” is indicative of disembodied Platonism,
rejecting the scandalous bodily nature of the resurrection. He suggests that
this goes a bit too far.
Levering agrees with the view of Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope
(emeritus) Benedict XVI, that “biblical faith, in the Hellenistic period,
encountered the best of Greek thought at a deep level, resulting in mutual
enrichment” (p. 9). This conviction results in a more charitable reading of
ancient and medieval theologians and it problematizes some of Wright’s
bolder claims. Following Aquinas, Levering emphasizes that the power of
the resurrection will transform the cosmos in such profound ways that one
cannot presume continuity between our lives now and our activities in the
eschatological future. In contrast, Wright’s “insistence on ‘new creative
tasks’ threatens to bog us down in endless work” in his effort to avoid a
picture of the new creation that seems boring (p. 110). Levering helpfully
warns that in our efforts to assert the materiality of the resurrection, we
must not domesticate eternity.
Y
Bodies renewed and transformed by the power of Jesus’ resurrection—
this is the news the Church has claimed as its gospel. The Christian hope
is not that someday believers will “fly away.” Therefore, we do not expect,
with Hamlet, that one day we will “have shuffled off this mortal coil”
in a final escape from materiality. Rather, as these books remind us, the
structure of the Church’s hope is firmly fixed on the promise of the risen
Lord who comforts his people by saying, “See, I am making all things
new” (Revelation 21:5).
Ca m eron J orgen s on
is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Campbell Univer-
sity Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina.
Editors
R o b ert B . Kr u s c h w it z
General Editor
Bob Kruschwitz is Director of the Center for Christian

Ethics and Professor of Philosophy at Baylor University.
He convenes the editorial team to plan the themes for the
issues of Christian Reflection, then he commissions the lead
articles and supervises the formation of each issue. Bob
holds the Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas
at Austin and the B.A. from Georgetown College. You may contact him by
phone at 254-710-3774 or e-mail at [email protected].
Heidi J . Horni k
Art Editor
Heidi Hornik is Professor of Art History at Baylor

University. With the M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History
from The Pennsylvania State University and the B.A.
from Cornell University, her special interest is art of
the Italian Renaissance. With Mikeal C. Parsons she
coedited Interpreting Christian Art and coauthored the
three volume Illuminating Luke. Her most recent book is Michele Tosini and
the Ghirlandaio Workshop in Cinquecento Florence. You may contact her by
N or m an Wir z b a
Review Editor
Norman Wirzba is Professor of Theology and Ecology at

Duke Divinity School. Norman holds the M.A. and Ph.D.
in philosophy from Loyola University of Chicago, the
M.A. in religion from Yale University, and the B.A. from
the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. He is the author of
The Paradise of God, Living the Sabbath, and Food and Faith
and editor of The Essential Agrarian Reader. You may contact him by phone
at 919-660-3400 or e-mail at [email protected].
w illia m D . S h iell
Proclamation Editor
William D. Shiell is Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church

in Tallahassee, Florida. He has pastored churches in Texas
and Tennessee and served on leading committees of the
Baptist General Convention of Texas and the Cooperative
Baptist Fellowship. After receiving the B.A. in religion
from Samford University, he earned the M.Div. in theology
from George W. Truett Theological Seminary and Ph.D. in religion from
Baylor University. He is the author of Reading Acts: The Lector and the Early
Christian Audience and Sessions with Matthew. You may contact him by
Contributors
Milton b ra s h er - c u nning h a m
Writer, Durham, NC
A rt h u r Boer s
Priest in the Anglican Church of Canada and R. J. Bernardo Family Chair of Leadership,
Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, ON
Mi c h ael p. f ole y
Associate Professor of Patristics, Great Texts Program, Baylor University
Heidi J. H O rni k
Professor of Art History, Baylor University
Keit h L. J o h n s on
Associate Professor of Theology, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL
Ca m eron J orgen s on
Assistant Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics, Campbell University Divinity School,
Buies Creek, NC
R o b ert B. Kr u s c h w it z
Professor of Philosophy and Senior Scholar in the Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor
University
b ill j. leonard
James and Marilyn Dunn Professor of Baptist Studies and Professor of Church History,
Wake Forest University School of Divinity, Winston-Salem, NC
m ar k m c c linto c k
Children’s Coordinator, PASSPORT, Inc., Birmingham, AL
D a v id w. Music
Professor of Church Music, Baylor University
Mar k d. R o b ert s
Executive Director of the Digital Media and Theological & Cultural Steward for the
H. E. Butt Foundation, Kerrville, TX

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A s s i s tant E ditor Heather Hughes

P u b l i s h e r The Institute for Faith and Learning

P h one (254) 710-4805

© 2014 The Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University

Study Guides & Lesson Plans

C elebrating E aster for F ifty D ays

ARE BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE?

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT CHRISTIAN REFLECTION?

If possible, make a financial gift. Simply go to

How should the Church’s second cycle of preparation,

the fifteenth-century Codex de Predis and the nineteenth-century realist

There is no scriptural requirement for us to celebrate

As a young adult, I sensed a call to ordained ministry in my Presbyterian

In my remaining fifteen years at Irvine Presbyterian Church, we always

If we follow the contours of the Christian year, however, it is likely

E a s tertide and E p h e s ian s : A n E x a m p le

In a stunning use of the metaphor of resurrection, this passage envisions us

The Paschal Triduum

The Paschal Triduum, the last three days of Holy

“hearse,” a triangular candelabrum holding fifteen candles. 12 After the

8 Rev. Msgr. Anthony A. La Femina, “The Footwashing—Jesus Christ Establishes the

“He Descended into Hell”

In the Apostle’s Creed we affirm that Jesus Christ

C h ri s t t h e Cr u c i f ied Ser v ant

Where can I go from your spirit?

Christ’s resurrection guides us into “newness of life,”

Apostle Paul explains, they no longer welcome sinful “passions” or willingly

together into communities to care for one another’s physical needs.

becomes much less important because believers are promised resurrectional

“called in the Lord,” and being in “the body of Christ”—Paul is reminding

Due to copyright restrictions, this

The resurrection itself appears nowhere in the Gospels,

Due to copyright restrictions, this

Eugène Burnand portrays John and Peter’s dawning

Due to copyright restrictions, this

Burnand was influenced by the realism and sociological concerns found

There is no form of early Christianity known to us—though there

I have no wit, no words, no tears;

Surely Christian ethics should ask different questions: Who are we as

Resurrection changes everything. Everything. The reality of Easter—Christ

I regard it as absurd and unjustifiable that we should spend forty days

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

My tender age in sorrow did beginne:

The First Day of Creation

The first day of creation

The day of resurrection

©2014 The Institute for Faith and Learning at Baylor University

The First Day of Creation

Celebrating the Light

Welcome and Instructions for the Service1

Opening Sentence: Psalm 30:4-5 (ESV)2

In heaven’s eternal bliss

Old Testament Reading: Genesis 1:1-5 (ESV)

Responsive or Antiphonal Reading: Psalm 148

Mountains and all hills,

The Eighth Day

Gospel Reading: Matthew 28:1-9

Let those who have fasted now receive their wages.

Hell swallowed humanity and discovered divinity.