Easter for Christians is not just one day, but rather a 50-day period. The season of Easter, or Eastertide, begins at sunset on the eve of Easter and ends on Pentecost, the day we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit and the birth of the Church (see Acts 2).
Easter is also more than just an extended celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. In the early church, Lent was a season for new converts to learn about the faith and prepare for baptism on Easter Sunday. The initial purpose of the 50-day Easter season was to continue the faith formation of new Christians.
Today, this extended season gives us time to rejoice and experience what it means when we say Christ is risen. It’s the season when we remember our baptisms and how through this sacrament we are, according to the liturgy, “incorporated into Christ’s mighty acts of salvation.” As “Easter people,” we also celebrate and ponder the birth of the Church and gifts of the Spirit (Pentecost), and how we are to live as faithful disciples of Christ.
Purple, representing both royalty and penitence, is traditionally used during Advent and Lent.
Blue symbolizes hope and may also be used during Advent.
White and gold are used at Christmas and Easter to symbolize joy and festivities.
Red symbolizes the color of fire to represent the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost and times when the work of the Holy Spirit is emphasized. During Holy Week it represents the blood of Christ. Red is also used for ordinations, church anniversaries and civil observances such as Memorial Day and Thanksgiving.
Green represents growth and is used during Ordinary Time (the season after Epiphany and the season after Pentecost.)
Let’s start with a word about liturgical colors. You can see listed here that the official color of the long season of Ordinary Time is green. This makes sense for lots of reasons: Ordinary Time is about growing in our faith, about accepting the gifts that we’ve been given, and producing the fruit not just as individual Christians but as the body of Christ. Green is the color of growth and of fruitfulness. There are other reasons why the season claims the color green. Perhaps you and your team can come up with some more and use them to inform the congregation who may never have given thought to why the green paraments are used throughout this season.
We started here, however, because there are those who get bored with a single color in this long season that runs from Pentecost through Reign of Christ/Christ the King Sunday at the end of November. There are so many colors, so much beauty in worship art and God’s creation, why use only one color for this long season? Isn’t this the season after Pentecost? Why can’t we use red for at least a part of the season?
The season of Ordinary Time (or the Sundays after Pentecost—there is no “Pentecost Season”) calls for creativity and artistry. Even if you are using green as a foundational color, there is no reason why you can’t bring in a host of other colors over the season. Green represents life, and life is colorful. So, use more colors; use both/and; use a whole palette of colors to bring to life the worship in Ordinary Time. Think ahead for changing series or themes and find ways to enhance the liturgy with visual expressions of color, not just in paraments, but in banners, worship centers, projected or posted images, and colors. There are ways to move beyond the plain green altar or pulpit fall. Call on artists of all sorts to enhance the space.
Chuck Knows Church — Episode 1 – LITURGICAL COLORS. Ever walk into your Sunday morning worship service and realize the colors have changed around the sanctuary? That’s why Chuck is talking about Liturgical Colors on his FIRST SHOW!
Global virtual choir sings Easter hymn More than 400 United Methodists from around the world have joined in singing the favorite Easter hymn “Thine Be the Glory.” Even in the midst of the pandemic, church members can celebrate Christ’s resurrection together.
This was an amazing experience bringing together over 400 singers from different countries, congregations, and communities – proving that even in the midst of a pandemic we are still united.
This project would not have been possible without the help of some amazing folks lending a hand:
The arrangement used of “Thine Be the Glory” was written and performed by Rev. Jared Wilson, Senior Associate Pastor and Director of The Music & Arts Academy at Madison Street UMC in Clarksville, Tennessee.
The Worship Team at Discipleship Ministries for coordinating the project and providing the vision for the Easter choir.
And of course, all 400 singers who submitted wonderful videos for us to use.
Thank you all and Happy Easter!
“Thine Be the Glory” is #308 in The United Methodist Hymnal.
Thine be the glory,
Risen, conquering Son;
Endless is the victory
Thou o’er death hast won.
Angels in bright raiment
Rolled the stone away,
Kept the folded grave clothes
Where the body lay.
Edmond L. Budry (1854-1932) wrote this hymn, originally in French as “A Toi la gloire, ô Ressuscité.” He was the pastor of the Free Evangelical Church of the Canton of Vevey, Switzerland, having studied theology at Lausanne.
The hymn was written in 1884 and appeared first in Chants Evangeliques (1885). A translation by Richard Birch Hoyle (1875-1939) gave the hymn increased visibility, especially when it appeared in the first edition of the hymnal for the World Student Christian Federation, Cantate Domino (1924). The Methodist Hymn Book (1933) was the first European hymnal to include the hymn.
Methodist hymnologist Fred Gaely notes that, “Budry was often asked to make translations of favorite German or English hymns, but he preferred to rewrite the texts, often improving on the original, and often freely adapting old Latin hymns.”
The inspiration for this hymn, according to Budry’s friend Paul Laufer, came from the words of Friedrich-Heinrich Ranke (1798-1876), published to the tune, MACCABAEUS, by George Fredrick Handel (1685-1759). The tune was adapted from a processional song in Handel’s oratorio Joshua (1747), as well as later versions of the more famous oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (1746).
Budry freely adapted Ranke’s Advent text and transformed it as an Easter hymn. As Gaely recognized, the Easter text “emphasized still more the triumphal nature of Handel’s music.” John Wesley, a contemporary of Handel, enjoyed this tune very much and cites it as one of his favorites in journal entries for March 29, 1774, and March 30, 1787.
According to English hymnologist J. Richard Watson, the hymn “is based on the Gospel accounts of the Resurrection (with a brief allusion to St. Thomas and doubt in verse 3), together with St. Paul’s commentary on it in I Corinthians 15.” This is especially evident in the use of the word “victory” in the refrain, reminiscent of I Corinthians 15:57: “But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Stanza two almost quotes directly I Corinthians 15:55. The Scripture says, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Hoyle’s translation of the second stanza concludes, “death hath lost its sting.”
This hymn took on new life for me in August 2008 when I joined a group of United Methodist musicians in a teaching mission to Côte d’Ivoire, the newest (admitted formally to the denomination at the 2008 General Conference) and largest (nearly 700,000 members) of the denomination’s conference regions. Sponsored by the Global Praise Project of the General Board of Global Ministries, our group was charged to train a new generation of church musicians in Côte d’Ivoire.
As we concluded our time in this West African country, we realized that we were taught as much—if not more—by the African Christian musicians than we were teaching. One of the hymns that these United Methodists sang with great vigor was “A Toi la gloire, ô Ressuscité.” We heard it in two versions: the first was the classic Western hymn style; the second was a West African version complete with drums, electronic keyboards and guitars. Both were delightful.
It was a joy to see how this hymn has transcended not only time and cultures, but also continents to resonate with a vibrant Easter joy.
Dr. Hawn is professor of sacred music at Perkins School of Theology, SMU.
Experts from the age of five to ten, as well as The Rev. MaryJane Pierce Norton from the General Board of Discipleship, talk about the traditions of the Easter egg — from hunting eggs, to coloring them, to the egg as a symbol of new life. The egg became associated with Easter somewhere near the 400s and was often a food that was given up at Lent.
According to Rev. Norton, “In some of the early church traditions, people brought their eggs to the church to be blessed before they ate them, as the first joyful food of Easter.”
Please also enjoy “Outtakes” and other cute stuff we couldn’t fit into the video.
Join us as our youth host Pender’s Easter Egg-stravaganza!
It will be a fun time for the kids as we get together safely to celebrate our Easter Season. We will have Easter story time, crafts, dancing, and photos with the Easter Bunny!
Bring the tailgate chairs or a picnic blanket. Social distancing will be observed and masks will be required.
The event will be Saturday April 3rd Check in starts at 12:45pm and the event runs 1pm-2:30pm. Please be on time so that you don’t miss the fun!
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