Easter Vigil: Connecting the Two Faces of Fire

Addressing the question from Psalm 137––“How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land?” asked by a people in exile––Philip Pfatteicher uses the Lenten image of fire to claim the rites from Ash Wednesday through Pentecost as an answer to injustices of all kinds. As people of faith, we sing in the place of ashes, in the light of Christ.

Fire is lit to burn the palms of victory for ashes of death used on Ash Wednesday at the beginning of Lent, and fire is lit at the Vigil of Easter when it becomes the light of Christ, the new life for all.

Holy Week is built on these images of power whose paradox is the bedrock of our comprehension. Let it be so.

Lent began in the destructive fire that consumed the dried palm branches and reduced them to the ashes with which our foreheads were marked on Ash Wednesday. To the world, it is a strange ritual showing only decay, destruction, and death, a gloomy and unwelcome reminder of what lies in the future for us all. But the ashes of the first day of Lent are not just the forlorn remnants of a conflagration, the powdery ruins of what once were green and living leaves. The ashes were a sign also, most of all, of repentance, cleansing, and renewal. They are the proclamation of the total destruction of our sinful past and the promise of a shining future with God. In the ashes of Ash Wednesday we see the two faces of fire: destruction and purgation, death and renewal. 

 The Sacred Triduum [the Three Days] reaches its climax in the striking of a new fire that recalls creation and brings light into the darkness. This is no ordinary fire, and the ritual of the Easter Vigil makes that clear. The fire becomes for us “the light of Christ,” and this light, rising in brightness like the sun, unlike the sun “knows no setting.” The frail light of a spark ignites a small fire that is carried by the Paschal Candle into the darkened church as into a tomb, and it is then spread to all the other candles in the church—the candles of the ministers, the congregation, the chancel, the altar—and no matter how often it is divided, this fire is not diminished. Indeed, as it spreads, it increases in intensity until the whole church is aglow with its light, bright with the glory of the resurrection, a splendid promise of the final victory of the resurrected Christ when all the world will be bathed in pure and holy light. 

 The proclamation of the resurrection is the declaration of a reality larger than this world, larger even than God’s enemies. We learn during Lent of the fearsome cosmic battle, and in Holy Week we watch the culmination of that warfare. It comes at huge cost, the life of the Son of God, but that awful price bought life for the world.

We can sing the Lord’s resurrection in a world ravaged by war and torn by violence because it was precisely in such a world that the crucifixion and resurrection took place. It was indeed for such a world that the crucifixion and resurrection were accomplished. As at the Red Sea, so on Golgotha, and now in our time, the power of God takes the forces of destruction and turns them, even against their will, into instruments of life and wholeness. It may not be visible from our limited perspective in this time and place, but the resurrection is the declaration that our salvation has been accomplished and that God’s will of remaking the world is being carried out. That is why the crucifix is not a repulsive representation to Christians, and that is why the blood of the young warrior dying on the cross, in descriptions from Fortunatus to Watts and beyond, takes on a strange and compelling beauty.   

 At the conclusion of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, fire breaks out again. It is the fire of Pentecost, the appearance of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles. Now, at the culmination of Easter, the destructive properties of fire are gone altogether, and this fire is wholly good and pure and life-giving. The fire of the resurrected Christ descends into the hearts of Jesus’ disciples and warms them with an energy and love that cannot be contained. With gladness we pray the ancient prayer, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love.” And with the fulfillment of that prayer we, like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, join the “company of the burning heart” who are suddenly aware of the power of God that has been at work in us since Ash Wednesday and that has been at work in the world since the beginning of creation. 

 

Philip H. Pfatteicher served as a Professor of English at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. A widely respected liturgical historian and scholar, he is author of many books, including Commentary on the Lutheran Book of Worship (Fortress, 1991) and Commentary on the Occasional Services (Fortress, 1983).

Philip Pfatteicher, “The Two Faces of Fire,” Liturgy 18, no. 2 (2003):5-7.

Salt and Light – Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany – 5 February 2017

The scripture readings for Epiphany 5 Year A coalesce around several themes: righteousness, light, and visibility.

Matthew 5:13-20

In this week’s second installment of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus announces that he has not come to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them. Our fulfillment of the law and the prophets is as salt and light.

Salt preserves. It tenderizes, it seasons, and diluted with water, the ancients used it to cleanse and treat wounds.

Light illumines, guides, and exposes what is formerly hidden or concealed.

Jesus insists that this discipleship be visible and tangible: not hidden under a bushel, not grown flat and stale. Yet the visibility of our discipleship as salt and light is not for its own sake. It is not meant to call attention to our acts of righteousness, but to allow the world to locate the “city on a hill” in the community of those who follow Jesus.

Isaiah 58: 1-12

Since Jesus comes not to abolish the law and the prophets but to fulfill them, we take seriously the words of the prophet. The people complain, and God answers. The content of their complaint is that God does not see their visible acts of righteousness, in this case, their fasting. God replies that the people have failed at fasting and humility, while really serving their own interests and oppressing their workers. Instead, God would have other actions constitute their visible righteousness: their fast should be to “share their bread with the hungry,” shelter the poor, and clothe the naked (58: 7). From these acts, “light shall break forth like the dawn” (58:8).

1 Corinthians 2: 1-16

Tthe Apostle Paul proposes the lens through which we perceive God’s work and which clarifies our own: Christ crucified. Christ crucified is the visible, incarnate out-pouring of God’s kenotic, loving, righteous mission to renew us. Looking through this lens, we see the powers of the world and the wisdom of the age for what they are, and for what they are not. Looking through the lens of Christ crucified also enables our spiritual discernment, our perception of “what is truly God’s” (2: 11).

Stephanie Perdew VanSlyke, Ph.D., is President of The Liturgical Conference, Senior Pastor of First Congregational Church UCC, Wilmette, Illinois, and affiliate faculty in Christian History at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, Illinois.