"Christ is Risen! He Is Risen Indeed!" These words that we spoke in greeting to one another on Easter Sunday morning are alive in the scripture, liturgy, and music through which we worship on this Second Sunday of Easter.
The liturgical season of Easter, which is also called Eastertide, began on Easter Sunday and lasts for 50 days until Pentecost Sunday (May 11). Just as we increased our focus on confession and heightened the reflective spirit of worship during the Lenten season, in Eastertide our worship is purposefully more celebratory in its spirit of praise. During the Easter season, our prayer of confession is replaced by a liturgy that focuses on God's grace, through which we are saved.
The liturgical color for Eastertide is white. During Eastertide, the artwork by American folk painter and Quaker Society of Friends minister Edward Hicks (1780-1849) that hangs on the brick wall of the sanctuary serves to evoke the memory of our spiritual journey through God's peaceable kingdom this Lent.
The paraments hung from the lecturn and pulpit are by contemporary Canadian artist Karen Brodie. The design of the paraments illustrates the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet: the alpha and the omega. The interior of the omega along with the curved lines of the light remind us of the open tomb and our risen Christ. The cross and the star are combined to become a symbol of Christ's birth and death. The bottom of the cross becomes one with the cup; the cup of our salvation. There you also see wheat, the symbol of the body of Christ, broken for us. Brodie's design is intended to evoke the image of a sun rising and of new life and it is this imagery that enhances our Eastertide worship of God.
