MORAVIAN EASTER
The Easter Morning Liturgy Easter
morning is an especially wondrous time at Moravian churches across the Northern and Southern Provinces. For many, Easter morning means greeting the rising sun in a God’s Acre or sanctuary with a service that speaks to the core of Moravian belief. “The Moravian Easter morning service is an old tradition, rich in spiritual significance,” says the Rev. Dr. Nola Reed Knouse, director of the Moravian Music Foundation. “It originated in Herrnhut in 1732, when a group of the Single Brothers met by appointment on God’s Acre (the graveyard) to sing appropriate hymns and to meditate upon Christ’s death and resurrection. Their experience that morning was one of deepening appreciation of the truth and wonder of the resurrection. Their experience led others to want to join them, and thus a new and cherished tradition was born.” According to Nola, the Easter Morning Lit-
March 2015
urgy in today’s Moravian Book of Worship is remarkably similar to that included in the 1778 German Moravian Hymnal (except, of course, ours is in English!) and to the one in the 1789 English Moravian Hymnal. The text is taken in large part from Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, with which Zinzendorf and his household, being Lutheran, would certainly have been familiar. Over the years, the Easter Morning Liturgy has come to represent the Moravian Church’s profession of faith—a statement of what we believe. Through the words recited by worship leaders on Easter Sunday morning, Moravians declare their belief in “the one only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who created all things by Jesus Christ, and was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself…” While it has evolved over the years, the (continued on next page) 15