Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

27 April, 2008

Russian Orthodox Easter Sunday

These are the words which ring forth along with every Orthodox church bell and everyone you meet on the street on Easter morning. “Christos Voskres! Voistiny voskres!” Easter for the Russians is like our Christmas, by far the most popular and celebrated traditional Christian holiday. It is such an important concept in Russian tradition that the word for Sunday in the Russian language is "Resurrection Day." Evangelical Christians, like orthodox Christians, observe Easter according to the Eastern church calender, this year, a full month after Easter in the West.

Egg decals are sold with the initials “XB” which stand for “Christos Voskres: Jesus Risen!.” Pictures of Jesus, churches, and icons are sold on plastic wrappers which are wrapped around eggs and proudly displayed. Traditional Easter breads with citrus and raisins are baked in old coffee cans and topped with icing and sprinkles. Traditionally Easter cakes and eggs are taken to the orthodox church at midnight to be blessed by the priest and for holy water to be sprinkled on them. The hope is that this will bring blessing and good fortune from God in the coming year. Evangelical believers meet on Sunday morning and call out the words to each other all day, back and forth, “Christ is Risen!” “He is risen indeed!”

Our church’s celebration of Easter began with a huge (about 3 feet in circumference) “kazan.” A kazan is a large wrought iron pot shaped similarly to a Chinese wok which also has a lid. It is used in traditional cooking of the Caucuses. It is necessary for making “Pilaf of Uzbekistan,” a dish made of mutton, rice, garlic, carrots and chick peas. Ryslan and Lily Gafurov, a couple from Uzbekistan, offered to make the pilaf for the entire church and all the invited guests on Easter Sunday to celebrate. On Thursday, Pastor Volodia Radjabov of “Open Door” church went out to the Axtirka Rehab Farm and bought and slaughtered a sheep. Saturday night church members gathered to chop 20 POUNDS of carrots at the church.

Early Easter Sunday morning Ryslan and other men of the church made a large outdoor fire over which they put the kazan. Uzbekistan Pilaf is traditionally cooked by the MEN (I’m really liking this part of Uzbek culture!) and so Ryslan tended the fire and kazan with care. When church finished we had a huge banquet together and each child received bubbles and a chocolate egg. Many new people were there and wanted to come again.

The women of the church were so happy to have a day off that with sheep fat and garlic dripping off our lips, we went to a local café and had dessert and coffee together and continued the laughter and celebration. Then men took children for a stroll in the local Botanical Garden or went home and rested.

The only “shadow” to our glorious Easter celebration was an article printed in a local orthodox journal. It warned people to beware of cults and sects in the city who may be inviting you to Easter services and celebrations. It named almost all the evangelical churches and pastors in the city of Krasnodar, including our church, as “cults” and the author encouraged stronger legislation against foreign cults and sects in Russia. Anything that is not Russian orthodox is considered a sect, so we are thrown in the same category as Mormoms, Jehovah's Witnesses, and more dangerous cults. As one believer noted, this puts us continually on the defensive, "to prove we are not a camel," as one Russian saying goes.

Don Fairbairn is a friend with whom we worked in Ukraine. He is the author of:

Grace and Christology in the Early Church. Oxford Early Christian Studies. Oxford: University Press, 2003. (This book has also been published in Russian.)

Eastern Orthodoxy through Western Eyes. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. (This book has also been published in Russian and Romanian.)

You may enjoy his description of Russian Easter below. Used with permission of author.

Easter in Russia
by Don Fairbairn

Of course, Christians all over the globe join together on Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, and one could probably go to an Easter service anywhere and recognize (to some degree) what was taking place. But there are also many differences in the way Easter is celebrated in different parts of the world. In particular, there are differences in the way Western Christians (Protestants and Roman Catholics) celebrate Easter and the way Eastern Orthodox Christians (members of the churches which descended from the Greek-speaking wing of the early Church) celebrate it. Perhaps it will be interesting to us in the West to learn about some of the customs related to the celebration of Easter in the East (and especially in Russia).

The most obvious difference is that Easter is normally celebrated on a different Sunday in the East and the West. Ever since the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325), Christians have celebrated the resurrection of Christ on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21). For most of Christian history, the church used the old Julian calendar (invented in the time of Julius Caesar in the first century B.C.) to determine when the vernal equinox would be. But in the sixteenth century it became clear that the Julian calendar was lagging behind astronomical time, and a new calendar (the Gregorian) was proposed. The Western Church accepted this new calendar, but the Eastern Church rejected it. At present, the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar, and is gradually losing more and more time. That means that whereas we calculate the date of Easter from March 21 by our Gregorian calendar, the Eastern Church calculates it from March 21 by their older calendar, which equals April 3 by our calendar.

The Eastern Church also insists that Easter must follow the Jewish celebration of Passover in any given year, and that celebration is based on yet a third calendar. Depending on when the full moon occurs and when Passover takes place, Eastern Easter can fall on the same Sunday as Western Easter, or it can follow it by one week, four weeks, or five weeks.

A second big difference has to do with the hour of the day when Easter is celebrated. Of course, we are familiar with Easter sunrise services. But in the East (especially in Russia), Easter services last all through Saturday night. The congregation gathers in the church or cathedral on Saturday evening and takes part in an Easter vigil commemorating the buried Christ. Orthodox church buildings have an inner sanctuary blocked off from the sight of the worshipers, and at this point the door to that sanctuary is closed, signifying that the way to God is closed. But at the stroke of midnight, the priest throws the doors open and emerges, shouting, "Christ is risen! Christ is risen! Christ is risen!" After hours of silent anticipation, the congregation comes to life and shouts back, "He is risen indeed!" This custom powerfully demonstrates the way Christ’s resurrection has opened up for us the way to God.

One of my favorite Russian Easter customs has to do with dyeing Easter eggs. In Russia, children always dye the eggs red, never using other colors. The red dye, of course, symbolizes the blood of Christ. Furthermore, people crack the eggs open using nails, in order to remind themselves again of the death of Christ. As the eggs are cracked and the whites are exposed, people remember that the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin. Although our sins were as scarlet, we have been made as white as snow.

A mainstay of our Easter celebrations is the family Easter dinner following our worship services. In Russia, the corresponding dinner is actually a picnic, in which the entire congregation celebrates together. People bring food to the church on Saturday evening and ask the priests to bless it. Then after the long Easter vigil through the night and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on Easter morning, people eat together on the lawn outside the church building. They believe that such an important celebration cannot be merely a private or family affair, and the worshipers are reminded by this communal picnic that all members of the body of Christ belong to one another.

Perhaps these tidbits about the celebration of Easter in Russia will not simply be interesting to us in America. Instead, they may also give us some ideas which we can incorporate into our own Easter celebrations, ideas which may help to re-focus our attention on the great truth which we all celebrate this Sunday: Christ is risen!