The Lord is Risen Indeed!

As the sun rose this morning, I had the privilege of celebrating the resurrection of our Lord in worship with about 2,000 of our Moravian brothers and sisters. For those who don't know, the Moravians were the earliest Christian reformers who followed in the footsteps of the martyr John Hus after he was burned at the stake in 1415 for leading a protest against the oppression of the Roman Catholic Church (yes, they even predated Martin Luther).

The Moravians were the first to emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus Christ through the atonement and covenant of His blood. In fact, it was a Moravian pastor named Peter Bohler who spoke of this personal relationship with a young Anglican priest during a trip from London to Oxford in 1737. The young Anglican left there very troubled and would later accept Christ as his personal savior. That young priest was John Wesley.

The Moravians were among the first in America to share the gospel of Christ with black slaves and Native Americans. In the earliest days of our country, they built churches were slaves could worship. Even before the civil war, some Moravian churches began integrating making them some of the first churches to allow slaves to worship alongside whites.

At Christmas, the Moravians celebrate the annual "love-feast" where all church members and guests gather as a family for a combined meal (usually sweet bread and coffee) and candlelight worship service to celebrate the birth of our Lord. In East berlin during the turmoil of 1989 Moravians gathered as usual to celebrate the love-feast. In the background they could hear the roar of the growing crowd gathering to tear down the Berlin wall. East German guards stood their ground with orders to shoot anyone who tried to jump on the wall. The Moravians brought their love-feast to the wall area and began giving the hungry, freezing guards their sweet bread and coffee. The gaurds were forced to drop their guns in order to accept this welcomed gift. With nothing to stop them, the protesters broke through and rest is history.

The Moravian Church's national cemetary ("God's Acre") is located in Winston-Salem, NC. All Moravians who desire can be buried there. All Moravians are buried in the order they die according to their marital status and gender. There are no family burial plots or gaudy moseliums. All headstones in the cemetary are the same size and height and equidistant to each other. This is rooted in the Moravian belief that all of God's children are loved equally and none is more important than any other.

Moravian worship services are liturgical and contemplative. One way to describe their worship style might be "reformed liturgical". In other words, the liturgies are rooted solely in scripture and are by no means vain! Today's sunrise service began outside the Home Moravian Church in Winston-Salem (Old Salem) and concluded in the "God's Acre" cemetary. To give you a picture of the size of this cemetary, think Arlington National. As we moved toward the cemetary there were 30+ piece brass bands stationed throughout the valley playing Easter hymns antiphonally. As we gathered on the hills of the cemetary to watch the sun rise, the 6 brass bands slowly streamed down to the front to form the largest brass band I have ever seen!!!

We faced east. The sun was peeking over the horizon. We lifted our praise to our risen Savior with hymns like this:

"Lord, your body ne'er forsake,
ne'er your congregation leave;
we in you our refuge take,
of your fullness we recieve:
ev'ry other help be gone,
you are our support alone;
for on your supreme commands
all the universe depends."

"Ev'ry other help be gone, you are our support alone." The next time you buy that can of Moravian cookies at the grocery store, you can now be reminded that there is a great story of faith behind that name. May each of us follow the Moravian example by emptying ourselves of "self" so that we may be filled only with Christ.