Since Easter falls on April 1 this year (no foolin’!) the month of April is all Easter this year. The season of Easter extends from Easter Sunday (which technically begins the night before at the Vigil of Easter) and extends through Pentecost fifty days later, the seventh Sunday after Easter Sunday, which will be May 20 this year. Pentecost literally means “fiftieth day.” Before it was a Christian festival it was a Jewish one – but perhaps I should leave that for next month’s newsletter. This month I want to draw your attention to a feature of life in the early church during the season of Easter. The Vigil of Easter, the first Easter service, was the time for baptism in the early church. This followed a process of baptismal preparation for adults, at a time when adults made up the majority of those being baptized. That process typically took a year, and in some cases even longer. During this time, those preparing for baptism would be accompanied in the process by those who were already members of the church, who would spend time with them to explain the church’s rituals and practices, to read the Bible with them, and to share their own faith with them.

            This process of baptismal preparation led, of course, to baptism. But it did not stop with baptism. Newly baptized adults continued to be accompanied by longer-term members after their baptism. This phase of the process was called mystagogy, which means “leading into the mysteries.” That’s a bit esoteric without further explanation, so it helps to know that the Greek word for sacrament is mysterion. Mystagogy, then, is really about living into the sacraments, or, to put it another way, “baptismal living.” The church, in other words, was intent on helping lead the newly baptized person into the new way of life that baptism called forth. “Baptismal Living” was the theme of our midweek Lenten services this year, during which we went through the five sections of the baptismal covenant from our service of Affirmation of Baptism, which take the form of questions for those affirming their baptism:

You have made public profession of your faith.

Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy baptism:

to live among God’s faithful people,

to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,

to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,

to serve all people, following the example of Jesus,

and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth?

(“I will, and I ask God to help and guide me,” is the response.)

That, you might say, was an exercise in mystagogy. But precisely what baptismal living will look like will be different for each person. Exploring that is what the practice of mystagogy during the season of Easter is for. You might call it a “capstone project” for baptism. Each person, under the guidance of the church, through prayer, conversation, and continued engagement with Holy Scripture, works to discern his or her specific calling, what Lutherans have traditionally termed “vocation.”

            During the Easter Season, both the Adult Sunday School class and On The Way will focus on vocation, or mystagogy. In the Adult Sunday School class we’ll have presentations by various members of Grace, who will talk about some of the ways they find themselves to be called to live out their baptism, both within and outside of the church. I hope you’ll consider joining us for this and spending some time thinking about your own baptismal vocation. Even lifelong members of the church can benefit from such an exercise. May God be with us all in our discerning.