Candlelit vigil

Last week I attended a vigil at my church. It was a time to sit quietly in a darkened, mostly empty sanctuary, to pray, to contemplate, to sit with a recent and very sad death. 

I went up to the front to light a candle. I stood it up in the dish of sand, with other candles that had been lit and placed there by people who had come to the vigil earlier in the evening. Then I went and sat next to a friend, in silence.

I thought about lots of things, one of them being candles. As I had walked to the front of church, past the tall Christ candle, lit at baptisms and funerals, words from the Easter Vigil service had suddenly popped into my mind, almost as if they'd been spoken aloud: "The light of Christ rising again." 

Huh. I lit my candle from others in the bowl and carefully placed it in the sand, arching my wrist, careful not to scorch the sleeve of my winter jacket.

These skinny white candles were the same kind we use at Easter Vigil, to pass the light of Christ from person to person through the congregation. And those words? It seemed to me like there should be more, like I'd forgotten the next part. Rising again for what? But apparently that's all there is to it. "The light of Christ rising again."

Practical churchwoman that I am -- or is because I'm impractical, I'm curious -- I thought about when else we use these white tapers. Actually, it was just a few weeks ago. Candles had been lit on All Saints Sunday, commemorating those who had died in the previous year. So here they were again, flickering, shining in memory of another saint, a new addition to the roster. 

My mind moved on to this family's loss, the hugeness of it. The deeply broken hearts, personal faith that I know all too well is upended by grief and loss and disaster. Inevitably, because it's a lifelong habit to ask, I thought about where was God in all this, and how I cannot answer that question.

I came back to the candles and when we use them and remembered suddenly that we would be lighting them on Christmas Eve. Yes, at my Lutheran church, we sing "Silent Night" by candlelight at the end of the late service. It's what we come for. It's sentimental. We even sing the first stanza in German, because ... well, for me, because my grandmother taught it to me. It's quite beautiful, as "the dawn of redeeming grace" breaks upon us in "Jesus, Lord, at your birth."

Christmas is a very different thing, I thought. No ideas about death running through Christmas, not like Easter or All Saints. Except, like all of us, Jesus was born to die. Mary brought forth her firstborn son safely, something that could not be assumed would happen (can't be assumed even now). She held him in her arms, watched him grow, and thirty years later, buried him. Yes, Jesus had a remarkable career of teaching, working miracles,  making disciples and upsetting authority. But I thought to myself in that darkened church, surely he had times when stuff happened, friends died, injustice was done and he, disturbed, angry, confused, asked where was God in all this? He was fully human. What do we think he thought about as he gazed into campfires late at night by the Sea of Galilee? Maybe the same kind of stuff that we toss and turn with late at night, staring at the heavens through the bedroom ceiling. 

Candles are for keeping vigil. The electric ones on my windowsills during Advent and Christmas say -- I don't know exactly. Keep hope alive? Watch for the morning? Or just, people live here, and through the darkness, the light of Christ keeps vigil with them.