Chronos and Kairos
FROM THE RECTOR
Every year at the Great Vigil of Easter, we experience a strange intersection of chronos and kairos—two different understandings of time that occasionally overlap in contradictory ways. Although in English we use the word “time” to express both a particular moment (e.g. “What time is it?”) and a fitting opportunity (e.g. “The time is right!”), in the language of the New Testament, those concepts of time are represented by different words. Chronos is the word that means a specific time of day. For example, in Matthew 2:7, “Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact chronos when the star appeared.” Kairos, on the other hand, comes from a Greek root that means “head,” connoting a moment of fruition. For example, in Matthew 13:30, in the parable of the wheat and the weeds, Jesus says that the farmer decides to let both grow up together until the harvest kairos, when they will be gathered and separated.
On the holiest night of the year, when we gather in vigil to await the resurrection of Christ, some of what we do takes place in chronos while other parts are expressions of kairos. Allowing some room for each understanding of time helps us experience the fullness of the paschal mystery and not rush what cannot be rushed.
Borrowing from ancient Jewish and Christian practice, the date of Easter is determined by examining both the solar and lunar calendars. As the prayer book reminds us, “Easter Day is always the Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox on March 21” (p. 880). That is a definition very much embedded in chronos. Even if the various Christian denominations cannot agree on when Easter should be celebrated, all of them approach Easter as a festival that belongs on a particular day.
The rubrics in the prayer book that govern the Easter Vigil go further than that, specifying that this “first service of Easter Day…is celebrated at a convenient time between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Morning” (p. 284). Because the sun will set in Fayetteville at 7:51 p.m. on April 16, we have decided to start our Easter Vigil at 8:15 p.m. that night, giving us enough time to appreciate that the sun has set before starting our liturgy. For the clergy and lay ministers who must get up early the next morning for Sunday worship, holding the vigil earlier in the evening would certainly be more convenient, but our celebration of Easter properly belongs sometime after Saturday is over.
Once you come to the vigil, however, chronos gives way to kairos, and our adherence to the strict passage of measurable time begins to soften as something more significant and substantial takes over. We begin in the dark, waiting and watching and remembering the timeless stories of salvation history. We return to our ancestral origins as we recall the creation of the universe. We immerse ourselves in the journey of the Israelites as they leave slavery behind. We baptize new disciples into the body of Christ, ingrafting them into God’s story of salvation.
Then, at some point that night, in the middle of the service, the time comes to celebrate Christ’s passage from death into life—the paschal mystery—the once-and-for-all salvation of the world accomplished by God in Jesus Christ. But when is that supposed to happen? How do we know that the time has come? Anyone who follows the liturgy closely can tell you at what point in the service the lights should be turned on and the first “Alleluia!” of Easter should be proclaimed. My guess is that that will happen around 9:15 p.m. But to try to pin it down like that and impose chronos onto something that can only take place in kairos is to miss the point entirely.
Even if we mark liturgically the precise second when Lent gives way to Easter, we gather at the Vigil to celebrate something bigger than one moment succeeding another. At the first Easter, when Christ burst out of the tomb, no human being was there to see it. We only got news of the resurrection because of the faithful women who went to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away. On Easter Day, we gather to remember a miracle that had already been accomplished, but, at the Great Vigil, we gather to participate in a mystery that washes over us outside of time and space.
How long will the Easter Vigil last? A long time. It is a long service. It stretches on deep into the night, and, with every passing moment, we all get a little less sleep the night before a really big Sunday morning. But could we have it any other way? Is there any other way for us to share in the paschal mystery as it unfolds around us? Even though all worship services are supposed to take place in kairos and not chronos, any service that lasts much longer than an hour begins to wear on us. For the Vigil, however, we have to suspend the passage of time for any of it to make sense. Join us that night and keep a timeless watch for the mystery that unfolds. Expect the journey to take as long as it needs, and you will relish every second.
Yours Faithfully,
Evan