As an Orthodox culture, Easter is the most important holiday of the year in Romania. There are almost three sides to celebrating Easter here: Orthodox traditions, Evangelical Christian celebrations, and a small amount of western commercialism. We learned a lot about the Orthodox traditions from our language instructor. She explained many of the traditional customs, from red-dyed eggs and "drob" (a dish made from sheep organs) to the 6-hour church service on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Also, beginning on Easter Sunday and continuing for the next forty days, rather than using a traditional "Buna" (hello) on the street, people will say "Hristos a înviat!" (Christ is risen!) and the expected response is "Adevărat a înviat!" (True, He is risen!). In one sense, it seems like the general population has a higher regard for the true meaning of Easter here than in America, but in another sense, that regard comes from years of church tradition and the true understanding and power of the cross has been lost. As part of a cultural experience, we went with our instructor to an Orthodox church on the Friday before Easter (Orthodox call it “Vinerea Neagra” (Black Friday) and Evangelicals call it “Vinerea Mare” (Big Friday) ). On this day, there was a large table in the middle of the church with a Bible and cross on it. There was a line of people at the table waiting to kiss the Bible, kiss the cross, kiss the table, and then crawl under the table. The must repeat this process three times. Our instructor wasn’t exactly sure the reason for this, something to do with crawling under the table to help identify with Christ’s suffering on the cross and the three times for the three days before the resurrection. As we stood there and watched elderly ladies crawl on their needs under a table and young mothers hold up their children to kiss the Bible, I was heartbroken for these people that are in bondage to such rules and regulations. They have been taught that keeping these rituals will help to gain God’s favor and increase their chances of getting into heaven after they die. We are praying for the hearts of these Orthodox Romanians, that God would reveal His truth to them and they would understand that Christ's death is fully sufficient.
Personally, we spent Easter weekend as a family, dyed Easter eggs, talked and read stories about the true meaning of Easter with the kids, and in Romanian tradition, cracked our red-dyed eggs together (Kamryn won the contest)! We enjoyed the Easter service at the small Baptist church we have been attending, then discovered that Easter Sunday is the best time to have lunch at McDonald's - it was literally empty!
The Monday after Easter, we hosted our monthly team worship meeting. We enjoyed singing and having a Bible study in English with our fellow team members; then took advantage of the great weather by having a hamburger cook-out and a egg hunt for the little kids.
Grilling burgers...
...and hunting for eggs!
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