JESUS' DEATH AND RESURRECTION REMEMBERED

EASTER 1804 IN LABRADOR

Moravian Mission Stations in Labrador

Religious faith is kept alive through celebration and ritual. Special festivities that remember important events of long ago keep believers in touch with the past and provide new meaning for the present. Since the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus is central to the Christian faith, most Christians celebrate these events during Holy Week and Easter in a special way. For the Moravian Christians of Labrador, Easter is particularly important.

Hopedale, established in 1782

1782 Mission House at Hopedale with meeting hall (front three centre windows)

If you used the time traveller once more and followed me into the Moravian community of Hopedale on Labrador's north coast in 1804, you would witness some exciting religious events. Christian Inuit and the Moravian missionaries, European Christians who came to evangelize the Inuit and first settled in Nain in 1771, have lived here together now for 22 years. The missionaries at Nain had quickly found out that they could not stay in one place but had to move where the people lived, hunted, and fished. So they established two more communities north and south of Nain: Okak (1776) and Hopedale (1782). Before the establishment of Makkovik in 1896, Hopedale was the southernmost Moravian community, located near an old Inuit whaling site, called Agivtuk (or Arvertok), "place of the whales."

Revival at Hopedale, 1804

Here at Hopedale a great revival took place in 1804, which was spread by Christian Inuit also to Nain and Okak. On Easter Sunday 1804 people knew that something remarkable had happened in their community. It all began when some women realized their religious commitment had been only a show for others, rather than a changed life of faith. One woman later recalled a moment in church when, listening to the story of Jesus' suffering and death, she realized personally the significance of this death on the cross. She became so aware of Jesus' suffering and death for her that she forgot everything and everyone around her. She found herself all alone in the meeting room in the mission house long after the other church-goers had left. She then witnessed to other Inuit women. "The saviour is mine too," she declared. "He removed even my sins and received me as his child. This I now feel in my heart, and I am grateful and ashamed."

Passion Narrative, published in Inuktitut in 1800

Literacy a Factor

Literacy, the ability to read and write, seems to have been important to this revival. Before the missionaries came, the Inuit language, Inuktitut, was only a spoken language. The missionaries gave it a written form and started printing books in that language. Schools for children started in Nain and Hopedale as early as 1780, and children had been taught regularly in Hopedale since 1783, only one year after the Moravians' arrival. The first two Inuktitut books to be printed were a primer, published in 1790, and an extract from a Harmony of the Gospels, published in 1800. A Harmony is the story of Jesus' life, woven together from the four gospel accounts. The book published in Germany in 1800 dealt with a week in the life of Jesus, the week he died on the cross, also called the Passion week, because of Christ's suffering. It was that book that young and old read fervently at Hopedale. A missionary wrote back to Germany that in 1801 for the children of Hopedale, "the printed history of the passion week, as extracted from the Harmony of the four Gospels, is a welcome present to them. This is the first printed Eskimo book which they read, and will no doubt prove a great means of blessing to young and old. Those that have learned to read, are very much delighted to be able to read it to the rest of the people in the house."Also in 1803, prior to the revival, several of the young people reportedly were reading "with fluency in the printed history of our Saviour's sufferings, extracted from the four Evangelists."

Inuit teacher with writing class

Eventually many women, children, and men were moved as they had never been moved before. Some felt that they could now endure the hardship of their lives much better and stand the meagre food of that winter. "When we feel in our heart the saviour, who has loved us so much and died for our sins and shed his blood and blesses us with his beloved nearness," one Inuit hunter exclaimed, "we can be quite happy and content, even though we may lack in external things, yet we trust him that he will care for us in that regard."

Easter 1804

Resurrected Jesus by Newfoundland artist Gerry Squires

In 1804 people attended the Easter festivities with renewed enthusiasm. In Labrador Easter ends a long period of festivities that start in Advent. After Easter the Hopedale Inuit would leave the community for their hunting grounds. The Hopedale diaries, in which the missionaries recorded day by day what happened in the community, allow us to look in on events of nearly 200 years ago.

On Palm Sunday, 1804, an Inuit woman, Nerchevik, was baptized in the afternoon and received the Christian name of Zipora. In the evening, Inuit and missionaries met and read the story of the passion from the newly printed book. On Wednesday of Holy Week, the missionaries met and engaged in a ceremonial foot washing. The following day a Communion service united Europeans and Inuit in one bond of fellowship.

Easter celebrations started early on Easter Sunday, the first of April. At sunrise the sound of a bell called the Hopedale Moravians to a celebration in the meeting hall of the mission house. No separate church building had been built yet, so the dining room also served as a place of worship. The revival of 1804 would increase the congregation so much that two years later, in 1806, the first separate church building would be erected and dedicated. This building was replaced in 1865 with the present building.

Moravian Choir from Nain, Labrador, ca. 1880s

As the congregation filed into the meeting room, they were greeted with the words of the Easter Litany, "Nalegak, makkisimavok!" "The Lord is risen!" To this the congregation answered: "Illa makkisimavok!" "He is risen indeed!" Then the Easter readings continued. The story of Christ's resurrection was read, with his appearances until his ascension. On that same Easter Sunday, the baptized members of the congregation and the candidates for baptism celebrated a so-called lovefeast-a simple meal, eaten in church amidst songs and prayers.

When Daniel and Jonathan and their families departed shortly after Easter on sleds to earn their living on the hunting grounds, the sun rose in the east over Anniovaktok Island and lit up the old graveyard near the sea. As they were pulled by their dogs over the frozen ocean, the words of Easter morning still rang in their ears: "Illa makkisimavok!" "He is risen indeed!"

Hopedale brass band of 1919

God's Acre and the Hope of Resurrection

Oldest graveyard at Hopedale

The cemetery that the hunting party passed had a special significance tied to the death and resurrection of Jesus. If you follow me into this old cemetery, which today is marked off by a pine fence, past a protruding rock toward the eastern end of the graveyard, you will see, nearly hidden in the grass, a row of stone slabs. Some are clearly readable. The inscription on others has almost been erased by the relentless wind. If you look more closely, you will notice German names and words on most of the stones. On one marker you can clearly read the name Johann Schneider. The German text tells us that he was born in Zauchenthal in Moravia in 1713 and died at Hopedale on 21 October 1785, just three years after the founding of this Moravian settlement. A little to the right, but in a separate section with other women, is the grave of his wife Elisabeth, nee Ertel. She survived him by 12 years. She was also born in Moravia, in Bodenwalde, on 21 March 1721. Elisabeth refused to leave Labrador after her husband's death and was buried in the same resting place. In 1771 the two had belonged to the party that established Nain, the first permanent Moravian settlement in Labrador. The couple also pioneered at Okak and finally, at an already advanced age, helped in establishing Hopedale. Elisabeth made friends with Inuit women and had an especially close relationship with them.

Grave of Johann Schneider, Hopedale

Johann Schneider was the first person to be buried in the Hopedale graveyard. In the church records, he is listed as "the first seed in hope of a joyous resurrection." The imagery of the body as a seed fits well with the name that Moravians used for their graveyards: God's Acre. The name goes back to imagery used by the Apostle Paul when speaking of the resurrection:

"The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable." (1 Cor. 15:42). Because of this hope, funerals for Moravians were upbeat and happy occasions, with songs of praise, Scripture readings, and singing, or even a band playing. Portions of a person's autobiography would often be read at the funeral, as a witness to their Christian life.

Grave of Elisabeth Schneider, Hopedale

Moravian graveyards differed from those of other churches in how the graves were arranged. People sharing common characteristics in life were buried together in different sections of the cemetery. There were separate sections for the married men and widowers, the married women and widows, the single men and boys, and the single women and girls. While you can still see these groupings in the old Moravian graveyards at Hopedale and Nain, burials today no longer follow this practice. But on Easter morning the Moravians of Labrador do still gather for traditional sunrise services in church and afterwards in their graveyards, where they celebrate Christ's resurrection as the foundation of hope for their own resurrection.

View of Hopedale, ca. 1847

It is an unforgettable and emotional experience to stand amid the snows of Labrador in the burial ground, which the Inuit call "Gudib perorsevings" (God's garden) , on an Easter morning and watch the rising sun tinge the snow-clad mountains with pink. To hear the presiding minister recite the names of those in the congregation who have died since the previous Easter and to hear the Inuit brass band lead the assembled worshipers in glad songs of hope and exultation. In this service, the many services in which the story of Christ's Passion is read to the worshippers, the celebration of Holy Week seems to reach its triumphant climax:

"The Lord is risen.
He is risen indeed"

Rev. William Peacock, Moravian Superintendent in Labrador, from: "The Moravian Mission in Labrador,: 1752-1979," unpublished report, Centre for Newfoundland Studies, MUN.