Easter Vigil
April 7, 2007
Romans 6:3-11
Psalm 114
Luke 24:1-10
Alleluia, Christ is risen….. Well, this IS the night, and this is the day of resurrection. This is the night when salvation history is fulfilled by a God who has made good on his promise. The promise we heard in all five of our lessons from Hebrew scripture. The promise made complete in an empty tomb where bewildered women are addressed by figures dressed in “dazzling white.” “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” they ask. “He is not here. He has risen.”
“He has risen.” Three words, three powerful words turned the ancient world upside down. Three words changed the very nature of our life and the way we are meant to live it. Three which began a movement which will not go away. A movement which came to be called Christianity. A movement which continues to baptize people into its faith and call them Christians. Christians who come together in communities they call churches. But churches are not the buildings themselves. Churches are communities of people; baptized persons who belong to the body of Christ in the world; believers who meet together regularly to remember who we are by our baptism and to remember who we are to be in this world by our regular communion with each other.
And it all started with three words: He has risen. We have given a name to this resurrection event. We call it Easter. And from that first Easter people through the ages and throughout the world have celebrated Easter resurrection. Easter has taken on many forms of celebration in the world. In the United States many people (and I will be one of them) will celebrate Easter with chocolate bunnies and colored eggs and candy and all kinds of rich and delicious foods which are meant to break the fast of Lent. But not all of us will celebrate resurrection. That is because in an increasing secular world, fewer people are going to church, even on Easter. It is a sad sign of the times, however, that yesterday as I was preparing for our Good Friday service I saw more cars than usual parked on Franklin Street and many people lining up at the Salmon Run restaurant for a fish dinner. They were obviously engaging in a time-honored tradition of not eating meat on Good Friday. But it was unlikely we would find many of them going to church. I didn’t have any illusions that they would come to our Good Friday service. But I thought to myself how important it is for us to be the Church in the world, especially in times like these. How important it is for the church to be here for people who will come to be baptized and married and buried, and for other important occasions of their life.
Occasions which often signify that there is something more going on for us than the event we are celebrating, and we need to pay attention to it. Special occasions often provoke our religious sensibilities to participate in rites and rituals of the church to celebrate them. And I believe that celebrating them within the context of a church is about getting in touch with something larger than ourselves; it is about the need to receive something more than what the world has to give, perhaps even something necessary to our greater well-being. Our religious sensibilities call us to participate in something more than opening presents at Christmas and eating candy and eggs at Easter. Our religious sensibilities call us to more than just satisfying the statutes and regulations of a state for getting married and for being buried. Our religious sensibilities call us to more than just living for ourselves in this world until we die in it.
What calls us to the Church at times like these can be found in three words. “He has risen.” It is because of these three words that the Church became established in the world. And it is because of these three words that the Church continues to be present to us in ways which are different from the ways of our world. The Church exists because of those who witnessed this new thing God had done for us in Easter resurrection. And the Church continues to be the place believers and followers of Jesus witness to resurrection in salvation history, just as we have on this night of Easter Vigil. Tonight we witnessed the stories of God’s salvation history, and by our very presence in this place we witness to resurrection. Tonight we are the women at the tomb. And we are the people who will encounter Jesus in the days ahead as he walks the earth in a bodily form which has already been transformed for his ascension into heaven. Like his disciples and the others Jesus encounters in his final days on earth, we will not recognize him, until he calls us by name, or gives us some sign by which we can know him. And we can be sure that he will give us signs and call our name throughout our life whether we pay attention to him, or not. Tonight the parents and sponsors of Danica Lin Poirier have paid attention to the signs; they have answered Jesus’ call to baptize their daughter in his name, so that he can call her by name. Jesus has called this family to this church of St. George’s to participate in the most ancient of all rituals for naming us and making us his own. Tonight Danica Lin will become part of God’s salvation history. She will become a player in the incredible story of resurrection.
Anyone who knows our story will tell you this IS an incredible story, so incredible some people find it difficult to believe, no less to follow. But any practicing Christian will tell you how the story only becomes more credible the more we believe and follow. “The world calls it the greatest story ever told.” Because anyone who has ever heard it, even those who do not believe or follow, acknowledge its power. Our story still has the power to move people and to transform their life. Our story has the power to bring justice to unjust societies and nations. Our story has a staying power which helps persons in need long before, and long after governments give up on them. The well known pastor and theologian, William Sloan Coffin, is famous for saying that our story empowers us to live an Easter life in a Good Friday world. And tonight our story has the power to bring people like us into a place like this on a night like this to hear our story once again and to baptize a new member into that story.
There is no doubt that our Easter story is powerful stuff. There is no doubt that ours is the greatest story ever told. It is so powerful sometimes, it is scary. It asks so little of us, until we begin to live into the power of it; then it demands so much. But the greatest story ever told derives its power from all of the stories of salvation history. We heard some of the most important ones tonight. Take the story of Creation, for example. I don’t think we can deny the power of resurrection in the story of Creation. It is apparent to me that our Easter story begins in Creation. Just as our Easter Vigil begins in darkness, so does creation. And just as our Easter celebration breaks forth in light, so does creation. God separated the light from the darkness and he gave us the choice to live our lives in darkness in the fear of sin and death, or to live in the light of love, free from fear and from the ways sin and death which diminish our life and keep us from fulfilling God’s purpose for us in creation. Salvation history reveals a God who wants to set us free from all that would make us slaves to earthly power and possession. Tonight we heard how God delivers his people from the bonds of slavery in Egypt at the parting of the Red Sea. Noah and his family survive the great flood to populate the world anew under the hope of a rainbow. And the people of Israel will struggle and suffer for centuries to keep their covenant with God, but they will remain faithful to their task of preparing the way for a Savior who will redeem us, not from this world, but in it; a savior who will show us the way to live in this world as God would have us live. In all of salvation history God continues to honor the covenant he makes with his people. We will be his people and he will be our God. God brought his covenant to fulfillment by Jesus’ birth and by his resurrection. And now we are free to live in the light of creation. Free to love life more than we fear death. Free to baptized in his name and to live in his image; to become the people God made us to be, rather than be enslaved by images of who the world thinks we should be. That is the promise of salvation history, the promise of resurrection and the promise of baptism.
This is the night and this is the day of such promises. It is the best day in the whole year for a baptism. Because by our baptism each of us is given a name and we are marked as Christ’s own forever. It was not long after Jesus’ resurrection that the church recognized baptism as the way to acknowledge the goodness of our life by the goodness of God’s creation. New life in Christ begins for Danica Lin today. She has been given the light of Christ lit from the Paschal candle, and we have placed a new white garment on her to symbolize her new life in Christ.
We pray that Dancia Lin will grow into her new life in Christ, and that she will prosper in it. But Danica Lin will not be able to grow into that life by herself. She will need to be nurtured in a community of faith, a community of baptized Christians who will tell her the stories of salvation history so that she can grow into the person God made her to be. She will need her family and her sponsors and she will need us. And as the body of Christ in the church we need her. We need Danica Lin and all who are being baptized at this Easter Vigil to join us in being the Church in the world. A community of people who believe and follow the One who makes a difference for good in our life so that we can make a difference for good in the world. We may live in a Good Friday world, but we are an Easter people. God continues to redeem us, not from this world, but in it. We are free to live in the light of creation and in the life of resurrection. We no longer look for the living among the dead; we look for the living among the living. And we often find them in places like this—churches where a community of faith comes together regularly to practice living in the light and hope and joy of resurrection. He has risen. Christ is risen, indeed. Happy and blessed Easter.