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Getting Hold of Easter
Easter Vigil Service
April 7, 2007
Gene Kendall, Jr.
When I got the call from Sharon on Tuesday night inviting me to be called up from the reserves for one night of active duty, I said yes without knowing
quite what I was getting into. I figured it was the least I could to help out my rector who was going it alone this Holy Week. I was initially hesitant
because this Easter Vigil service has not been a part of my past Holy Week pattern, but I am a quick study.
In the course of my preparation I’ve learned that this Vigil service dates back to the 3rd century, and in the early church it was the mother of all
worship experiences for the year, lasting from sundown to sunrise. It was largely abandoned after the reformation by many branches of the church…and
has only crept back into use in the last thirty years or so. Repeatedly in our liturgy we use the language “this is the night”…For in the early church
it was THE night when new converts were finally baptized into the fellowship of the church, having been apprenticed for up to three years.
For those of you who are well marinated in this experience of Easter Vigil, you know that tonight is the night where we wrap ourselves in the stories
and symbols and mystery that cannot be explained, only proclaimed, because Easter is hard to get hold of. Even though a few years ago, a vendor in a
Christian supply catalogue apparently gave it a try.
In that catalogue, you could order the Calvary Hill Play Set, complete with a stone that really does roll and crosses that were removable. Human
figures were not included, but if you paid a little more, you could order Jesus, the Son of God, action figure. The things we do to get hold of Jesus.
Someone else has described the mystery of Easter is like, “trying to gaze at the sun. If you look at it directly it will blind you…so we must try to get
a glimpse from an angle in order to take it in.”[1] And yet another preacher writes that, “Easter preaching isn’t about
persuasion…all we can do is tell the story once again, marvel at it, and sing our wonder and praise…there are other Sundays when we wrestle with
questions and struggle for what to believe in a world that inundates us with so much good Friday after good Friday news. But not
tonight.”[2]
We began our service tonight with fire, or as Nathan Mitchell describes it… “an act of ritual arson. We light this fire not because there is snow on
the ground and the night is chilly, not because our pagan ancestors greeted the equinox with bonfires on hillsides, not even because our forebearers
in faith were led by a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night…but because kindling a fire is a daring, dangerous, and destructive thing to
do. The world as we know it has to be torched…the fire is to the vigil what the Big Bang is to the universe…an explosion so uncontrollably vast in
its magnitude, so awesome in its energy, so fierce in its power to destroy and create, that light and radiation from it are still not spent these
billions of years later…The primal force of fire expresses in a way that words alone cannot, that an untamable mystery has taken hold of us, and the
light forbids the darkness to prevail.”[3]
So tonight we tell stories…stories about passing over…from chaos to order, from darkness to light, from fear to joy, from slavery to freedom, from
despair to hope, from death to life.
First there is the story of creation, where God, not satisfied with the universe as a formless and chaotic void, created all that is…we passed from
formless void to what we call our earthly home.
Then there is the story of Abraham and Isaac, and of a father willing to sacrifice his son in obedience to God’s command…and in the nick of time God
provides a ram substitute, and Abraham and Isaac pass over from fear to joy, and God passes over from fearsome monarch to loving parent.
And then we joined the Israelites escaping a life of slavery in Egypt, poised for annihilation at the edge of the Red sea, yet God parts the sea and
they pass from slavery to freedom.
Then there is Ezekiel, priest to the chosen people in Exile, banished from the promised land having forgotten the one who led them out of Egypt…a people
now lost and swimming in their own despair, a valley of dry bones with no hope of life…and God breathes on the dry bones and they pass over from death to
life, from despair to hope.
And finally, we go with Mary Magdalene to the tomb of Jesus….where she comes with her bottles of spices to abate the stink of death. But God is again
not satisfied…Death will not be the final answer…and so Jesus is raised…and as Jesus passes over from death to life, Mary passes over from fear to joy.
As we listen closely to these Passover stories tonight, they encapsulate all the problems of the world that you and I know so well…The six(6) a.m. news
on NPR that I woke up to this morning had a lot to say about darkness…the Washington Post cover story this morning said a lot about fear…Colleagues that
I know at the State Department whose work is trying to reduce the business of human trafficking will never be out of a job. Human slavery is a big
business in certain parts of our world. And the news illness and death is hard to avoid anywhere we go. A good friend of mine whose infirmed mother
recently fell and broke her hip, was told rather pointedly last week by her mother’s physician that her mother was “circling the drain.” Now there
is a good Friday image for you. Darkness, fear, bondage, sickness and death….Good Friday news surrounds us. Some days, overwhelms us…
If the face of all that, we are here tonight, not to say that these things don’t exist, but to proclaim that they are not the final answer…We are to
proclaim here tonight that these stories are OUR stories, and the same God that performed these mighty acts is here with us and goes from the tomb out
ahead of us, inviting us, imploring us to join in co-creation of a world as seen through resurrection eyes…if only one glance at a time.
I love the poetic way that Walter Brueggeman sums the yearning that is present with Easter in his poem entitled “Easter Us.”
You, defeater of death, whose power could not hold you,
Come in your Easter,
Come in your sweeping victory
Come in your glorious new life.
Easter Us…
Salve wounds,
Break Injustice,
Bring Peace,
Guarantee neighbor.
Easter Us… in joy and strength.
Be our God, be your true self, Lord of Life.
Massively turn our life toward your life
And away from our anti-neighbor, anti-self deathliness.
Hear our thankful, grateful unashamed Hallelujah![4]
Christ is Risen… He is Risen indeed… Halleluha. Amen.
[1] Kimberly Bracken Long, Journal for Preachers, Volume 27, # 3, The Many Languages of Easter Worship.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Nathan D. Mitchell, Eucharist as Sacrament of Initiation (Archdiocese of Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications,1994)
[4] Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Edwin Searcy, Editor. Fortress Press 2003
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