Easter Vigil 2010

Easter Vigil

Transcribed from a sermon given

Easter Eve of 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Arroyo Grande, CA

The Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

It’s been quite a journey.  We have talked about this Lent as a journey to Jerusalem, as a journey to the Holy City, as a journey to the center, to the center of the labyrinth.  Now some of you may have had an intense and profound Lent having given things up and fasted.  Some of you may have been so busy during the last couple of months you hardly even noticed that Lent was happening. Some of you may have been doing this for a long time or some of you may have just started out.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s all part of the journey.  It’s all part of the journey of salvation history, which is what we heard this evening over in the Perish Hall. 

That is the idea of the Easter Vigil.  The Vigil was originally designed for the people who were about to be baptized. On the eve of Easter, they would literally stay up all night reading scripture to tell the story.  It was a teaching moment.  It was a remembering moment.  It was a time to be with the literature, to be with the history, to be with the journey of the people of God.  Then at sunrise those who had prepared for months would be baptized and have their first Communion on Easter. 

We don’t do it all night.  It’s hard enough to get just a few people here in the evening, let alone do it all night.  But we do remember and read the salvation history, the story of God’s walk with God’s people.  We hear about the Israelites who were in bondage in Egypt, and how God came and called them to leave their bondage, to leave slavery and walk free, and how they came to an obstacle.  They got to the Red Sea, and they couldn’t go any further. They were about to give up. Then God said, “No.  Don’t turn around.  I’ll make a way when it seems like there is no way.”

One of the things that we heard on Thursday night as we reflected on and lived out part of what a Passover meal would be like is that for the Jewish people, when they remember this story at Passover, they don’t remember it as something that happened thousands of years ago.  They remember it as something that has happened to them.  They say, “We got out of bondage in Egypt.  We crossed the Red Sea.”

It’s not even really in the past tense.  It’s something that we’re living today.  We all know what it’s like to be in bondage.  Maybe bondage to a job or a bondage of fear of not having a job.  Maybe bondage to drugs or alcohol or bondage to food or bondage to a relationship or bondage to fear.  We all have ways in which we are not free, in which our lives do not live out of the freedom of choice of the moment, but live out of habit and fear. We all know what it’s like to be in bondage.  And so just as thousands of years ago the people of Israel were invited to leave the bondage of Egypt, we are always invited to leave whatever it is that binds us and to walk free.

 And we may have freed ourselves from something and then run into an obstacle.  We’re always running into obstacles.  We’re always running into times when we want to turn back. We remember what it was like for the Israelites.  They got hungry, and they remembered there were onions, there were leeks and there were other good things in Egypt.  We should go back they told Moses.  Sometimes when we are seeking our freedom, we feel like we need to go back; we remember the good old days.

Or sometimes we run into an obstacle where we feel like there is no way that we can move forward in our lives, that we’re stuck, we can’t move forward.  But God opens the way.  God just parts that Red Sea, that obstacle that looked impossible, just opened it right up, and the people walked through.  No matter what the obstacles we face in our lives right now, God is with us opening them up.

And we read Isaiah who was speaking to people who were in exile.  He said, “Come you who are hungry and thirsty.  Eat and drink in abundance.  If you hunger, eat and drink.”  He talks of the abundance of God, that God just wants to shower good things on us.  Back then God wanted to do it, right now God wants to do it, tomorrow God will want to do it. To those who hunger for God, who hunger for peace, who hunger for joy, God will be there.  If we thirst for love, if we thirst for God’s presence, God wants to provide for us.  Salvation is offered to everyone.  Mercy is offered to everyone.

Then we read how God is giving a new heart.  Not just back then, not just to them, but to us and to everyone on earth because for God time is not like it is for us. We live in linear time, but God lives in some other kind of time.  I don’t know what it is, but it’s not linear.  I know that.  And God is not limited to one place.  God isn’t just offering salvation to us or to the people of Israel or to the people in Africa or to people who believe in a certain way.  God is offering God’s love to everybody all the time everywhere.  Always was, always will be. 

And then we heard about the dry bones. Who can forget when Fred reads about the dry bones? Of course the writer was not talking about literal dry bones.  He was talking about the people, the people of his country who had become dead inside.  They had become spiritually dead, and the prophet was feeling hopeless.  “I talk to these people and they’re dead.  It’s like talking to a pile of bones.” Then God says to the prophet, “Is there life in those bones?”  The prophet says to God, “You know.  I don’t.  I don’t have any hope for these people, but, God, you’re in charge.”  Then God says to the prophet, “Prophecy and make these bones come alive.”  And he speaks to the bones and says, “Come alive.”  And they start getting back together again.  But they aren’t fully alive until God breathes the spirit into their nostrils. 

Tonight, yesterday and tomorrow God is speaking to the dry bones, to people who are spiritually dry, so that whatever in us that’s not fully alive can live.  The bones can come back together and new life is breathed into them.  And that is called resurrection, which, of course, is what we’re celebrating tonight.  That Christ died and was buried. Then people went to the grave not knowing what to expect.  They discovered it wasn’t a dead body, it was an empty grave, and then they even met Jesus. And they were fearful and joyful. 

In all of the stories about the resurrection, the response is fear and joy because there’s something about it that when we realize, when we come to know that Christ died and is risen for us, that we will not die, that there is that much love in the universe, that God cares for us that much, there’s something scary about that because there’s nowhere to hide.  We can’t hide in our fear.  We can’t hide in our doubt.  We’re called to step out of Egypt.  We’re called to cross the Red Sea.

How can you look at a resurrected Christ and not accept a new heart and a new mind?  And so it’s kind of scary, but it’s wonderful and joyful.  When we accept it, we are new people.  Each day, every day, but tonight especially, we are invited to open our hearts and minds and let God’s love that shone through Christ come into us, transform us, and make us whole. 

Amen.