Easter Vigil
A Triduum Sourcebook says" The Vigil begins, as it were, with an act of ritual arson. We light this fire not because spring nights are chilly, not because our pagan ancestors greeted the equinox with bonfires on hillsides, not even because our forebears 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. (Local fire marshals, take note! We're doing this on purpose! Arrest us if you dare!) The fire is to the vigil what the big Bang was 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"
In the midst of the noise of cars on the street and the planes that fly overhead, in the very center of the sounds of business as usual - everything which confuses and confounds us, torments and tries us, binds and grieves us—Here is the fire which came into the world to destroy sin and death. Christ, the light that shines in the darkness.
What we have in common with those women who first witnessed the empty tomb- is this: resurrection is a profound mystery. But what we can understand is that Jesus - who calls Mary by name out of her grief…calls us out of the darkness of our lives..
…..Oftentimes you and I mess things up pretty well. Sometimes we don’t do the right things. Sometimes we’re not in the right place. Sometimes we’re just not the right person for the task. You and I cannot be the sign of hope, because we have this thoroughly consistent habit of being human.
If there is not a God who knows our suffering, if there is not a power to help us, where are to turn? The resurrection is the sign of hope, because in the resurrection God gets it right. God in the risen Christ offers all of us to new life and new hope. There is forgiveness and a new spirit in resurrection. We are not alone in the days ahead, there is Christ, from whom we draw strength.
The only problem is, most of us don’t really believe in resurrection. We believe that the way things are today is the way they will always be, or that the future is certain to be worse. Despite all the times God has raised us up in the past, we wonder will this hour be the one in which we are forsaken?
To this fear, God through Christ answers no. When we are faced with a task we don’t want to do. When we must work with people we would rather not work with, when a change is needed and we know we are too weak to make it. When we are sent to a place that we would rather not go, it’s in those times, in those places, and with those people we can trust that God will resurrect us. Now we can live without the fear that intimacy with God, or with others will destroy us.
There is great joy for Easter people. There is courage. Into the darkness of our lostness and our deadness a light shines. We are Easter people. Raised up by the very one that raised Christ. Every Sunday is a little Easter, but this is the real thing. Frederick Buechner says it this way "that baptism signifies the end of everything about your life that is less than human, the beginning in you of something strange and new and hopeful."
Go in joy. Christ is Risen. Love extravagantly. Amen.