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The Great Vigil of Easter This is the night when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land. This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life. This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave. Tonight’s celebration, this Great Vigil of Easter, is the culmination of all that we have done over the last week. We began on Palm Sunday with our commemoration of Jesus’ joyful and triumphant entry into Jerusalem. We quickly shifted our focus to his arrest and death with our reading of the Passion Narrative, foreshadowing the rest of Holy Week. On Thursday we actually began the liturgy that we finish here tonight as we washed one another’s feet as Jesus did for his disciples at their last meal together, and we kept vigil through the night as his disciples did in Gethsemane. On Friday we went with Jesus to Golgotha and we viewed the cross that was the instrument of his death. We suffered with him as he gave himself over to God. We left a stripped down church in silence. Empty. Alone. But tonight! Tonight we have come into a dark church and welcomed again the light of Christ. We have heard the story of God’s saving acts in the world, and we have welcomed both an infant and adult into the household of God through the waters of baptism. And tonight we have traveled with Mary Magdalen and the other Mary and to find the empty tomb that heralded the news of the resurrection. Tonight we joyfully—and rightfully—celebrate the risen Lord as a sign for us of new life. Tonight we celebrate the resurrection as part of the grand sweep of our salvation history; we celebrate it as a sign that our God is a God of limitless possibilities, a God who comes to the people not once, but over and over again, a God for whom even death is not the final word. In the midst our joyful celebrations I want to inject one word of caution and that is this. In our celebration of Christ’s resurrection, our emphasis on new life, new hope, it is far to easy for us to incorporate into our theology what some critics call the grand myth of modernity—the notion of progress. While this notion can be expressed in many ways, at its core is the belief that the world, through the efforts of humanity utilizing technology and capital, is moving towards some end state of perfection. In such a scheme, each new innovation, each new development is seen as bringing us closer to that end state. Like all myths, this one contains a grain of truth. As humans we do strive for a better world, and in many ways the world is a better place for our efforts. But this myth can also lead us to behaviors and attitudes that are destructive. One of these attitudes is the understanding of suffering as a necessary step on the road of progress. When we understand suffering that way, as one more ingredient in the recipe for success, we tend to minimize it and its very real impact not only on ourselves but also on those who in the view of some may not be so far along on the road of progress (another idea that is problematic in this scheme, but we’ll leave that one for another time). If we accept this notion, we may not feel compelled to do everything in our power to relieve that suffering, nor do we address how we cope with that suffering that cannot be relieved by human effort. And when we incorporate this idea into our theology we run the risk not only of minimizing or justifying suffering, but also of seeing the resurrection as something apart from the suffering that preceded it, something that happened after suffering was over rather than a mystery that was born in and of suffering. That in turn makes it more difficult for us to face the reality of suffering in our lives squarely and honestly. Our Triduum liturgy, the liturgy of the three days that we began on Thursday night and finish here tonight, can serve as at least a partial corrective to that tendency if we pay close attention. In the first part of our Triduum liturgy we focus on Jesus’ suffering always looking forward to his resurrection and tonight we celebrate his resurrection in the shadow of his suffering, and in the context of God’s continuing works of salvation for God’s people. We do not and we cannot separate the suffering of God’s people—then and now—from Jesus’ suffering, and we do not and we cannot see the resurrection as a one time fix, a promise of “pie in the sky by and by,” because if we do, where does that leave us and our suffering now? Participating in this liturgy can help us to see Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection as part of a whole cloth, and to see in Christ’s suffering the suffering of all humanity, not because he suffered for us or instead of us but because he suffers with us. When we can do this, then perhaps we can see God’s presence with us in our suffering in a new way. Perhaps then we can see our redemption as God acting in the world past, present and future, as God acting through Christ and because we are Christ’s body in the world, acting both in and through us. And perhaps we can learn to face the reality of suffering in the world –our own and others—head on, not justifying it as necessary nor minimizing it as transitory, but acting on it with the trust that we are both agents of and recipients of God’s redemptive power. This is the night when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land. This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life. This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave. Christ is risen!
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