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The Great Vigil of Easter Alleluia! Christ is risen! So, here we are! We’ve made it—we’ve made it through the long dark days of Lent, we’ve made the journey to Jerusalem and shared Jesus’ last meal; we’ve faced the agony of the cross and the desolation of seeing a broken Jesus laid in the tomb. We’ve gone with Mary Magdalen and the other Mary to the tomb to bid Jesus a last farewell, and there we’ve met the angel who rolled away the stone. And we’ve come face to face with the resurrected Jesus. What relief! What joy! And now that we’ve made that journey, now that we’ve witnessed the resurrection, now that we’ve brought back the alleluias and rung the bells, we can just finish our service and go eat our celebratory lamb feast and go about our business. Everything’s back to normal now, right? Wrong. It’s really tempting, really easy from our 21st century perspective to feel that way, to see Easter as just another milestone in the church year, no matter how glorious and moving and wonderful. After all, we’ve been doing this a long time—following the cycle of Jesus’ life, celebrating Christmas and Epiphany and Lent and Easter, year in and year out. So what’s changed? Nothing and everything. We can act as if nothing has changed. We can go downstairs tonight and feast together and then go on about our business as usual. And on one level, there’s nothing wrong with that. We love Jesus. We worship together every week. Lots of good works come from Saint Mary’s—from both our individual efforts and our corporate ministries. So we could just keep on keeping on. But I wonder—when we do that—and it’s so easy just to do that—if we miss a golden opportunity to consider the real impact of Easter. What does it REALLY mean for the tomb to empty? What does it REALLY mean for Jesus to be raised from the dead? And how might that affect our lives even more than it does now? In order to do that, to consider again what the resurrection means, what Easter means for our lives, we have to go back a bit and look again at the crucifixion. And if those of you who were here on Friday will forgive me, I want to repeat something I said during our Good Friday liturgy: We often hear it said that Jesus died FOR our sins, but it might be more accurate to say that Jesus died BECAUSE of our sins, the sins of the world. Jesus died because he dared to question the domination systems of his day…those forces whether they were political or religious, Roman or Jewish, that worked to oppress the people, that held them in the bondage of poverty and submission. He dared to challenge those systems and the people complicit with those systems. And he dared to suggest that God calls us to a different way—a way of justice and compassion. The crucifixion was about the powers that be saying no to Jesus, no to this new way, no the threat to the status quo that Jesus and his followers represented. But Easter—Easter is about God saying YES to Jesus—yes to Jesus and NO to the powers of the world, the powers that killed him. Easter is Jesus’ vindication; Easter is God saying that earthly powers, no matter how powerful or seductive they might be, cannot squelch, cannot eliminate, cannot dominate the power that Jesus brought into the world. And what power is that? It is the power of love. It is the power of love and compassion and justice. It is the power that puts care for the other above care for the system. It is the power that pulls down hierarchy and domination systems and the status quo and calls us to a new way, a new life. Easter is God saying that Jesus’ death is not the end, but the beginning—the beginning of a new life for each of us who will take up our crosses to follow, a new way for the world—a new kingdom. And what might that new kingdom look like? Some 2000 years later, we have all kinds of theological expositions about the Kingdom of God. But if we really want to envision it, if we really want to consider what it would mean to live in such a kingdom, all we really need to do is to return to the gospels, and consider again what Jesus called us to do. Because the Kingdom of God is right there, revealed to us in Jesus’ words, in Jesus’ passions. Jesus’ words and his actions, those things he was passionate about, show us a kingdom in which no one is beyond God’s love, no one will be hungry or unclothed, no one is uncared for. They show us a kingdom in which there is justice for the poor and the downtrodden, in which loving God and loving your neighbor are the ultimate good. In our 21st century reality we can come up with all sorts of pragmatic reasons, rational justifications, for why we are still so far from realizing such a world, from living into the Kingdom of God. But Easter, the celebration of the new life given to us through Jesus, invites us again into that kingdom, invites us to reexamine the choices we’ve made, the priorities we’ve set, the way we live. Easter invites us to crack open all those rational justifications and pragmatic reasons, all those excuses and ask ourselves, “Do we really share Jesus’ passions?” Easter invites us to say yes to Jesus and his passions and no to the domination systems that oppress and tear down. If we accept that invitation then we cannot go on as if everything is the same, as if nothing has changed. Because when we accept that invitation into the Kingdom, into new life EVERYTHING changes. Of course, we don’t have to change everything we do around here—because so much of it is good. But when we accept that invitation we are likely to see the world through new eyes, to see new opportunities, to see the resurrected Jesus in unexpected places. Easter tells us that the Kingdom of God is upon us. Easter invites us into new life. Easter invites us to say yes to Jesus and to celebrate with alleluias, not just here in church, but out in the world, and not just in words but in actions. May we accept that invitation and proclaim to the world, Alleluia! Christ is risen.
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