Sermon: Easter Vigil 2013
Christ is Risen!If you go to Adler Planetarium sometime, there is currently a show playing called “Welcome to the Universe”, projected on one of those great domed theaters. The camera begins zoomed in on earth and you move ever outward. They pause for a moment at a view of earth from the moon and they ask you to put your thumb up and block the earth from your sight. Around your thumb you see vast black space dotted with stars, as the guide Ted says, “that’s everyone you’ve ever known, all the inventiveness of humankind, the history of life and our world, all covered by your tiny thumb”. The journey proceeds out until our solar system, our galaxy, our cluster of galaxies, and all the galaxies themselves likewise could be easily covered with your thumb. The show impresses on you a very different perspective for viewing your life. I think this is what Lent, and especially Holy Week are like for the Christian Church. The Easter Vigil is a time to reflect on where we have come from, where we are now, and where we are headed on a trans-historical and cosmic scale, to place our lives within a sweeping view of the spiritual reality of this world in which we live. It is an exercise in perspective.
The Italian poet, Dante, in his fourteenth century work the Divine Comedy recounts his imagined, guided tour of all the spiritual realms from the depths of hell to the heights of paradise, a tour of cosmic reality in its whole breadth and grandeur, horror and ecstasy. It steps back and it takes a big picture view. The tour, interestingly enough, takes place from the night of Maundy Thursday through Easter in the year 1300—reflecting the idea that the church has long related this time, this period in which we now stand as time to recap the whole story and driving force of our Christian lives, the life of the Church throughout history, and the full range of our emotions, our bodily experiences, and our thoughts. To experience through this story of Christ’s death and resurrection a guide to our own lives and goals as a people of God.So, today I am your guide, brace yourselves, let’s go!We heard today from a range of texts from the Hebrew Scriptures, which culminated in the outbreak of Easter joy. But what connects all this? What are we celebrating? How did we get from Good Friday, Jesus of Nazareth dead and in the tomb, to our shouts of alleluia now? How can this movement grant us a tour of all that stands central to our notion of what we, as a church, are supposed to do in this world? How do we get our bearings? What will orient us?So, forgive me for a moment, I am going to set down the alleluia once more for a brief moment and bring us back to where we stood just moments ago, in darkness.The first stop on Dante’s journey is hell. As he approaches it, he looks up and he sees the giant gates which stand at its entrance. Over the door is written a sign these words: Abandon every hope, all you who enter here. This is hell’s marker and pronouncement, the word of despair which speaks into our hearts and into this world. Abandon every hope, all you who enter here.Don’t we here this everywhere in this world around us? On Palm Sunday, we heard some young people talk about the conditions of our public schools, and didn’t we hear that the sign written over the doorposts to the institutions and then slowly, over time etched into the minds of every child in those places was just this: Abandon every hope, all you who enter here? Hasn’t our city, through its failure to police so many parts of this city’s West and South sides, as we watch the barricades go up, inscribed on the hearts of those neighborhoods this same sign? This is the sign placed on people’s foreheads as often as we fail to love one another, participating or standing by in a culture that shames people for who they are, that holds power violently over the weak. It is all around, this sign. Abandon every hope, all who aren’t like me, all who are born into poverty, all who are oppressed, all who are lonely, all who are ashamed, all who are tired and weak. And it’s like being placed behind someone’s thumb, being told you don’t matter, that there is no hope for you.We hear this in our stories from today, people in tight and tricky situations. We heard about a flood coming to destroy the world. We heard about a group of Israelites, just newly escaped from slavery being stuck while their enslavers continue to pursue them. We heard about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego asked to bend their will to the king or face death in furnace. We hear this power pursuing them. Abandon every hope. We can hear this voice ringing through our history as humanity, even as powers rise and fall, as one generation is replaced by the next, this sign is everywhere—it is on our wars and fighting, our witch hunts and persecutions, our broken relationships and our losses. This sign is powerful, it brings tragedy and pain everywhere it goes.But this sign is accompanied by the cries of our human hearts: the cries for deliverance, for change,
"Merciful God don’t let another child die in this city! Merciful God, don’t let my loneliness consume me! Merciful God, don’t let my tormenters laugh over me! Merciful God, end the bloodshed of innocent people! Merciful God, don’t let my relationship crumble!" Even in our stories, "Keep us safe in this flood! Don’t let us be dragged back into slavery! Don’t let the fires of this treacherous power consume us!"In our gospel today, this is where we meet Mary. Because yesterday, it didn’t just seem like we were at the gates of hell, it seemed as though we were already inside. Our cries made sense when Jesus was defying the powers of Jerusalem, even as he was arrested, beaten, and hanging on a cross, but what good is there in crying out anymore when Jesus is already dead? Jesus who came to show us that we can submit ourselves to the powers of this world and still overcome, what does his message mean as he lies in a tomb, with the powers that had him killed still ruling this world? The power of that sign seems even stronger, saying: Abandon every hope, all you who would be like this man, who think that the way of the cross has any power. With all their power they strove to block out Jesus from the people, like the earth behind a thumb.Yet here Mary comes, returning to the tomb before it was even light out. In the darkness. How hard it must have been even to move her body there. She comes to look for what is already gone. "Where is my Lord’s body?" she asks. "Where have they taken him?"Has she not read the sign? What difference does it make where his body is? He is dead! Does she not realize that he has been defeated? And yet she pursues him recklessly: "Where is my Lord?" Where is our Lord? Show us a new sign!Mary! She hears her name, and not just her name, but her name spoken with His voice, Mary. Think for a moment how utterly unique it sounds to have someone you love say your name, perhaps your mother or father, your lover, your friend. To have another person say your name is to call into view your unique relationship with them, to remind you of who you are in the eyes of this person. Mary hears his voice call out her name, Mary, bringing her back to peace and purpose. That name, Mary, grabbing hold of her in the same way it had when she first heard him call her out of an old life and into a new one.She turns to him, his real and abiding presence with her there, and she calls back in love, "Teacher, you are here, Teacher who led me by the example of your ministry and teaching, and in your last days showed me the way of the cross! Praise God our Lord is here!" Christ is present with her and us still—Christ is risen!—and she realizes that the greatest sign this world could muster against him, his public humiliation and death a show designed to act as a sign for all who could see to march towards an abandonment of hope, the show that we see occurring around us all the time, has underestimated its foe and proved laughably weak, with all the power of a little human thumb. The death that the world could give him could not hold him in the tomb! For he was still present with his disciples! As he is present now!
He says to her immediately, take this sign to everyone else. "Tell them: I am the resurrection and the life so that even though you die, you will live. I am the sign placed over this world a limit and an end to its suffering. A sign that hope is not to be abandoned."This is the sign that stands against and triumphs over the gates of hell, which the Holy Spirit cries into our hearts, each by name. This is the sign that occurred in the saving ark, in the deliverance of the Israelites through the Red Sea, in the saving presence within the fiery furnace. This is the sign to which Mary Magdalene was the first witness along with the apostles, the sign to which the church has given testimony to throughout the centuries by its proclamation and its action, by the blood of its martyrs and the works of its saints, by the confessions its has spoken and the hymns it has sung, through its art and writings, through its scriptures and acts of charity, by the immersion of ever new generations in the waters of baptism and the offering of our Lord’s presence in the wine and bread. Throughout our history the Holy Spirit has not ceased to cry until its voice has grown hoarse with this message: Christ is risen!In the words of the apostle Paul: Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Christ is risen!St. Luke’s is a little church with big ideas. It is a place that has had the sign of hell written over it, when not too long ago its future looked uncertain. Thank God that the Spirit still moves here, and calls each of us by name! It has not come this far by luck, but by the power of this sign of hope in the presence of a living and risen Lord. The work we all do can often be hard and draining and without reward, because we know the power of that hellish sign written all over this world and in the hearts of people.This message of a risen Christ is for us to hear now, that wherever you are oppressed or ashamed, afraid or doubting, Christ says to you: St. Luke’s. Do not be alone or afraid. Do not fear the work that I have called you to as a church. Do not be ashamed or timid. Do not grow tired. For, I am strong enough to support you. I am the promise of life in death! I am the resurrection! The powers of hell shall not prevail against me! I am with you in everything that you do, and my Spirit shall be your comforter and helper.We go forth as individuals and as a church to face a world where we will again confront these forces, but let us cover the signs of despair in the victory of God, that vision of hope and an end of suffering, of healing and raising up, of peace and love of empathy and joy. For just as God saved Noah in the Flood, and the Israelite at the Red Sea, and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Fiery furnace, just as God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, just as God has lifted up his martyrs throughout the ages and reformed his church again and again with human hands, this God will surely be our own strength.May we etch a new sign on this world, on the hearts of people, on the lost and abandoned places, on the mourning and the lonely, on the poor and the scared, on each other and on Logan Square. Christ is Risen! Amen.