Homily for Easter Vigil, March 26,
2016 Graves Chapel
Tonight
we stand vigil, with countless Christians around the world and down through the
ages, by the tomb of the Lord. We stand vigil in darkness as He rests in the
dark embrace of death.
For
early Christians, the Great Vigil of Easter was the most important service of the
year. It lasted from sundown and the lighting of the first fire on Holy
Saturday until sunrise on Easter morning.
The most familiar reenactment of the Vigil in American churches and
communities today is the Easter sunrise service. Early Christians conducted the only baptisms of the year
during this service, and it was a baptism of adults. Choosing to become a Christian in those days was dangerous,
even death-defying business since many Christians were persecuted and martyred
for their faith. The adults
preparing for baptism at Easter would have undergone three years of intense
study, and during the long dark night of the Vigil, they faced their final set
of questions before the gathered community of the Church. If they passed that
last test, they would step naked into the waters of baptism at sunrise. (That
is, interestingly, a detail usually omitted from today’s sunrise services.)
During this Holy Week we have entered
Jerusalem with Jesus and shared in the “Hosannas” of Palm Sunday. We have
joined Jesus and his disciples for their last supper on Maundy Thursday. If you are like me, you may have been
unable to attend a noon Good Friday service due to work or other unavoidable
responsibilities. As much as we may regret that omission, there is historical
precedent for it. If you’ll recall, most of Jesus’s followers, including the
majority of his disciples, were not there at the foot of the cross to witness
the anguish of his death. They and we, each in our own way, often fall short in
our worshipful appreciation of the Lord. We can all of us, Christians then and
now, offer a prayer of gratitude to Joseph of Arimathea, who stepped forward to
claim the broken body of Jesus and tenderly placed the Lord “in his own new
tomb.” Only Mary Magdalene and “the other Mary” were there to witness the
entombment.
As
I pondered the sadness, the silence and the shame of that hasty burial, it came
to me that Jesus was never given a proper eulogy, as we think of a eulogy.
There was no one there to tell the remarkable story of this young man’s
promising life, so cruelly cut short.
We
know only a few scattered things about the life of Jesus before he began his
brief ministry around the age of thirty.
Some things we can surmise. As we’ve read the Old Testament lessons this
evening, covering the long history of the children of Israel, we remember their
many trials, and we know how very earnestly they longed for a Messiah. The
Messiah they expected would not only be a descendant of King David—as Jesus
was-- but the Messiah they hoped for would also be a great warrior king,
someone like David who would deliver them from persecution and oppression.
Even
though Pilate recognized some quality of royalty in the demeanor of Jesus and
placed a sign reading “King of the Jews” on his cross, Jesus was in no way the
king of the people’s expectations.
Jesus
was poor. Even if Joseph and Mary had been able to find a room at the inn,
they probably would not have been able to afford one. Being born in a stable
identifies Jesus as someone we might today call homeless.
Jesus
was a Middle-Eastern refugee. We are told in Matthew 2:13 that an angel
appeared to his earthly father Joseph in a dream with this warning: “Get up, take
the child to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to
search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph got up in the night, bundled Mary
and the infant Jesus onto a donkey, and fled to Egypt, where they remained for
several years. Then, another angel told Joseph it was safe for him to take the
child home.
Jesus
learned the carpenter’s trade. He was working class. When Joseph took his
family to Palestine, their years as refugees in Egypt behind them, he settled
them in the town of Nazareth, in the region of Galilee—a backwater place where
Joseph hoped they would be out of reach of Herod’s son, the new ruler. Joseph
was a carpenter, and we surmise that the little boy Jesus helped his father and
learned his trade.
What
kind of child was Jesus? We next hear of him when he is twelve years old and
stayed behind at the Temple in Jerusalem to sit at the feet of the elders.
After three frantic days of searching for him, Mary and Joseph find him there.
He tells them they should have known he was tending to his “father’s business.”
Since what Jesus was doing has nothing to do with carpentry, we wonder how
Joseph felt when he heard those words. This is a tiny glimpse into the
pre-adolescent life of a precocious and determined young man.
Jesus
becomes a homeless itinerant preacher. We hear little about his young
adulthood until he emerges from the daily grind of hard work and poverty to be
baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin John the Baptist. The voice of God
acclaims him as Son and the Holy Spirit descends to rest on him in the form of
a dove. Jesus goes off into the wilderness for forty days to fast, to pray, to
examine the enormity of the call he has been given. From that point on, as we
are told in the gospels, Jesus follows a preordained pattern: he moves from
place to place, since he has, as he himself exclaims, “nowhere to lay his
head.” Once again, he is homeless. He forsakes all possessions, as he instructs
his disciples to do—as he instructs us to do. He ministers to the poor, the
sick, the outcast. Since his ministry is mostly carried on outdoors, on the streets
and in fields, the church he works to inspire and build is a church of people,
not a building. Jesus calls the people to him by showing them love. And the
people become a multitude…
Jesus
is a radical, at least in the eyes of the mainstream authorities. When he
becomes tired and is overwhelmed by the never-ending neediness of the people he
serves, he retreats again to deserted places for rest and prayer. Recharged, he
returns to his ministry, where he is opposed on all sides by the political leaders
of the synagogue, who plot against him. Even so, Jesus always instructs his
disciples—instructs US—to love God and each other, including our enemies, with
our whole heart. When he washes the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper,
making them extremely uncomfortable, he illustrates the message of his life:
his disciples are called, as we are called, to service, not to lives of
comfort and self-seeking. On the night of his betrayal, he tells the disciples
to love each other as he—as Jesus himself—has loved them.
Jesus
is our savior. Out of the immense and unselfish love he feels for all
arises his willingness to die for all. And that is what brings us here, to this
evening and this vigil. Surely, in this dark and quiet time, we can contemplate
how we are called to follow the path that Jesus forged—a path marked by poverty
and homelessness as well as by a fierce, self-sacrificing love.
In
the darkness of this peaceful valley, surrounded as we are by farms, let us
consider these words by Thomas Merton about long-ago Easter vigils: “In the old
days, on Easter night, the Russian peasants used to carry the blessed fire
home from church. The light would scatter and travel in all directions through
the darkness, and the desolation of the night would be pierced and dispelled as
lamps came on in the windows of the farmhouses, one by one. Even so, the glory
of God sleeps everywhere, ready to blaze out unexpectedly in created things.
Even so, his peace and his order lie hidden in the world, ready to reestablish
themselves in his way, in his own good time—but never without the
instrumentality of free options made by free people.”
Let
us freely go forth this night as instruments of God to light the fire of the
risen and living Lord—to bring his peaceful kingdom on earth. AMEN.
