Easter Vigil
April 11, 2009
I’ve never been a big fan of history. I have trouble getting excited about reading non-fiction books. I always groaned when my parents brought me to the local historical sights. Unless it’s part of Gone With the Wind, I don’t want to hear about the Civil War. I rarely read the plaques that go along with the artifacts in history museums. And yet, on a night like tonight, even I have to admit that history matters.
In our many readings tonight we’ve heard little snippets of the very long history of God creating and recreating, loving and forgiving, making and keeping promises. We’ve gotten short glimpses of the sometimes tumultuous, but nevertheless enduring, relationship between God and humanity. It’s a relationship that has somehow survived all the good and bad times that are part of our history together – times of darkness and light; death and life; fear and joy; disappointment and fulfillment, suffering and healing, doubt and assurance. God has been working and loving and redeeming throughout God’s history with God’s people. It sounds a lot like a human relationship, albeit awfully one-sided at times.
Next month, I’m going to be the celebrant for a good friend’s renewal of wedding vows. She and I were part of a group that lived on the same hall freshman year and ended up close friends throughout college. We ate in the dining hall together, went to parties together, studied together, rolled the quad with toilet paper together, heard each others’ excitements and woes about boys. A few years after college, my friend got married. We didn’t know him too well at the time, but he was funny, and clearly into her, and welcomed the rest of us into his world, and so we approved. And now they’re celebrating their ten year anniversary.
For some of you, ten years may not sound like very long, it may not seem like much of an accomplishment. But if you knew this couple, if you’d been part of their crowd, you’d know what a big event this is. As it’s turned out, their time together has not been easy. They’re both very expressive and opinionated and so their relationship has seen more than its fair share of fighting, including a few times, both before and after they married, when they (and the rest of us) weren’t sure they were going to make it. They’ve had added stresses, like problems with in-laws and starting a business. And on top of that, they’ve had more than their share of heartache, including a miscarriage, a serious health scare, and a parent’s death. They’ve spent more time in therapy, together and alone, in the past ten years than most of us will in our lifetimes. And because I’ve been part of her crowd of friends, I’ve had the privilege that friends have of hugging her, and crying with her, and listening to her during a lot of it.
And next month, after all this, they will stand up together and reaffirm those vows they made ten years ago that they would love, comfort, honor, and keep each other in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, for better and for worse. For most people, I would imagine that those words mean a lot more after ten years of marriage than they do in the rosy pre-marriage glow. That’s certainly true for these friends of mine. Their history matters. They know how hard these vows are to keep up – they know how much work they’re signing up for when they say these words.
And so, I can’t wait to rejoice with them next month. To glory with them in their having somehow survived, to affirm them in their triumph over the dark times, to celebrate their having emerged stronger against all odds. Knowing their history together matters in understanding where they are now.
And understanding our history with God matters in helping us understand where we are now. Without the history, we can’t understand the significance of what we celebrate tonight. Easter is a celebration of how God risked everything, joined humanity in death, had God’s heart broken, and busted out of the darkness with humankind firmly in tow, triumphing over death and sin and everything that separated people from God. As the Exsultet, the chant that we began this service with, puts it: “How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined, and we are reconciled to God.”
But Easter wasn’t something done in the past, some fix made for the people in those old stories. History is important in understanding Easter, but Easter isn’t a historical event. Easter is the ever-present challenge of our continuing relationship with God.
Theologian and Bishop N.T. Wright puts it this way: “Those of you who are going to preach on Easter, please note that the resurrection stories in the Gospels do not say Jesus is raised, therefore we’re going to heaven or therefore we’re going to be raised. They say Jesus is raised, therefore, God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do.”
Well. Bishop Wright is in luck, because the Easter Vigil service makes that sentiment abundantly clear by including Baptism in its liturgy. As we heard in the reading from Romans tonight, when we are baptized, our history becomes grafted into this same history of God and humanity. These glimpses of relationship we’ve read about tonight are part of our story as well. We become part of the new creation in which God works and loves and redeems. And we’re given a job to do. And it’s a big one.
Tonight we’ll get to support Karen as she makes her baptismal vows, which is a wonderful thing to behold. She’ll make the same bold and daunting promises that most of the rest of us have made already, and that we’ll have the opportunity tonight to renew.
We’ll promise to continue in the Church (with a capital C), we’ll promise to do good and return to God whenever we fail, we’ll promise to be evangelists – spreading God’s story in the world, we’ll promise to love and serve all people, and we’ll promise to work for justice and peace for all. These are hefty, fearsome promises. They are impossible promises, truth be told. We know from experience that they are impossible to keep, impossible to do alone, impossible to feel good about. These are promises that require real effort. They require us to start over again and again and again. Like Easter, these promises are not a one-time deal, but a part of our past, present and future as the People of God.
Like my friends’ renewal of their wedding vows, when we know what we’re getting into, making (and reaffirming) these baptismal vows seems daring and optimistic. But it also strikes me as incredibly hopeful. We’re essentially promising to participate in the transformation of the world. And we make these vows despite, or maybe because of, the sometimes turbulent and painful, sometimes blissful and joyful, but always enduring, history of God and humanity. “God’s new creation has begun and we’ve got a job to do.”
Amen.
Elizabeth Rees