Crossing of the Red Sea, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58768 [retrieved April 16, 2024]. Original source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_psaulter_gr139_fol419v.jpg.

RCL The Great Vigil
Genesis 1:1–2:4a, Genesis 7:1-5 and 11-18, 8:6-18, and 9:8-13, Exodus 14:10-15:1, Isaiah 55:1-11, Romans 6:3-11, Psalm 114, Saint Matthew 28:1-10

“What mean ye by this service?”[1] This was the question put to the fathers of the ancient Israelites by their children concerning the ritual of the Passover. You can read the question in Exodus, chapter 12, verse 26, and Moses’ answer to the question follows immediately. Moses taught them to explain, generation after generation, the meaning of the Passover service and its connection to Israel’s great deliverance through the Exodus. Tonight, I solemnly announced to you that “this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death.”[2] Any number of you might well ask the same question, “What do you mean by this service?” Each Easter Vigil, I ask the same question, but I try to give a different answer to it.

Tonight at the Easter Vigil, the First Eucharist of Easter, we are confronted first and foremost by the unstoppable and unflinching love of God for each and every person, regardless of who he or she is, regardless of what he or she has done.

We see in his powerful and stunning resurrection God’s life, God’s all-powerful life, the creative force that summoned and sustains the universe and all that therein is into being. Do you think a little death can stand in the way of that powerful life, the life that brought into existence the galaxies, the planets, and the stars, and every blade of grass, held continually in existence by the song of the Greatest Singer of life, the almighty and the everlasting God? That life, that creating and sustaining power, that is the life that we meet in the risen Christ. The resurrection of Christ is the future of the universe breaking into our present world through a tomb, of all things. And, furthermore, this way of seeing the cross of Jesus and what it means is only possible because of his being alive to teach us now and to work his new life within our minds and hearts. And so it was for Jesus’ first disciples. And so it can be for us now if we ask Jesus crucified and yet alive to take his friends by the hand just as now at this very time in this very liturgy, he may come to us by the power of the Spirit and lead us into the very heart and meaning of all that he does and all that he suffers in order that we in him can go on loving where we, without him, would turn away. In him, we choose to go on loving and embrace every moment of his life in our earthly life, the moments that we have forgotten that he was with us and will be with us. He very likely will tell us that all his Father ever wanted was to love us and love us into loving him in return. It is enough if we but look on him and love him. Amen.

[1] Exodus 12:26. kjv

[2] BCP, page 285.