The Rev. Dr. Austin Leininger
Sermon of Easter Vigil
31 March 2018
Readings:
Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13 [The Flood]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Romans 6:3-11
Psalm 114
Mark 16:1-8
This is the night! As we heard tonight in the Exsultet, This is the night when God brought the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land. This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life. This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death, and rose victorious—leaving empty the tomb of broken hopes, despair, and darkness. This is the night when darkness became light, death became life, and emptiness becomes the fullness of hope.
This is the night when God’s power over life, death, and the rules that govern our universe is made known in their undoing. With the two Marys and Salome, we are invited into the awe of that cosmic moment highlighted in Mark’s gospel by the silence that follows the angel’s proclamation. What response could bear better witness than the stunned silence of these three women as they fled into the growing dawn?
Drawn to the tomb by their duty to Christ’s torn, beaten, pierced, and expected to be putrefying body, they come to anoint the remains of their fallen friend, teacher, and messiah. Anticipating their defeat by the stone even as they move toward the place where all their hopes had died, the gathering light of morning sun dawns on an emotionally indescribable scene. The stone is rolled away and even the body they had come to tend in death might have been taken from them. Yet they enter the tomb.
They once again do what all the rest of Jesus’ followers are unable to do in Mark’s gospel. These are the women who stood and watched while the disciples fled. These are the women who watched him die and who watched him laid in the tomb. These are the women who tend to all the unmentionable work of their society—birthing, child rearing, washing, cleaning, cooking, and ultimately tending the dead when the cycle of life comes to its end. These are the women who return to do what no one else will do—to care for Jesus’ body in death. And now, with the stone gone, they enter the tomb not knowing what they will find, but never imagining what has come to pass.
Alarm may not adequately describe their experience of finding not only the body gone, but a living person addressing them and telling them the impossible. That Jesus was raised, that he was no longer to be found entombed in death with all the hopes that had died with him, but that he would meet them in Galilee. And these stalwart companions who stayed to the very end, also finally flee as the reality of what has transpired overcomes them.
There are no words. Just the awe of what God has done.
And yet we are here this night of nights, celebrating the 1985th anniversary of that moment when God changed everything to finally show us that nothing can stop God’s love.
We heard at the end of Epiphany that Christ’s being “raised up” is the same word used for when he “raised up” Peter’s mother-in-law, and when Christ “raised up” the next day to go on to neighboring towns to cast out the demons of fear and oppression, to heal—essentially to bring resurrection to all those he encountered. Here, Easter morning, the cosmic significance of communal resurrection becomes the reality that directs the disciples back to the beginning of their ministry with Christ. “Go back to Galilee, knowing what you now know, that it isn’t about worldly power, or Jerusalem, but about love, about relationships of mutuality and care, about the resurrection of hope. Go and start over with the understanding of what resurrection looks like and means in the lives and hearts of those bereft of hope who are living in a toxic world that has told them they aren’t worthy, aren’t loved, aren’t enough. Cast out those demons and resurrect the hope and spirits of the people.”
And here we are, having gathered around the font to baptize Shelly and Terry into Christ’s body, having renewed our commitment to being people of this resurrection hope, having promised to carry on, with God’s help, to continue casting out the demons of injustice, discrimination, oppression, neglect, and distain; having promised to carry on proclaiming by word and action the good news of resurrection and hope through our faith communities that still—1985 years later—stand in awe of all that God has done.
May this be a night of our own transformation and resurrection as we stand in awe of all that God has done.
Alleluia! Christ is Risen!
Amen.
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