In the name of God ☩ Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
We’ve
arrived at the pinnacle not only of Holy Week, not only of all liturgies of the
Church, but to the very pinnacle of all Creation. As we heard in the Exsultet, “This
is the night when God led the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt… This
is the night when all who believe in Christ are delivered from sin… This is the
night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from
the grave… How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and
humanity is reconciled to God.” This is the night. The Easter Vigil is the
pinnacle of time and space because it is asynchronous with our understanding of
time. By God’s sovereign grace, we are in a sacramental sort of time where God’s
salvation is absolutely present to us. My role in this sermon is to serve a
tour guide of sorts. Tonight’s liturgy and Scripture readings do all of the work,
I merely will be pointing them out so that what becomes apparent is the legacy
of God’s salvation.
We
begin in Genesis with the Flood that swallowed up the earth. In the Creation
stories of Genesis, water is symbolic of chaos. When God created the heavens
and the earth, on the second day, a dome was created above and under these
waters of chaos and that dome is called “sky.” The idea is that the universe of
God’s creating is surrounded by the forces of chaos that God keeps at bay by
the dome. But, because of human wickedness, cracks are made in this dome which
eventually lead to the great and mighty return of these chaotic waters.
And
what we see in this Flood story is that God can work with chaos. There is no
situation so chaotic that God cannot wring salvation out of it. Through the chaos
of water, God will save the righteous. As we will see throughout the liturgy
tonight, God saves through water. In 1 Peter, we read how this event is a
prefigurement of the salvation of Baptism, and thus we see one of the ways in
which God saves us – through the transforming of death into life. These waters
had been about chaos and death, but through God’s salvation, water becomes the
doorway into life in the Kingdom. This same thing happens in the story with the
bow in the sky. Bows are a symbol of violence and retribution. But God takes
this symbol of war, and hangs the bow in the sky, facing away from the earth,
as a symbol of God’s peace. Violence will not be the way that God saves, and we
see that ultimately on the Cross, when God takes on the violence of the world
to save it through the power of love. God is our mighty fortress and our bulwark
against the floods of chaos.
We see God saving us again in the story of the Exodus where God makes a way out of no way. Through the plagues, God has softened Pharaoh’s heart to the point of letting the Hebrews leave Egypt, but Pharaoh has second thoughts and pursues them. Pharaoh’s imposing army on one side of them and the raging waters of the Red Sea on the other. Death was the only way out of this until God intervenes and opens a new possibility. There are strong parallels to the Exodus and Easter – both have us up against Death with nowhere to turn when God makes a new path into liberation for us. One scholar has defined God as the one who raised Jesus from the dead after having first raised Israel out of Egypt.
We see God saving us again in the story of the Exodus where God makes a way out of no way. Through the plagues, God has softened Pharaoh’s heart to the point of letting the Hebrews leave Egypt, but Pharaoh has second thoughts and pursues them. Pharaoh’s imposing army on one side of them and the raging waters of the Red Sea on the other. Death was the only way out of this until God intervenes and opens a new possibility. There are strong parallels to the Exodus and Easter – both have us up against Death with nowhere to turn when God makes a new path into liberation for us. One scholar has defined God as the one who raised Jesus from the dead after having first raised Israel out of Egypt.
In
the connection between these two events, we see God’s faithfulness on display. Right
before the Egyptians retreat, Pharaoh says, “Let us flee, for the Lord is fighting
for them.” And, indeed, God is fighting for us. Surely, it is God who saves us
and the enemy of Death is put to flight. God has promised salvation to Israel,
and God has promised us abundant life in Jesus Christ. As we see over and over
again, God is faithful to these promises to be with us and to always be on our
side.
And
even when we are lost and hope is gone, God saves. Though we may think the
story is over, there always remains another move for God to make. Consider the
valley of dry bones in Ezekiel’s vision. The prophet sees a valley of dead, dry
bones symbolizing the whole house of Israel. This year, we can better
commiserate with Ezekiel that in other years. Already, more Americans have died
in the last two months from the Coronavirus than died at Pearl Harbor, on 9/11,
in the Iraq War, and in mass shootings since Columbine combined. By the time
this is over, there will be many more deaths than this nation experienced
during the Vietnam War. We are in the midst of death. God addresses Ezekiel as “mortal,”
reminding us of the fate of us all.
God
asks, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel hedges his bets and replies, “O Lord, you
know.” But the answer is “no.” The dead do not raise themselves, nor does
anyone else raise them. The dead are dead. Unless, that is, unless God breathes
new life into us. God’s Word and Spirit can bring Resurrection. As we say at
the Committal during our Burial liturgy, quoting Romans, “He who raised Jesus
Christ from the dead will also give new life to our mortal bodies through his
Spirit that is alive within us. My heart, therefore, is glad and my spirit
rejoices; my body shall also rest in hope.” My brothers and sisters, we rest in
hope because God can gather the dead back to life. Though we are socially
distanced from one another, whether it is in this life or on the other side of
the grave, God will indeed fill us with life anew and gather us together again in
God’s perfect eternity.
As
we go through these valleys of death, God is with us. This is what we see in
the reading from Daniel about the three young men in the furnace. Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abednego trust that God will be with them and they have tremendous
courage as they say “We have no need to present a defense to you.” These three
men get into trouble for refusing to worship the king, which would be idolatry.
Aligning our life to anything other than God is destructive, and they refuse to
do so and are prepared to pay the price.
And
the God of grace and glory meets them in their trial. God does not save from
entering into the fire; instead, God is with us in the flames. God knows our
suffering and is with us in it. We see this in the Cross of Jesus, that God is
with us in our suffering and endures what we do. And we know that God also
saves us from the flames of eternal hell.
God does not save
though because we’ve done something to warrant it. In the words of one
theologian, the only thing that we bring to our salvation are our deaths and
our sins. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were prepared to die a martyr’s
death; it is not that they went into the furnace knowing that they would be
saved, but rather they went trusting that God alone is God and alone is worthy
of praise and obedience. And God saves them because God is a God of salvation. God
does not give us what we deserve, rather, in love, God nourishes us, forgives
us, and saves us. God is always with us and that makes all the difference.
The
culmination of God’s salvation happens at a tomb outside the city walls of
Jerusalem as dawn was breaking on the first day of the week. God takes on human
flesh in Jesus of Nazareth and lives as one of us. He knows what it is like to
be surrounded by chaos, to be living under oppression, to be betrayed, to be
executed – he takes on the sin of the world on Good Friday and descends to the
dead on Holy Saturday. And then, on this very night, the earth quakes as the
stone is rolled away and Jesus walks out in Resurrection life. The same God who
saved Noah, who guided Moses and the Israelites, who gave new lives to the dry
bones, and who was Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, this very same God is Jesus
who is risen. And just as Jesus experienced the fullness of humanity in his
life, all of humanity will experience the fullness of his Resurrection. The Resurrection
of Jesus is the culmination of God’s saving acts in history as God defeats the
enemies of Sin and Death through the Cross and the empty tomb. There’s not much
more I need to say here about the Gospel text from Matthew. Given this survey
of salvation history in the Vigil readings, the Resurrection story can stand on
its own. And if you want more of a sermon on this Matthew text, come back
tomorrow for Easter Sunday.
What
matters here at the Vigil, in this moment when all of time exists in God’s
love, is that we are made a part of this present and ongoing salvation of God. St.
Paul makes this clear in chapter 6 of Romans which is a keystone passage in
Scripture – “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by
baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the
glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have
been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him
in a resurrection like his.” In Baptism, God saves us from the chaos of trying
to make our own meaning and purpose, God liberates us from the damage of Sin,
God gives us new life in our deaths, God’s Holy Spirit is implanted with us so
that we are never alone, and we are made citizens of the New Creation which is inaugurated in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In every way that we need
salvation, God saves us.
Just
as all of salvation is unfolding in the Easter Vigil, salvation is present in
your lives as well. And so St. Paul tells us, tells me and you, “So you must
also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Know
this: you are loved, you are forgiven, you share with Jesus in his Resurrection
and so death is not final, sins are not a barrier to God’s love, and grace
abounds.
This
is something we need to hear during this season of “Coronatide” when everything
has been upended. God is the bringer of salvation and this has been true since
the very beginning and will be true into eternity. A vaccine will not save us,
an economic stimulus package will not save us, the end of quarantining will not
save us. While God certainly wants us to have life and have it abundantly,
those things won’t save us. What saves us is the fact that God’s love is
stronger than death, that God’s light shines in the darkness of sin, that God’s
grace extends as far as the east is from the west. If there’s one thing that we’re
learning during this pandemic, it is how precious and valuable life is.
Throughout history, and especially in the Resurrection, we find our hope in
that God also knows how precious we are, which is why God saves us over and
over again, because God’s love knows no limits, not even at the grave. And for
that, we say: Thanks be to God.
