For
about 1,500 years, Christians have been gathering on this night and praying the
words of the Exsultet in which we heard the words, “How blessed is this night,
when earth and heaven are joined and humanity is reconciled to God.” We
experience time in a particular way – when we lit the Easter fire in the
Columbarium, we think of that moment as being behind us and no longer
accessible. I do not pretend to be an astrophysicist, philosopher, or quantum
physicist – but I’ve read the works of people in those fields who have engaged
with theology. What they have taught me is that time is a rather funny thing –
we perceive it in one way and we assume that is how time really is. But, in
truth, there is much more about time that we do not know than we do. We do not
exactly understand what happens to time as we approach the speed of light, as
happens near black holes. We’ve all experienced that some moments seem to last
forever and others are over before we even recognize it. Thinking that we understand
time is like asking a worm to tell us the best way to get from New York to San
Francisco.
As
an Episcopal theologian wrote in a recent book called The Fullness of Time,
“Scientific knowledge is real, but God is more real than that.” The Easter Vigil
takes us into that reality that is more real than anything else we have ever
known. To better attune our chronological senses, we must realize that we do
not look into the past tonight. We don’t seek to dwell on God’s saving deeds of
yesterday in the Exodus or the lions’ den. No, instead, what we are seeing is
actually the inbreaking of the future into time. The Resurrection of Jesus
Christ is the culmination of Creation; it is when eternity broke into time and
brought the dawn of the New Creation. So when we heard God’s saving deeds in
the Old Testament, we are witnessing moments, in real time, when God’s final
future washes upon the shores of time as waves emanating from tides of God’s
timeless love.
With
this different approach, the readings that we heard in the Vigil take on new
significance for us, no longer as glimpses of salvation history, but rather as
the inbreaking of salvation future. We begin in Genesis, with the very act of the
Creation of time and space. With God, literally, all things are possible
because no thing exists without God. There was no before Creation, so even
language and our imprecise understanding of time betray me, but before Creation
there was nothing – the most we can say about it is that was not; sheer and
utter nothingness. But God brought order to chaos and life from emptiness.
The
way the Creation story unfolds is in terms of a liturgy – there is a certain
rhythm and intentionality to how God creates. Scholars note that what is being
described in Genesis is the making of a temple. What made a temple a temple and
not just a big building was the presence of the divine being at its center.
Well, instead of a statue of the Lord,
we find that humanity which bears the image of God. We are placed here in
Creation to reflect the glory and love of the Creator, and so we are blessed
with a sacred vocation and purpose. This is the first time that the fullness of
time comes into focus – when God calls this setup “very good.” We are blessed
with the image of God so that we might bless all of Creation by showing forth
that image.
We
then heard in the Book of the Wisdom of Solomon about the Wisdom of God that
was present in this creating. It has long been noted that there are Trinitarian
tones here – Wisdom is the spoken Word of God who we have come to know in
incarnate form as Jesus. This Wisdom has always been present with God and we
heard that “she orders all things well.” This is the next wave of God’s future
that breaks upon us tonight – the sense that things have been ordered in such a
way for us to know and thrive in God’s salvation. How glorious and gracious
that God sends these waves of salvation to us and gives us the gift of Wisdom
to make this saving love known to us.
In
the Exodus, we hear of the most definitive inbreaking of God’s future into the
present for Israel. When Israel was between the rock and the hard place of the
waters and Egypt’s army, God does what God so often does in providing a way out
of no way. One aspect of this tidal wave of the future is that sometimes
salvation, like a wave, can be a bit scary and disorienting. The people see the
chaotic waters in front of them and the fearsome army behind them. They’re
ready to concede and head back to slavery. Sometimes we try to run from
salvation when it’s right in front of us, or we try to make our own way out of
a tough situation instead of trusting that God will do what God has promised.
Through
Moses, God says, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, I will deliver you today. I
will fight for you, and you only have to keep still.” So often we try to do
more than keep still. Indeed, salvation continues to come towards us as waves
continually crash on the shore. Sometimes that salvation is not what we
expected or even what we thought we wanted, but the God of all things provides
the best path forward. Salvation is not forced on us though, just as it was not
for the Hebrew people. Imagine standing on the banks of what used to be the Red
Sea only to find a wall of water on both sides. I bet those first few steps
were rather tentative. The salvation that God provides isn’t something to carry
in our back pocket like a “get out of jail free” card; no, it is something that
we enter into, step by step, day by day; we walk the way of salvation,
following the trail the Lord has blazed for us.
While
is certainly true that salvation is a communal reality, something that happens
not just for individuals but for all of Creation, it is also true that
salvation can be experienced personally. Again, not individually, but
personally. The prophecy to Ezekiel gives us a sense of this when we heard that
God’s salvation comes to us as a new heart and a new spirit. In using the metaphor
of salvation coming as waves upon a shore, we have the image of water. Ezekiel
notes that this newness comes through having clean water sprinkled on us.
Water
has been present in many of the other readings and water will come to the fore
when, later in this liturgy, we renew our Baptismal vows and are sprinkled with
water to have that grace of God fall afresh on us. Baptism is not something that
happened to us once a long time ago. That is an impoverished view of time.
Rather, Baptism is a reality that we enter. It’s something like marriage – yes,
there is a wedding, but the point of getting married isn’t to have a wedding,
it is to live a life of commitment, of partnership, of sacrifice. Baptism is
the same, it’s not about something that happened in a church or lake decades
ago, it is about being sealed as Christ’s own forever and being empowered by
the Spirit for ever and ever.
How
exactly the Spirit transforms us depends on the person. Some people follow God
through their intellect like Thomas Aquinas, some through courage like Harriet
Tubman, some through sacrifice like Oscar Romero, some through teaching like
Thomas Cranmer, some through service like Elizabeth Duncan Koontz. For Daniel,
it was an unwavering trust in God. Though he knew that his allegiance to God
could cost him his life, even in the face of conspiracy and collusion against
him, he remained faithful to the God who is faithful to him. Unless you have a mishap
at the zoo, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever find yourself in a lions’ den, as
did Daniel. But as we know from the letter of First Peter, “Your adversary the
devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” There are
lions that seek to destroy us – they go by different names but they almost
always end with “-ism.”
One
of the ways that God’s salvation breaks into our lives is in giving us a
better, a holier, a truer, and more beautiful way of being in this world. That
strength and protection are what Daniel knew through his faith and it is what
God calls us into through our Baptisms. We are made different in Baptism so
that we can be in this world differently, not in opposition to the world, but
in the world in the way that God intended when God created it in the beginning.
Baptism is our reorientation to the way of love, so when we renew our Baptismal
vows, listen for what God is summoning up in us.
The
Vigil readings concluded with Zephaniah, a reading that speaks to the ultimate
trajectory of time: God being in our midst. Contrary to popular, and incorrect,
belief, the end of all things is not in utter destruction, not in raptures,
dragons, or beasts, not in harps in the clouds, golden streets, or anything of
the sort. No, from Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is consistent on what the
fullness of time looks like: God being with Creation fully. This is what the
Incarnation of Jesus is all about and what our ultimate hope is. The Resurrection
is one of those moments when eternity touches time and we see the promise of
God that nothing, not Sin, not Death, not fear, not doubt stands between us and
God’s love. Zephaniah was given a vision of this wave that was out at sea and
tonight we see the source that sends out these waves of salvation to us: the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Part
of the reason why I choose to preach at the Easter Vigil at this point in this
liturgy instead of after the Gospel text is that the Easter Gospel preaches itself
once we allow the liturgy to wash over us. This sermon is intended to do just
that, to reorient our sense of time so that when we joyfully and exuberantly
proclaim the Resurrection it will be as glorious as it was on that first Easter
because this is the very same night of our Lord’s Resurrection. Just as it did
then, God’s future is breaking upon the shores of our time.
This
is what St. Paul is getting after in the text that we will hear from Romans: “Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized
into his death? And if we have been united with him in his death, we will
certainly be united with him in his resurrection.” We are baptized into the
future and partake of those sweet fruits of eternal life even now. That is what
the Pascha nostrum, the great hymn of Easter, proclaims. When the first fruits
come, it means that harvest will soon follow. Christ is raised from the dead as
the first sign of God’s inbreaking future, and there will be much more fruit to
follow, much grace and love to taste and see.
When
we hear the angels at the tomb tell the women “Remember how Jesus told you” they
say this because they understand things from the perspective of the fullness of
time. In saying “remember” they are calling into the present all of those times
that God’s future has already been revealed. Remember how he was born to a
lowly mother, how he healed the sick, how he cast out demons, how we forgave
sins, how we fed the multitudes, how he showed us God’s love. Again, these were
not things of the past, but rather incursions of God’s future into the
experiences of these faithful women. The Resurrection is the culmination of
time, and it has crested upon the shores of our world so that we might have life,
and have it abundantly.
Ultimately,
this is what the Eucharist does. The Sacrament that we will celebrate will not
happen on April 16th, it is happening in the fullness of time, and
by God’s grace, we are brought into that moment of our salvation when we gather
in Risen One’s name to break bread and share the celebratory wine of God’s victory.
What we receive are tokens of the Body and Blood of Christ that show us the
fullness of God’s love which comes to us from the fullness of time. This is the
night the Lord has made, when the
fullness of time comes to be, let us rejoice and be glad in it.
