Christ who lives in me - The Vigil of Easter

Genesis 1.1,26-31a The Creation

Exodus 14.15-15.1 ‘The people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground’

Ezekiel 36.16-17a, 18-28 ‘I will sprinkle clean water on you ands I will give you a new heart.’

Romans 6.3-11 ‘Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again.’

Luke 24.1-12 ‘Why do you seek the living among the dead?’

 

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What has just unfolded before us tonight?

It’s a bit of a shock to those who have never attended this service before, and it is so very different from the orderliness and stability of our regular worship: but then Easter disrupts settled patterns and assumptions all round.

There has been drama and performance and texts.

This is not theatre, but the Church’s time-honoured way of revealing mysteries that don’t just speak to our heads, but speak to our hearts, and all our senses, for tonight, in this proclamation of Easter, life and light flood our lives, our whole being.

We have gathered around the primordial element of fire, with its sparks, leaping flames, heat and light.

The fire evokes the pillar of fire that led the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt; the fire of the Burning Bush in which Moses encountered the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; the fiery furnace into which the three young men were thrown because of their faithfulness to the faithful God who preserved and delivered them.

The flames evoke the disciples on Easter Day whose hearts burn within them as Jesus unfolds for them the scriptures on the Road to Emmaus; the Day of Pentecost and the tongues of fire that dance upon the apostles’ heads, not burning them but setting them on fire with zeal for the Gospel.

From the fire in its wildness we light the luminous Paschal Candle that burns as a witness to the Risen Lord and the light he sheds on our hearts and minds, and illuminates our reading of the scriptures.

And, haven’t we had a good dose of scriptures tonight!

The Exultet gave us the broadest sweep of salvation history, distilled from scripture, and its power in us now, tonight: represented in this Paschal Candle.

We have heard afresh the Creation born out of life-giving water, as we celebrate the New Creation in Christ.

We have heard afresh the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, as we celebrate our own deliverance, in Christ, from the slavery of sin.

We have heard afresh of the prophetic promise that God will replace Israel’s heart of stone with a heart of flesh; as we celebrate the new and contrite heart that expands and beats with love in Christ.

All this, we believe, points us more deeply to the rich meaning of the Christian life, a life initiated, refreshed and made sense of in baptism, which took us to St Paul’s letter to the Romans.

It is, as it were, his meditation on the encounter we have with the Crucified and Risen Lord.

The key to the experience of the Resurrection is in the language of being buried and being raised.

The same thing, he says, is going on when we are baptised.

We are sacramentally experiencing death and resurrection, so that ‘we too may walk in newness of life’.

The Sabbath Day was the day when Jesus’ body rested in the tomb: and it was to that tomb that those women came.

And thanks be to God for the myrrh bearing women – Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women whose names we don’t know - because their devotion and faithfulness blessed them through something prophesied but utterly perplexing.

They did not find Christ’s dead body, as they had expected, but they became the first to hear the greatest proclamation of them all: ‘He is not here, but has risen’.

The evangelion, the Good News of the Gospel flows from that empty tomb; what seals Christ’s incarnation, ministry, passion and death is an unsealed empty tomb and the proclamation: ‘He is not here, but has risen’.

This Good News proclamation shapes the Christian life finds its home in the liturgy, in our worship.

As one writer puts it:

Evangelization is the first touch that starts someone on that journey; evangelization is the nurturing of that initial conversion into a full-blown conformity to Christ; evangelization drags the Christian through the font and deposits him at the foot of the Eucharistic altar where communion with Christ is attained. (David W Fagerburg, ‘From Divinization to Evangelization’ in Divinization: Becoming Icons of Christ Through the Liturgy, p27)

The ‘dragging through the font’ of Baptism is a thoroughly Easter Sacrament, it encapsulates the Mysterium Paschale, the Paschal Mystery which is proclaimed tonight.

Hence why we will refresh the promises of our own baptism: we renew a covenant tonight.

The Exultet speaks of tonight being the night, ‘when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and divine to the human’.

That’s why tonight we are ‘deposited at the foot of the Eucharistic altar where communion with Christ is attained’.

I began by referring to the primordial element of fire, I’ll end with the primordial element of water.

Just as we stood outside by a fire, shortly we will stand by a fountain, a pool, the font with the water of baptism.

We didn’t get burned, but we will get wet!

This is the saving, life giving water, into which we plunged in baptism and from which we are raised in Christ.

Baptism effects the heart of the Easter Gospel:

Death has no dominion over Christ, so you also must consider yourself dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6.11).

In the midst of the drama, the many layers of meaning, there it is: ‘Christ is not here. He has risen.’; ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’ (Galatians 2.20).