Homily for the Great Vigil of Easter - How Shall We Live?

Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 22:1-18 [Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]

Homily by Fr R Chrispher Heying

In the late fourth century—50 or so years after Constantine’s Edict of Toleration for Christianity—a woman from Galicia, Northwest Spain, named Egeria made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and described what she witnessed in a letter she sent back home to a circle of women friends. 

It is from this letter—maybe the earliest example of formal writing by a Western European woman—that we are given a glimpse of the shape of worship and liturgy in Palestine, indicating among other things the observances there in the late fourth century of  Epiphany, Lent and each day of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday to Easter.

From Egeria’s letter, of which there is a later extant copy, we know, for instance, that celebration of the nativity—Christmas—was not yet universal, but the events of Holy Week and Easter are given in surprising detail.¹

In Jerusalem, Egeria writes²

Paschal vigils are prepared in the great church. . . . The Paschal vigils are kept as with us [back in Galicia], with this one addition, that the children when they have been baptized and clothed, and when they issue from the font, are led with the bishop first to the Anastasis.

By anastasis, Greek for “resurrection,” Egeria apparently means a chapel in the cave believed to the empty tomb.

Egeria continues:

The bishop enters the rails of the Anastasis, and one hymn is said, then the bishop says a prayer for [those who have been baptized], and then he goes with them, where, according to custom, all people are keeping watch.  Everything is done there that is customary with us also, and after the oblation has been made [that is, communion is celebrated], the dismissal takes place.  After the dismissal of the vigils . . . they go at once with hymns to the Anastasis, where the passage from the Gospel about the Resurrection is made.  Prayer is made, and the bishop again makes the oblation.

So what we do this night, this holy night, is fully consonant with Christians all over the globe for at least some sixteen hundred years. 

As we engage this sacred story from so long ago, we do not do so as if we were some kind of detached, objective historians.

Rather, in telling the story of salvation history—such as the unimaginable test to Abraham’s faith, the miraculous deliverance of the Israel from bondage, the vision of Ezekiel’s dry, dead bones coming to life, and above all this night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the dead—and in hearing the story we enter that story which is made present here and now, among us and in us. 

Not spectators, but participants.  His death becomes our death, his life our life.

That light which triumphs over darkness has now been shared with us and there could be perhaps no better occasion to give that to witness a child of God born again to new life and to receive that light by the one who gives his light to all creation.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, perhaps only after Paul the Apostle the most influential Christian upon the reformers, was himself baptized at the Easter Vigil in 387.  Mary Grace, my daughter, was baptized at the Easter Vigil in 1999. 

Jennifer Wilson herself was baptized at the Easter Vigil and now it is meet, right, and a joyous that she and Steven bring Jackson Beau Wilson to the lifegiving waters of baptism at this Easter Vigil, that he may be washed anew and born again to new life in the kingdom of God.

Baptism is not just a rite of passage, let alone a photo op however precious.  In Romans, Paul is clear about the high stakes and serious consequences of baptism:

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. 6.3-4

In a few moments questions will be asked of the parents and godparents who will answer on behalf of Jackson. Do you renounce evil?  Do you accept Jesus Christ as Lord?  Will you provide a context in which he can be nurtured in the Christian faith and life?

Then, you and I will be given opportunity to reaffirm for ourselves—much like Jackson will one day choose for himself—the confession of faith and the promises made at baptism.   

What do you believe about God the Father? about God the Son? About God the Holy Spirit?  These same questions have been asked of baptismal candidates since at least the second century, a full hundred years before Egeria’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Each of us will be given opportunity to answer for ourselves questions about what we believe.

And then, if this is what we believe, how then shall we live?

What will our commitment to Christian community look like?

How will we live a life of continually turning to Christ?

How will our life proclaim the gospel?

Where will we look for Christ?

How will we work for peace and justice?

Is there anyone we can exclude from deserving the dignity that attaches to being made in the image of God?

This night, this holy night, we recall and make present here and now the great events of salvation history, including how God delivers us from sin and death and brings us into new and unending life.

If this is what we believe, how then shall we live?

____________

¹ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egeria_(pilgrim)

² As found at http://users.ox.ac.uk/~mikef/durham/egetra.html