Easter Vigil
Category: Easter
Speaker: Grace Pratt
May the words of my mouth and the mediations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight on this most joyful night, O God our great Redeemer. Amen
The liturgy of The Great Vigil of Easter that we have entered into tonight is so beautiful and complete, that it really speaks for itself. It is hard to imagine what a sermon might add to all that we’ve already heard and felt, but I’m going to give it a try!
There is a richness to our readings tonight that is not typical of our regular Sunday lectionary. Tonight we get to move through the entire narrative of our salvation in Christ. All the way from the creation of the world, the sacrifice of Isaac, Israel’s deliverance at the red sea, the prophecies of Isaiah and Zephaniah, the valley of the dry bones, and finally to the empty tomb and the risen Christ. Often I find myself anxious to move quickly through all the Old Testament readings and thinking; “When do we get to the part about Jesus coming back to life? That’s the part I want to hear! That’s the good stuff!” But all of the readings tonight are the “good stuff.”
Because this is the night when we celebrate our covenant with God, a covenant that began many years ago when God created the world and man. Throughout our history God is always reminding us of our covenant with him. In His covenant with the Hebrew people God says 'You will be my people and I will be your God.' But what does that look like exactly? Our readings tonight give us some examples of God’s saving work in our history as part of His covenant with us. In the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham faithfully said “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering.” And God does! This is a reminder that God will provide for us as part of our covenant with him. God will also protect us and fight for us as we learned in story of Israel’s deliverance when God throws the Egyptians into the red sea. But, the cornerstone of our covenant with God is that He promises to redeem us. With the story of the valley of the dry bones, God tells us that nothing is too dried up to be redeemed, even some old bones can have new life. Isaiah, Zephaniah and others prophesied about what our redemption might look like. So our covenant has many pieces. Our God promises to provide for us, to fight for us and finally to redeem us. Though our redemption did not happen the way it was predicted.
And I think this is partly because we sometimes confuse the concept of covenant with contract. Nothing is black and white in a covenant, there is no you do this and I do that. And we should know this because we are all in many covenantal relationships. All of our friendships are covenantal, we don’t have written contracts with guidelines in them. The relationship between a parent and child is definitely covenantal, as children and their parents often disagree on what the rules of their relationship should be. The very nature of a covenant is unclear. We don’t always get what we deserve in a covenant, because a covenant is based on love. That is just how a covenant works, there is no fair or un-fair just love. We can be sure that in a covenant with God’s love we will get more than we deserve.
And this is the night when we renew our covenant with God through remembering the death and resurrection of his son, Jesus Christ. He sent Jesus down to earth to be a human to fulfill his covenant with us. And we, humanity, did not understand this and killed the only Son of God. However, this act of violence is rewarded with eternal salvation. The only thing we need to do to share in this salvation is to be baptized into God’s love. The love that is so wide and gracious that He repays our foolishness with salvation through his Son Jesus Christ.
So it is only fitting then that tonight we would baptize two people, Matt Argon and Michael Broughton, to bring them fully into the salvation of Christ. Also this is the night we will renew our own baptismal vows as we say together the Baptismal Covenant. I pray tonight that when we say these words that we will rest in the knowledge of our own salvation through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!