The Great Vigil of Easter, April 3rd, 2010
Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. (3 X)
Happy Easter-we've made it through, and that's really all there is to say, but of course... I'll go on.
On Palm Sunday we read the whole crucifixion narrative, in case people don't come back on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. The church is anxious that people not skip from Jesus walking up to Jerusalem and then rising on Easter omitting the cruifixion, but on this day the church is even more anxious. Suppose people didn't know the whole history of salvation. The Prayer book offers 9 possible readings, but sometimes 12 even are done, so our 5 here are a mere token of the whole. The church wants people to know of wondrous deeds that God had done for our forebears, and that God's deeds were known and to be celebrated.
How best to respond to God's great deeds? Hearing them as part of our own history, the church wants to tell the story and have additional folks sign right up, and so Sabina Shu-Jiao Li has just done that, with the support of her family, friends, and this community. The reason any of us would do that is explained in the psalmist's line: "As the deer longs for the water-brooks, so longs my soul for you, O God." Hence we process to the font, both accompanying Sabina, and also marching to symbolically to God, but our marching tune is really "And I want to be in that number when the saints go marching in."
In the earliest days of the church before the church was legal, people were at great risk from the Roman Empire and its lions. If you were caught as a Christian, the Romans could condemn you to a battle with lions, to see whether your God would rescue you. You were guaranteed, though, as a witness to your faith, a direct entrance to Heaven, but people still tried to avoid that path. What made you vulnerable as a Christian was knowing the Creed, If you were tortured and you knew it, then the lions could be your next stop. The church therefore thought it unfair for anyone to hear, mark, or learn (reading wasn't so much done and inwardly digesting seemed more ironic perhaps than they wanted to deal with yet) the creed until you were baptized. Baptism was its own guarantee as a route to Heaven, so death by lions wasn't a risk until after baptism. The pattern then for joining the church was a three-year course of study, usually done in families and small groups, as catechumens. People would stay through the weekly Sunday services through the readings and the sermon, but would then leave for the proclamation of the creed and the gathering at table for the Eucharistic fellowship.
Then three years later, early, early on Easter morning, at the Vigil, properly done around 4 am, so that Easter and sunrise would happen together, the ancients being no fools about both symbols and retooling others' good practices, or about hedging their bets, they would do this whole service through the readings of the past, teach people the creed in this traditional question-answer teaching method, baptize them, and then bring them through the proclamation of Easter, its Gospel, to join the table fellowship of the foretaste of Heaven. (One would have thought the Romans could have picked off these groups wholesale on Easter morning, but there is no record that that happened ever.) It does make a long service, though, and it's like no other one in the church year.
We take our time to tell stories and to make an event dramatic enough to buoy people up and to remember, as we go out to regular life and times. The focus is not on the hour and ten minutes, and you'd better be done or else shape of service, but on our communal history, our growing present, and the life everlasting to come, feast and all. The feast is never adequately represented to me by the church's regular use of virtual Styrofoam or fish food at this table, though homemade bread helps considerably, and I read this quote in the authorized manual for doing this service, "some Episcopal churches use champagne for this Eucharist"-do they now? My feast needs garlic and probably chocolate, so we proceed to a jolly human feast downstairs for all. It's a real party, with real food-no wine at all, sorry- but a real meal many of us have cooked ourselves and brought in to share for EVERYONE. It is the less metaphorical version of what we do at this table, this table where everyone is welcome.
When we were talking about music and sounds for this service, we asked John Hooker, who wrote this mass for us for our 125th anniversary two years ago, to add some music for the Easter acclamation time, he replied, "90 seconds from darkness to light?" Exactly. Exactly. Music, glorious brass quintet (thank you!!!), bells, and light take us each and all from darkness to light. Then we give thanks together, eat together, and --have no doubt-- ALL, that is everyone, ALL are genuinely, hospitably, and eagerly invited to this table to be together, and if you're comfortable in sharing this meal-DO, if not, just fold your hands across you, and trust that I'll give you some sort of blessing that... won't creep you out. Then we clean up, celebrate together that Jesus Christ is risen, go proclaim that to the world, and THEN, we'll eat together downstairs. All are welcome and encouraged to come on down.
That God in Jesus lived as a human is a mystery; that God in Jesus died as a human is a mystery; that God in Jesus rose from the dead is a mystery. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women remembered that that's what Jesus had said, and reminded the apostles of that. The 11 didn't take the women seriously, but Peter having blown his witness the night before the crucifixion, ran to just check. He saw the linen grave clothes by themselves, and went home, amazed at what had happened. He didn't claim the information aloud yet, nor share it, but the women and Peter got what had happened. They didn't understand it, but they witnessed it, and, in their groups together, worked out what had happened, what it meant, and how to go on. That their friend had overcome death and risen from the dead, made no sense, and had no precedent-other than they'd have remembered Jesus' raising Lazarus from the dead, so they were more prepared for God's action in overcoming death than most of us. For God to show that with God even sin and death, the human universals (not everyone does pay taxes...) were overcome once for all was, and is, and is to be a mystery, but one to be absorbed, considered, and praised with all the energy and thanks can muster. So let's move along, continuing this glorious celebration
Alleluia, Christ is risen; The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia, Xristos avesti; alnthws anesti. Alleluia. In Truth he is risen. Alleluia. Good News.
© Katharine C. Black, 3 April 2010
