Easter Vigil Meditation

A Sermon by Cynthia Bauleke
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Bellingham, Washington

This day - Easter Eve - has an empty feel about it: suspended between the tragedy of Good Friday and the triumph of Easter Sunday. Surely, Christians ought to hide from the light this day. The past week has been almost too much to take in, from the palm procession on Sunday, to the enactment of the last supper on Thursday, followed by Jesus arrest in the garden, and then there was yesterday – those of you who were at the Good Friday service, and several of our confirmands were, know that Friday is almost too much, as we heard in story and mournful song, how Jesus was mocked, killed, nailed to a cross of wood, and left to die like a common criminal – while his friends watched, the end of all their hopes and ours – or so it seems.

Yet unlike those closest to Jesus, we already know the end of the story...

how in the morning after a Sabbath of grief, the women come to the tomb expecting to use their spices to anoint Christ’s body in death. These faithful and loving followers of Jesus, come ready to carry out the duties which death requires of them. They fall into their usual roles as they walk through the gray dawn to the tomb talking of the task before them, “Do we have everything we need, did you bring the oils? What if the Roman soldiers are there? How will we move that huge stone?” As they arrive they see the stone has already been moved. What luck! Entering the tomb, they are surprised by it’s emptiness, with no body to be found. At first they’re confused, not sure what it means. This isn’t what they expected! Before they can figure out what to do, two people in dazzling clothes appear, reminding them of all Jesus told them – about his own death and resurrection to new life. “Jesus is not here, but has risen,” they are told, and amazingly the women believe and rush out into the light of day to tell the others. . . . . But it seemed to these others an idle tale.

It still seems an idle tale to many. What does it seem to you? This is not an idle question, not just something to wonder about. What does this story mean to you? In this question there is much at stake. A great deal more than questions about death – although we have lots of questions about death, as attested to by the questions asked by the confirmands each week. What is at stake here are questions about life and how we are to live it.

For if this is just an idle tale, then we must live in a world where love of a man like Jesus is sentimental and powerless. If this is an idle tale told by gullible women, than we have nothing to say to a world in which children open fire on their playmates; we have nothing to say to the refugees of the world fleeing the ugliness and danger of war; we have nothing to say to our sisters and brothers living in despair.

If this tale is not idle, but alive, we find ourselves living in a different world, a world which contains evil and hatred and violence, but is also infused with the power of love and hope and promise. And we have something to say to those children on playgrounds, the refugees fleeing their homes, and the hopeless living with despair. We can tell them: There is a power stronger than death and that power is the love of God, unleashed on the world in the resurrection of Jesus, unleashed on the world in the lives of each one of us who follows Jesus – living out God’s love and hope and promise.

Admittedly, the Easter story is pretty incredible, often more than we can take in, and we cannot help but question the story. Yet this is not just an ancient story from another time and place. This is a story for our lives ... here ... now. For Easter is not just about Jesus, it is about you and me. Jesus has already claimed new life; now it is ours to claim new life. For Easter is about life, and how we choose to live.

Twelve young people sit before us, they have started their faith journeys guided by family, friends, and this community of faith. For ten weeks they have spent time with mentors and pastors

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talking about faith, about God, about church and each has struggled with putting into word or picture what they believe. These remarkable young people are as diverse in their faith, and the way they articulate it, as they are in their lives. Yet each one has intentionally undertaken this journey of confirmation which brings them here tonight and each has chosen to make a commitment to come closer to God, either by being baptized into Christ’s church or by being confirmed into membership in this community of faith.

Donel and I certainly haven’t been able to answer all of your questions, but we have attempted to help you learn ways of grappling with questions of faith which will be used again and again as you make choices of how you will claim and live out God’s good news in your lives, choices of how you will love, choices of how you will care for the earth, choices of how you will treat your fellow human beings and reach out to those in need, choices of how you will be in relationship with God.

I hope this time of study, of questioning, of paying attention to devotions and transformation in worship, has prepared you in some way to look for the surprise of God present in strange places and amazing ways in your lives, as you grow in your relationship with God.

We have used Marcus Borg’s book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, as a guide in worship through this lenten season. As is the way of most professors, Borg is rather academic. Yet at the end of the book Borg gets personal about faith. “To believe, is to give one’s heart to,” according to Borg. Our heart is the deepest level of our being. Believing, isn’t just giving intellectual agreement to something, it is not just head knowledge, it involves our hearts. Believing in Jesus means we give our heart, we give ourselves at our very deepest level to be in relationship with Jesus, who is the living God, the side of God turned toward us, the face of God, the Lord who is Spirit in our midst. When we believe in Jesus, we give our hearts, this is how we move from learning about Jesus, to being in relationship with the Spirit of Christ. For Jesus is not just someone crucified and resurrected long ago, Jesus is very real, is very present in this moment, in this very room – and not just here, Jesus comes to us again and again in countless ways, loving us, and longing to be in relationship with each one of us.

Yet it is so easy to get caught up in life, and set our relationship with God aside. Anne Lamont is one of my favorite authors, partly because she is so irreverent and real in talking about her faith. She describes the rules of life this way: you must not have anything wrong with you . . . if you do have something wrong with you, you must get over it as soon as possible . . . if you can’t get over it, you must pretend that you have . . . if you can’t even pretend . . . you shouldn’t show up . . . if you are going to insist on showing up, you should at least have the decency to feel ashamed.” These are rules of the world, and too often we think these are rules of the church, but they are not. The world lies in telling us there is only one certain, specific way to be, and here, in this church, we seek to be a place that dispels that lie, a place where each one is welcome, no matter what’s wrong with us, a place where we are loved and encouraged to grow into all God has created us to be.

Confirmands, this community needs you. We need your enthusiasm, your hope, your creativity, your dreams, your questions, and your wisdom to keep us from becoming stale and set in our ways, and to remind us of important things we have either forgotten or never knew. Just by being here, you make a difference. And you need us, too. You need our wisdom, our hope, the grounding of those of us who follow Christ together to help through the challenges and the quagmires of life. We need each other to cry, and laugh, and pray, and sing, and move, and celebrate, and question, to support one another in our relationships with God, to encourage each other to live out the Good News of God’s love in our lives. For we know it is not an idle tale, the love of God is more powerful than death and gives us newness in life. If we claim this story, if we live it’s love and hope and promise, feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, healing the sick, binding up the brokenhearted, welcoming the stranger, working for justice, that is all the proof of resurrection this tired old world will ever need.

Thanks be to God.