Easter Vigil, 2001

Trinity Church, Princeton NJ

Readings: Matthew 20:1-10; Romans 6:3-11

"The Day of Resurrection!
Earth, tell it out abroad"⁽¹⁾
The day of resurrection: today we tell it abroad
that Christ our Lord is risen. Alleluia!

From the very first day of resurrection, almost 2000 years ago,
Easter
has been a time for telling,
a time for telling
of the glorious resurrection
of our Savior Jesus Christ.
But Easter has also been
a time
of mixed emotions.

It was that in-between time
between night and day,
when the birds have begun to chirp quietly
but the moon still hangs bright in the half-light,
when the chill of the ground seeps upwards in fog,
and nothing is plain, nothing is clear.
It was that in-between time
when Mary the Magdalene
and Mary the mother of James
came to the place
where Jesus' body
had been laid.
We don't know
what they were planning,
we don't know
what they were thinking,
maybe
they just wanted to see it, wanted to see
one more time
the place
where he had been laid.
Maybe, like many of the things.
we do
in in-between times,
they we just trying to keep place,
to touch some sort of reality,
an island of certainty
in the river of grief
which threatened
to drown them. They came to the place
where Jesus' body
had been laid.
And when they came to that place
a rocky tomb
in a grave filled garden,
they found -
- not the certainty
of cold stone
and dead flesh,
- not the ending of a story
and closure
for their grief -
but earthquake and angel
and the yawning chasm
of an
empty
grave.
Like lightning, like snow
were the only words
they could find
to describe the angel;
a great earthquake,
the rending of earth and heaven
which rolled back the stone guarding death
and loosed life
into the world.

Was it any wonder
that they were afraid?

And the angel's words
"Fear not"
were of little comfort. They knew those words,
knew them well
from the lips of their friend,
the third Mary, mother
of Christ.
"Fear not"
the angel had said to her,
"Fear not,
for you have found favor with God,
and you will bear a son."
Young, unmarried,
the angel's message
was a mixed blessing then,
and a mixed blessing now.
Because if there had been no angel,
no earthquake
no stone
rolled away,
life, and grief
could have continued
on their course,
painful,
but certain.

But instead,
an angel, an empty tomb,
and an urgent message,
a message
which they knew only too well
would shatter the world
as they knew it.
If death is not sure,
what about life?
This is a dangerous message,
dangerous news.

"Go, quickly,
and tell the disciples that
He is risen
from the dead."

Full of fear
full of joy,
emotions
churning around inside them,
they ran
to tell
the news.

Easter
is a time
of mixed
emotions.
Not only
for the two Marys
but for us
as well.

The journey through Lent
to Easter
is a hard one.
Six weeks ago, we knelt in this church
to receive
the mark of ashes, tracing a cross
on our foreheads;
it has been six short weeks
since we tasted the dust of death
which first turned us
toward Jerusalem.
We have faced temptation, we have talked
about sin.
We have celebrated, waving palms
and following
a donkey;
we have stood in silence
as witnesses
of a man
hung to die.
Death
has been all around us:
for six long weeks,
slowly but surely,
we have wound our way
to the cross.

And now, with organ fanfare and
burst of light,
we launch into celebration.
And before we quite know
what we are saying
the words are on our lips.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!

We understand death,
some of us all too well,
but this resurrection...
it's a whole lot harder
to grasp.

A couple of years ago
I came across a book called
The Physics of Immortality
by Frank J. Tipler.⁽²⁾
Using the theories of quantum cosmology,
Tipler argues
that the consequence of Omega Point Theory,
which is a testable physical theory,
the consequence of Omega Point Theory
is the resurrection
of all human beings.
He backs up his arguments
with lots of diagrams and over a hundred pages of mathematical proofs,
and while it's all intellectually fascinating
when it comes down to it,
Tipler misses the point.
You see, as far he is concerned
the human person
is simply a biochemical machine,
and religion becomes simply
a branch
of science;
his is a world of facts;
his is a world
in which meaning
seems to be largely absent.

Tipler misses the point.
Because the question I hear being asked more and more
is not just,
is resurrection true,
but if it's true,
what does it mean?
What does it mean now
when I'm facing
life?
What does it mean now
when I'm facing
death?

Resurrection
is not simply
about the disposition of molecules
for eternity; Omega Point Theory
has little to offer us
in those in-between times
when joy
joins with fear.

Where as
the resurrection
we know as Christians,
the resurrection
we celebrate,
the rising to life
of the crucified one,
turns full face
toward the ambiguity
of the world we live in,
it turns full face
toward the ambiguity
of our lives,
lives scarred by pain
and beautified
by love - and sometimes
the two
are not a whole lot different,
the resurrection turns full face
toward the ambiguity
which surrounds us,
and lets loose life
in the midst of it!

No matter
where we have been, no matter
where we are going,
Easter lets loose
the life giving force of God
to work among us.

It's dangerous stuff.

Because that life, once let loose,
can never
be conquered,
that life
can never be bound.
Death
no longer
has the power to control us,
the tables have been turned.
The powerful
are brought down,
and the lowly
lifted up.
The hungry
are filled with good things,
and the rich sent away empty.

This is a dangerous message;
no wonder we hear it
with mixed emotions.

And it's a hard message.
Because the only way to this resurrection life
is the way of death.
The death of Jesus
on the cross,
and our death
with him.

In baptism, we are buried
with Christ.
It is a serious matter,
and a costly one.
In baptism
we turn
from sin, we turn
from envy
and greed
and bitterness.
We sign
our own death warrants.

But that's not the end.
Because in baptism we take hold
of the promise of Easter.
Just as we died
with Christ, so too
are we raised with Christ.
We may sign our death warrants,
but God signs us
into resurrected life.
And while we will not know
the fullness of that resurrection
until after our physical deaths,
we taste it now. We know
the life of God
let loose in us,
we know the love of God
engulfing us.
We have just baptized
three babies,
three small human beings
just beginning their lives in this world.
And all this talk
of death
may seem kind of morbid
in the face of these precious and wonderful
new lives.
But mixed emotions
a part of all
of our lives.
Already they have experienced pain
and they have experienced pleasure;
they have screwed up their faces
red with frustration
and anger.
Smiles have played on their lips
and they have stretched with pleasure.
And we who love them
have experienced fear,
and we have experienced joy.
We've fears for them
and we've wondered at them.
And we will continue to do so
the whole of their lives,
and the whole of ours.
And so when we baptized them
we marked them
with the sign of the cross
a sign of death,
because it is only
as they are joined,
as we are joined,
with the death of Christ
that we are joined
in his resurrection,
then
that we invited
the wild loving life of God
to be let loose
in their lives.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
It's dangerous news.
But its news
that the whole world
desperately
needs to hear.
Tell it to your children
and to your children's children,
tell it to your neighbors,
your enemies,
your friends.
The tables are turned;
death
has lost its sting;
life
is let loose among us.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Raewynne J. Whiteley
14 April 2001

1. John of Damascus, tr. John Mason Neale; The Hymnal 1982, no. 210.

2. New York: Doubleday, 1994.