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Trinity Episcopal Church Hattiesburg, Mississippi The Great Vigil of Easter With Baptism April 7, 2007 Go To Trinity's Home Page

Collect of the Day
Psalm 114
Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-10
From the Revised Common Lectionary as Adapted for Use by the Episcopal Church
and Authorized by the 75 th General Convention of the ECUSA

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. (Luke 24:1-10)

God Among Us Again!
The Rev. Dr. Bill Stroop

     “Expect the unexpected.” That is one of the most common oxymorons in the English language. But we hear it all the time. I suppose the intent is to make us aware that something out of the ordinary can always happen. That may seem reasonable, but the flaw with anticipating the unexpected is that it does not account for the phenomenon of the “black swan.”

     A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations. Most people expect all swans to be white because that’s what their experience tells them should be the case; a black swan is by definition a surprise.

     Nearly everything about Easter is like that black swan. The Great Vigil of Easter and Resurrection Sunday that follow, are the greatest services of the Church year. But Easter comes at a time nearly every year.[1] We expect it, but unless we look at a calendar, or use that awful table in the prayer book for calculating the date of Easter Sunday, we do not know exactly when it will come. That is because Easter is set by the moon. It falls on the first Sunday after the first moon on or after the spring equinox. This makes ancient sense, because Easter will then coincide with the new growth of spring when everything comes alive. But to us modern folk, Easter comes unexpectedly, because we have lost any kind of real connection to ancient rhythms of the lunar cycle, and the occurance of the four equinoxes.

     Perhaps there is a message there for us moderns. Having Easter fall on a different day each year, helps us remember that the day itself points to something unexpected and completely new.

     The writer of Luke’s Gospel tells us that having laid Jesus’ body in the tomb just before sundown on the Day of Preparation, the women attending Jesus’ death had gone home to prepare spices. The women then went to the tomb the morning after the Sabbath to apply those spices to Jesus’ body and shroud it in the first stage of Jewish burial.

     I imagine that one woman, perhaps Mary of Magdala, left her home first, and went to the home of the second, perhaps Mary, the mother of James. I imagine few words were spoken between them as they went to the third woman’s home; they knew what they were going to do; what they would see that day. Holding the spices they had prepared, they headed through the pre-dawn mist of the early morning hours, they arrived at the tomb.

     I don’t know what they expected to find, other than the tomb. In Luke’s account of this story there are no Roman soldiers guarding the entrance of the tomb. The women apparently went there, expecting that they could roll the great round stone away themselves.

     They went to the tomb expecting to see the white swan, but they encountered a black one: the rock was already rolled away! Puzzled, they entered the tomb, probably quite unnerved by the situation. But they were most certainly expecting to see the shrouded body lying on the carved stone shelf of the damp, cold stone walls of the burial chamber. Instead, they were met by two men in dazzling white garments. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”

     It’s a remarkable story. So remarkable, that some people – including faithful Christians – have trouble understanding it. In his book, Resurrection: Myth or Reality? Jack Spong, the former Bishop of Newark, New Jersey, writes this about the death of Jesus: “Jesus died alone. He died the death of a publicly executed criminal. His body probably received the typical treatment given to those so unfortunate as to fall into that category. He was removed from the instrument of execution, placed into a common grave, and covered over. No records were kept, for no value was attached to those who had been executed. Bodies did not last long … In time Nature [reclaimed] its own resources.”[2]

     And of the resurrection he writes, “ … God claimed the life of Jesus. And his life, now part of God, was available to them forever, as God.” [3] Spong believes that the image of Jesus as resurrected Lord came to the disciples in the meals they shared together after Jesus’ death and as they reflected upon his life and ministry and after they learned to lov the ones Jesus loved, namely, the least of God’s children. [4]. The resurrection, Spong says, had nothing to do with empty tombs or feeling the wounds of Christ. It had nothing to do with physical reality. It had to do with arriving at the understanding that Jesus made God real to human beings, and that God had assumed the life of Jesus into the Divine nature.

     I find it interesting that in his rational approach to historicize the resurrection, Spong comes down in almost the same place as our gospel text puts those who experience the resurrected Lord. Something extraordinary happened on the road to Emmaus that caused the disciples to recognize Jesus not in his teaching, but in the symbolic act of breaking bread with them. He had opened their hearts with the scripture, but it was only in the physical act of eating together that they finally ‘got it.’ In that moment, Jesus became the incarnate God to those at table with him.

     Truth be told, none of us can say with any certainty at all what happened on that first Easter day. We can talk about the effects of developing a belief in Jesus as the incarnate God, and in the incredible power of God’s love. We can talk the effects of it, but we can only guess about its factual beginning.

     The death and resurrection of Jesus are things way beyond human understanding. They are beyond time and space and therefore beyond our ability to express in words. But, like the women and the disciples to whom Jesus appeared, all we can do is stand in awe of the effect of the thing called resurrection. And about the only response we can make is to utter a simple “yes” or “no” as to its validity and meaning. As for me, I speak my “yes” and I try as best as I can to live into the power of the resurrection in my life.

     There is a family among us tonight who has chosen to utter “yes” to the resurrection, and have their infant daughter baptized into the Christian family – into the faith community of Trinity Episcopal Church. The parents and Godparents of Piper Lauren Henley are people who heard that mysterious call from the cross and from the tomb that speaks to the power of resurrection. They and their sponsors have said, “yes” to that call.

     Being a Christian is both difficult and easy. It is difficult to be a Christian and remain who we are with our identities intact, because God does not ask for our time, money, labor, but for our very selves.[5] Because God asks for everything, we have no choice but to be transformed by God. But that is what makes Christianity easy. It is our nature to be transformed. We are meant to be transformed by the love and depth of God.

     The transformation is evident in what we do. When we feed the hungry, we feed Christ; when we give clothing to the naked, water to the thirsty, companionship and friendship to the despondent, we give to Christ himself. God came and dwelt in the least of our brothers and sisters. Jesus, the new incarnation, took the risks and died at the hands of a heartless human culture.

     But his resurrection shows how we can live a new life with each other in this world, and with God in the next. Baptism from the beginning describes an action involving the use of water that causes a profound transformation in the persons Baptized. St. Paul wrote with the understanding that Baptism provides a way to participate in the very death and resurrection of Jesus. Through the symbolic use of water, and in the presence of the Christian community, Piper Lauren Henley will emerge from the water of Baptism as new creations, incorporated into the Body of Christ. And all of us will renew our commitment to Christ and the Church and promise to support one another along our Christian journeys.

     The resurrection itself is a mystery. But the power of the resurrection is something that can be felt by everyone who has been touched by the gospel story. It is the power of the gospel that can reach us today just like the persons in dazzling clothing helped the women remember Jesus’ words and first grasp that he had in fact risen from the dead.

     The experience of gathering as a community to bless and welcome newly baptized members and then to share in the Eucharistic celebration with them is part of the tradition of the Great Vigil and Easter morning. It is the time when we as a community feel the presence of the incarnate God still with us even though we killed him and buried him once. We gather together and use ordinary water, oil, bread, and wine to create something extra-ordinary: a community united spiritually through him, and with him, and in him; a community that sees the love of God to be so powerful that even death cannot contain it. We are empowered by that love, a love that knows no boundaries of time or space. A love that will reach toward us, and sustain us especially when we least expect it, when we experience those moments of the cross; times when we endure the betrayal of friends, the loss of loved ones, physical agony, fear, loneliness, and hopelessness.

     God is with us in those dark moments, when we least expect it. That is the message of Easter: God comes to us when we least expect it. But God comes. And for that I say, thanks be to God!

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Collect of the Day

O God, who made this most holy night to shine with the glory of the Lord’s resurrection: Stir up in your Church that Spirit of adoption which is given to us in Baptism, that we, being renewed both in body and mind, may worship you in sincerity and truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Psalm 114 In exitu Israel

1 Hallelujah!
When Israel came out of Egypt, *
the house of Jacob from a people of strange speech,

2 Judah became God’s sanctuary *
and Israel his dominion.

3 The sea beheld it and fled; *
Jordan turned and went back.

4 The mountains skipped like rams, *
and the little hills like young sheep.

5 What ailed you, O sea, that you fled? *
O Jordan, that you turned back?

6 You mountains, that you skipped like rams? *
you little hills like young sheep?

7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, *
at the presence of the God of Jacob,

8 Who turned the hard rock into a pool of water *
and flint-stone into a flowing spring.  

Romans 6:3-11

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. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Luke 24:1-10

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.” Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.

[1] This sermon was inspired by Barbara Brown Taylor. “The Unnatural Truth.” Home By Another Way. (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1999), 109-112.
[2] John Shelby Spong. Resurrection: Myth or Reality? (New York, NY: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 241.
[3] Spong, 257.
[4] Spong, 256.
[5] Malcom Young. “The Beatitudes: Is or Ought?” Preaching Through the Year of Matthew. Roger Alling and David Schlafer (eds). ( Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing)

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Copyright © 2007, William G. Stroop - All Rights Reserved.
5 April 2007

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