Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, April 19, 2025

Romans 6:3-11+Psalm 114+Luke 24:1-12

At the beginning of this service, I chanted one of the oldest pieces of liturgical music that we have. The earliest version of the Exultet is from the 7th century, although there are references to the lighting of the new fire as early as the 2nd century and celebrating that flame as the rekindled, resurrected light of Christ. I don't have to tell you that I love history, and church history is, as the kids say, my jam.

The Exultet is, first, a praise of the light. But it also takes a step back and references the story of our salvation, from the restoration of Adam through the Exodus when the people of Israel were led by a pillar of fire through the Red Sea on dry ground. It remembers the Passover and how we, too, have passed over from bondage to sin and death into eternal life.

If the Exultet did not make it explicit enough, we then heard the salvation story, from the creation of the universe to humankind’s rejection of God's paradise through the Exodus and exile and the prophets' promise that God would breathe life back into God's people. This salvation story is all about God's repeated invitation, persistent attempts to restore and reconcile us to God and to each other. It is a love story. We are the ones who are playing hard to get because we would prefer to do things our way. Sure, we'll eat of the forbidden tree so that we can be like God. We'll control our own destiny and defy God's commands and end up enslaved and exiled.

But God never gives up on us. We may be a valley of dry bones scattered across the landscape, and still God is going to breathe life into us. It may be a bad metaphor, but God is like the hound of hell and will not stop until we are gathered together in those everlasting arms once again.

This is the night when all of this happened. God, who in human form absorbed all the evil and all the hate and all the recalcitrance and stubbornness of all of us, showed us that our death-dealing ways are no match for the love of God. The bonds of death are shattered, and we are, as Paul says, "united with (Christ) in a death like his, (and) we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Romans 6:5).

This is why, from the earliest days of the Church, this has been the time for converts to the faith to be baptized. Ben and all of us who are baptized have died, we are dead to sin and evil and brokenness of this world, and we are reborn in the waters of baptism. The waters of creation, the waters of the flood, the waters of the Red Sea, the waters of the Jordan. This Vigil reminds us that our baptism is, truly, as old as Creation itself. And God never gave up the pursuit to bring us home.

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels. This is the night.

Thanks be to God.