Then As Now

Homily from the Easter Vigil, Emmanuel Episcopal 2011

Listen: Easter Vigil Homily 2011

As churches go, ours tends to be what some might describe as cerebral.  We are a thinking bunch, heavily shaped and influenced by 21^st century rationality.   It does not mean that we have a lack of mystics in our midst.  We do indeed.  Mystery abounds in wide variety among our folk.  If there is one thing we Episcopalians know for sure, it is that we do not know many things for sure.

And so it is with the resurrection of the body.

• When I die, does my body, filled with plastic embalming fluid, sealed in a steal casket, sit and wait for the resurrection of that very physical body?  

• Does the plastic embalming break away and flutter to earth as new life is breathed onto my rotting bones and I am caught up in the air to be with Christ?  

• If I am cremated, are all my ashes, scattered across the shores of Lake Marie in the Medicine Bow Range outside of Laramie Wyoming, the place where my wife and brother have been instructed to scatter them, will those ashes, long absorbed by the soil, haven given their nutrients to the moss that feed the small fish on the shores of that lake, with those molecules be pulled back into one central location to reform into my body, only then to be caught up in the air with Christ? 

Things we do not know for sure.

This is the Easter Vigil.  Enacted in darkness.  The paschal flame, prepared ahead of time by our Fireman Tim Ford, is lit on cue.  The story of creation is scripted, read and chanted by what are essentially actors.  What we celebrate in the darkness this Saturday night is theater.  Theater.  There are no physical resurrections that are taking place here tonight, only remembrances, re-enactments and celebrations of things past.  And if you’ve been listening these past weeks, you’ve heard us say it; me to the children, Fr Gary to the adults.  Holy Week is a dramatization, and we are re-playing those events in the days prior to Christ death and resurrection 2000 years ago. 

Not too long ago, I was trying to wax eloquently about our Holy Week practice and one of our members, David Shattuck, a cradle Anglican, said he thought Holy Week was a lot of hooey.  “What’s the point?” he asked.  And though it sort of took me down a notch while I was trying to be all-spiritual, I suppose it is rarely a bad to thing to ask the “so what” of our rituals.  Why do we do this anyway?  What is the point?

There are two stories running side-by-side, concurrently weaving in and out of each other, one touching upon the other, being pulled in and out--a tug of war, a dance, a fight--between the life, death and resurrection of Jesus then and our own life, death and resurrection now.  

The "then" story is about actual people, 2000 years ago, who were swept up by an extra-ordinary teacher and healer whom they were convinced had to have come from God.  Twisted limbs were healed, the blind from birth could see, the self-righteous bullies were challenged in the most peculiar way.  Jesus was disarming and provocative at the same time.  They had never seen anyone like him.  Finally, a leader who challenged their cynicism, cynicism, which you and I both know, comes much too easily. 

Andrew Lloyd Webber, in his musical Jesus Christ Superstar, put these words into the mouth of Mary Magdalene:

I don't know how to love him, what to do, how to move him.  But I've been changed, really changed. I seem like someone else.  I'm the one who's always been so calm, so cool, running every show.  He scares me so.

Jesus was this source of answers for them, and not just intellectual ones, not just words that helped them win arguments, but answers about their own nature, and what mattered most in their life--language for suffering, grammar for the soul. 

And when we reenact that story, we are holding out for the chance, that by putting ourselves in that story again and again, that somehow we can encounter that Jesus in that same way, the one who changes you, enriches you in a way that no one else ever has, one who saves your life.  Here.  Now.  Holistically.  Saves you.

Maybe David Shattuck is right.  Maybe what we need is less of the re-enactment of Christ’s passion then, and instead, the creation of the story of his passion now; for you, for your children, your spouse, and your friends.  What we need now is for us to be the antagonist in a new story with a whole new cast of characters, bringing our own plot points, our own rising action, climax and dénouement.

And then the words of the Apostle Paul, a character in that story then, become words for our story now when he says, “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 slaves.”

The protagonist of these two stories remains the same.  It is the resurrected Jesus, back from the dead and active in this life.  Yes, often more elusive and transcendent than when in the first story.  Christ comes to us filtered through testaments and councils, wars and power struggles, evil and good popes, crusades and inquisitions, reformations and scientific revolutions. But he comes.  He is here.  He finds his way into the habitation of your mind and like Mary Magdalene, you can be changed, really changed. 

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and life that last forever.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.