This is the Night (Great Vigil of Easter)

“This is the Night”
The Great Vigil of Easter
20 April 2019 8:00 p.m. Sung Eucharist with Holy Baptism

Parish Church of Trinity, Ashland (Oregon)

Gen 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation] ; Exod 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea] ; Isa 55:1-11 [Salvation offered to all] ; Ezek 37:1-14 [Valley of dry bones] ; Rom 6:3-11 ;   Psa 114 ; Matt 28:1-10

May the light of Christ, rising in glory,
banish all darkness from our hearts and minds.   Amen.

It begins in darkness.

The Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) set the date of Easter as the first Sunday following the full moon that falls on or after the spring equinox.  Jesus rose on a Sunday, just after his death at Passover, a festival set by the full moon after Spring equinox.  In practical counting, the date of the full moon, because it changes from time zone to time zone, is counted as 14 days after no moon at all is visible.  The counting starts in the darkness of the new moon.   

The day itself, as in most ancient calendars, begins at sundown.  As we read in the creation story tonight, the evening was, the morning was, the first day.  Easter Sunday begins in the darkness after the sun is fully set on Saturday.   

It begins in darkness. 

The Great Vigil of Easter, the heart of the Christian year, and mother of all our celebrations, begins in darkness before the New Fire is lit.  The Paschal Candle is blessed and lit, and the darkness begins to yield. 

In Easter, we celebrate the coming of the light in the darkness.  And we learn that what St. John says is true, "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it."

The Great Easter Proclamation, the ancient hymn the Exsultet we sang tonight, says best whatever anyone might preach at this time: 

This is the night, when you brought our parents… out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land…. when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life… when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave…  when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away… when earth and heaven are joined and we are reconciled to God. 

The New Fire lights the Paschal Candle, and lights the aumbry’s presence lamp indicating the presence of the body and blood of Christ.  The Paschal Candle will light our little Church throughout the Great Fifty Days and then come out for all baptisms and funerals throughout the year.  Both are a symbol of the great light, Christ, a pillar of fire in our desert, light in our darkness.  As the Exsultet continues,

May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning-he who gives his light to all creation…

And yet, it all begins in darkness

All spiritual growth and renewal begins, at least in part, in darkness.  Plato said anyone wishing enlightenment must first undergo aporeia—an acknowledgment of ignorance.  AA’s first step is that we admitted we were powerless and our lives unmanageable.  There can be no spiritual answers where there is not first a spiritual question, no nourishment where we are not first famished.  Death must precede life, you have to lose yourself to find yourself. 

It begins in darkness: Christ betrayed, Christ tortured, Christ killed.  And then light dawns with the unexpected and startlingly unique act of God, God’s ultimate joke on the powers of darkness:  Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed. 

Risen Jesus is more alive than any of his friends ever remembered him in Galilee and Jerusalem.   More alive, not less.  This is no ghost, reanimated corpse, or memory-based hallucination. 

One of Ralph Vaughan Williams Five Mystical Songs is a setting of 17th century Anglican priest and poet George Herbert's poem Easter:

Rise heart; thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise without delays,

Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise with him mayst rise:

That, as death calcined thee to dust,

His life may make thee gold, and much more just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part with all thy art.

The cross taught all wood to resound his name, who bore the same.

His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key

Is best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song pleasant and long:

Or since all music is but three parts vied and multiplied;

O let thy blest Spirit bear a part,

And make up our defects with his sweet art.

It starts in silence, but it ends in song.  It starts in darkness, but it ends in light. 

Thanks be to God.

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