Why Is this Night Different from All Other Nights? Genesis 1:1-2:2; Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13; Exodus 14:10-15:1; Ezekiel 36:24-28; Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 28:1-10 Easter Vigil, April 10, 2004 The Rev. William V. Livingston, Rector Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi Why is this night different from all other nights? With a young child asking the question, so begins the Jewish Seder meal, in which Jews for over 3000 years, continuing today, have, retold the story of God's momentous salvation of the Israelite exodus from bondage in Egypt and deliverance to the promised land. As we gathered outside to kindle the new fire from which we lit the Paschal Candle, the same question could be asked. And, we answered this hypothetical question with the opening address: Dear Friends in Christ: On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer. For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which, by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death. As we know through life experience, momentous life crises sometimes change us for the better. Dramatic moments can turn deep sorrow to joy overflowing, distress into transcendent peace. The results of these moments, however, depend upon our environment and our inner disposition. The people and events that step into these moments of change are just as important as an inner sense of balance. Tonight, we gather to experience a dramatic event that has forever changed the world and can, has, and will change us. An indescribable event forever changed the women who visited the tomb of their beloved master. They came to grieve. They left with a message that would change the world. Resurrection is not a departure from God's way with us but a continuation of God's creation, restoration, calling, deliverance, prophets, living among us, loving us to death, offering new life. The story of Easter, the story of the empty tomb, the story of resurrection is not just that the dead one is on the loose! At the heart of this story, in fact at the heart of the whole history of God's work in the world, is new life for all of us. As in ALL of us: the living and the dead. So it is tonight we hear of life in the story of creation of life itself; in the Flood and the gift of the Rainbow as a promise of life for all people and every living creature; in the Exodus and the promise of new life for the people of God outside the Egyptian empire with its endless production of bricks made without straw; with Ezekiel and the promise to gather the peoples from all the nations and to restore them to life in the promised land; and Paul's letter to the Romans and the promise of life through baptism. The problem is that each of these stories is about people a lot like us, the sort of folk who like to believe that you can have resurrection and still have the world as it was yesterday. We want to have Easter and still have our world undisturbed by resurrection. We are amazingly well adjusted to the same old world. I think that's why Matthew says that when Jesus died on the cross, the whole earth shook and as the two Marys made their way to the tomb, once again, the earth shook. Easter is an earthquake with doors shaken off tombs and dead people walking the streets, the stone rolled away by the ruckus and an imprudent angel sitting on it. We modern types, in our scientific rationality try to "explain"the resurrection. You cannot "explain" the resurrection. Resurrection explains us. The truth of Jesus tells on the faces of the befuddled disciples who witnessed it. Not one of them expected, wanted Easter. Death, defeat, while regrettable, are utterly explainable. Easter is not about the resuscitation of a dead body nor about Plato's "immortality of the soul," some divine spark that endures after the end. Easter is about God, not God as an empathetic but ineffective good friend, or some inner experience, but God who creates a way when there was no way, a God who makes war on evil until evil is undone, a God who raises dead Jesus just to show us who's in charge here. On the cross, the world did all it could to Jesus. At Easter, God did all God could to the world. And the earth shook. Tonight, the tremors continue. On this night, heaven and earth are joined, and we can be reconciled to God. That is really what God offers us tonight. We are bound to the earth, but God invites us to be citizens of heaven. We may have wandered far astray, but God calls us to be reconciled. Come home! God says to us. Christ is risen! And you are delivered from the gloom of sin; you are restored to grace and holiness of life. Throughout the stories we have heard this evening, throughout the liturgy of this evening light is an extremely important part. It symbolizes the passing from death into life, from darkness into light. In creation, God said, "Let there be light", and there was light. The light of the rainbow following the Flood evidenced God's love for creation. God's pillar of light guided the Israelites in their journey to freedom. In the resurrection the angel is described as "his appearance was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow." Light blinds or reveals. The guards were blinded because of their fear. They "became like dead men." The women saw the Lord because of the light of faith. The Lord was revealed to them because of their faith. Tonight, from the light of the new fire, we lit the Paschal candle which burns to remind us that Christ, the light of the world, is risen indeed. From the Paschal candle, we lit our torches and other candles around us and lit our Altar candles to remind us we are about the light of Christ. It may be that sometimes we can only see this light in the darkness. Now that all the lights are on in this space, it is harder to see its flame. It may be that sometimes we need to go deeper into the darkness to see, to find, to rediscover this light of Christ that God has placed inside of us in our Baptism. You don't explain the Resurrection. You witness it. That's why the Risen Christ appeared first to his own disciples. They had heard him teach, seen him heal, watched as he loved the poor and attacked the rich, watched him be arrested by the soldiers, tried by the judge, and crucified. When the stone was rolled away, and the earth shook we got our first glimpse of a new world, a world where death doesn't have the last word, a world where injustice is made right, and innocent suffering is vindicated by the intrusion of a powerful God. Each of us has or has had our sufferings, our trials, our struggles. Easter won't make them go away. That's resuscitation, but in the light of Easter, in the Resurrection, God shakes them at their core. In your mind, image the scene at the empty tomb. Image the joy and fear of the women. Then, let us run to meet our future, as it were, knowing that it has been unalterably changed for the better, that God, in some mysterious way, has rolled back the hindering stone that barred us from entering eternal life. Let us keep the light we have witnessed tonight shining as we return to our homes. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness.