The Great Vigil of Easter April 15, 2006 8:00 p.m. The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection Starkville, Mississippi In the Name of Jesus Christ, the Risen One. Amen. Alleluia! The Lord is risen.  [The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!]  We’ve made it! … We’ve made it! Finally our 40 days’ Lenten pilgrimage has rounded. We’ve made it across. We’ve made it to the other side. We’ve survived it … the wilderness … the dessert … the thorny and stony places … the solitude … the meandering … We’ve made it! … traveled so long … and persisted through it.  We lived it, … and the thing is … we’ve only just begun! … Tonight we mark the first celebration of Easter. We mark it by keeping the Feast … by saying and singing our first Alleluias! … by recounting the story of salvation, our story of salvation … by responding to holy scripture with sacred song … by celebrating in the rite of Baptism … by retelling the story of the risen Christ … by celebrating the end of the wilderness time, but realizing that the journey continues … because if it doesn’t … we’ll find ourselves still in the tomb … in the grave … or a locked in an upstairs room … with nothing there … no one else … no sustenance … alone … with nothing. …  … We’ve made it to Easter. This night, the sounds of “Alleluia!” echo throughout the universe … through most of the churches of the this world, big and small … from every mountaintop to the caverns of the earth; from the most desperate of darkened alleyways in the busiest and most bustling of the world’s cities, to the crawlspaces under the wood floors of farmhouses; from the banks of Nile and the Amazon through the babbling waterfalls of Tishimingo State Park and everywhere in between; from the beams and rafters of this very room, to the farthest reaches of interstellar space.  Tonight, if we truly believe it … if we hold fast to hope … if we fasten ourselves in for the wonderful ride … we may evermore make our song “Alleluia!” And it requires a lot of us. It’s costly.  It requires faith and hope and love. … faith that such an incredible story can be true … that what was dead, now lives … that what was gone is here, in our very midst … that what had been feared lost, was never really missing …  hope that the story is for us and includes us, that it continues, that it still reveals itself to us … love, that the story may be shared and participated in and lived out … all of which cycles around and makes it just the more real and true and able to be lived out. And we’re called through this faith and this hope and this love to live as Resurrection people, as Easter people … and as we do … the journey, the work, the self-denial, the humility, the humble service, the vulnerability, the advocacy, the suffering, the pain, the willingness to act, have all just begun … as we enter the tomb, seeing with new eyes, entering into places of darkness, and places of loss and confusion—seeing not prisons, but opportunity—all the while, delving into and resting sure in the mysteries of the faith, … and participating, that we might bring light, and scatter the darkness in and of those places of scarcity and compromise and depravity and longing and want and need … that we may not only testify to the Light of Christ, but share in it … bear it … for all to see … for all to partake … if they … if we … so choose.  The Exsultet, sung at the beginning of this night, reminds us that we are participants in the story, that we are very members—not just actors, not just players, but participants—in and partakers of the story of salvation … that we, some 2000 years down the road, find ourselves at the heart of the story of faith … the wonderful mystery … the unfolding of God’s redeeming work already accomplished and still being accomplished in the world—this night … here … in this very room … in and for that world out there—that world awaiting a message of hope and new life. “This is the night,” we hear; “This is the night … where God delivered our ancestors through the Red Sea into the land of promise; … when all who believe are delivered from sin and restored to holiness of life; … when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell and rose victorious from the grave; … when the captive prisoner is set free; … when the Good News of Christ redeems the world; … when wickedness is put to flight; … when sin is washed away; ... when innocence is returned to the fallen; ... when joy flows forth from those who mourn; ... and pride and hatred are cast out; … the night that brings peace and concord; ... when earth and heaven are joined and humankind is reconciled to God; … the night that joins every other night across all time and space, before it and beyond it … … … the moment—this night—now—when we’re called to make all of this more than just words … when we’re called to make it true, to make it real—a new reality, … to make “Easter” for all.  … This is the Night that was and is and is to be; and we can either choose to make an Easter life … to participate … to make it real … or not. … The journey has just begun. … … In a few moments, Gavin Olsen will stand amongst us to receive the sacrament of Baptism. As Children of the Living God, it is our belief that in Baptism, we find Easter life.  We die to old ways of being and rise from the waters, refreshed, renewed … made new.  … What an amazing night to celebrate this, to live it, to join in it, to make it! … What an amazing night … IF … If we can really make it so. … not through empty or passing promise, but through conviction and sincerity and by faith and with hope and in love. In and through baptism, we find our direction.  The initial confusion of the empty tomb and the disorientation of the recurring places of death that we encounter throughout our lives give way, more and more over time, to a clearer and more perfect path. This certainly doesn’t mean that there won’t be obstacles—big ones—along the way, or that everything will be hunky-dory, or that all sin and sadness are done away with, and that all is made rosy. Quite the contrary! … The danger of baptism—the wildness of it—is that it can plunge us further into the wilderness. … It should plunge us there, out of our seats, out of our places of comfort, out of our norms and our routines and our complicity and into the midst of darkness … that we may bear the light that is ours, not by right but by grace, to all places of obscurity. … Tonight, our shouts of “Alleluia!” compel us. They move us. They charge us to be transformed, to be changed, to be made new. And, tonight is not simply about our salvation.  It’s much more about the world outside the Easter tomb. … For tonight, the miracle has happened, and if we truly believe what we profess, then there is no place for us to linger in the empty tomb. Tonight, “Alleluia!” calls us from this place.  It throws us into that world out there to share the message of hope. It thrusts us to the dark places of the world, the dark places of our own lives, the dark places of our souls, and those of the world around us.  It thrusts us towards every waste land, every place of the forgotten or marginalized, to bring new life and new ways of being; and in so doing, we ourselves become an “Alleluia!” We become workers in the plan of salvation, participants in the redeeming work still playing out in our own day—the stories of old, meeting us square in the face—one story across the ages. … Tonight, we celebrate the world’s upending. Tonight, our Savior lives! Tonight and evermore, we are called to witness to this truth, and to make “Alleluia!” our song! … Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is risen. [The Lord is risen, indeed. Alleluia!]