Sermon for the Easter Vigil

Now listen carefully! This is going to be short – but important!

Here we are at the Axis Mundi,
the Center of the Earth, indeed the Center of the Universe,
at the heart of our Faith.
Right now we are connecting in with an eternal moment of priceless worth,
because this is the pivotal point for all our Holy Week and Easter commemorations,
at the center of what gives us reason for being as Christians.

The Easter Vigil is poised between the death of Good Friday
and the resurrection of Easter Day,
weaving it all together in what has been called in the Apostolic Tradition
as the Paschal Mystery.

This is the liminal place between Christ’s death and resurrection,
and it is the most apt time for baptism.
that in-between place,
the transition between one day and the next,
at the end of the darkest night of death
and the beginning of the brightest day of new life.

For those of you who were here Palm Sunday,
you may remember what I said in the sermon:
I said Palm Sunday represents delusional hope,
and Good Friday is then the collapse of all our delusional hope,
crushed and nailed to the Cross.
Yet Good Friday is the necessary and beneficial collapse
of that delusional hope.

And then the Resurrection is the transcendence of this collapsed, delusional hope.
Easter is a revelation which could not be anticipated.
But we can’t get to Easter, to resurrection, by any other way
than through the collapse of delusional hope and the Cross of Good Friday.

Now we are at the transcendence point
represented for us in the sacrament of Baptism.
Baptism, I would like you to note, is not a one time event,
but rather it is an ongoing sacrament;
it is a state of being.

In baptism, the Apostle Paul tells us,
we are united with Jesus in his death and resurrection.
Baptism is the sign of our union with him,
the outward expression of what Jesus was talking about
when he said, “I am the Vine and you are the branches.”
In his letter to the Colossians, Paul wrote:
“You have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God,”
and in Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ;
it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.”

The implications of these statements are profound.
What does this say about our own lives, our deaths?
Jesus took the death for us.
In that one death, death has happened for all of us.

How can this be? Here we all are, sitting here very much alive.
Aren’t we too going to die? We see a lot of people dying all the time.

Well, yes, the body will die. We know that for sure.
But who we think we are in terms of our consciousness, our very essence,
has already had that kiss of death.
In the water of baptism we are buried with Christ in his death,
and by it we share in his resurrection.
The life we now live is resurrection life.

When this body wears out and falls away,
life is not ended; life is changed.

So now, at this moment, this very moment,
we are living in the resurrection.

Everyone needs to discover this for themselves,
and not just be told it.
For resurrection is transformation of our conscious awareness,
so that we get it, so that we realize
the truth and power of life in Christ.
Everyone needs to discover this for themselves.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!