Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
The Lord
is risen indeed! Alleluia!
This year with our vigil lessons from the Hebrew Bible,
the Old Testament,
we
did something a little different, if you noticed.
Jack had an idea:
“My thought (he said) was to combine the idea
of "retelling our stories"
with
the way that we tell our stories seasonally –
Advent,
Christmas, Epiphany, etc.
So, I chose four stories from the vigil
selections and paired it with a season, starting
with Advent and running through Lent.
The stories…had a …connection to …seasonal
themes.
Then, at the end of the story, we sing a hymn
from that season…
What I like about the idea, from a musical
perspective,
is
that by singing songs that everyone loves and has sung many times before,
we
really connect people emotionally to this idea of story telling.
…Feeling
the different feelings that arise with the songs of the seasons
after
one of the stories, I think, could be very profound.“
Well, Hunt and I liked the idea and were engaged.
And so what I want to do here in a very short time
is
run a thread through all the readings as a sort of short catechism
describing
the spiritual rationale of the Church Year,
and especially to help us be clear about what we are doing
here and why.
So
fasten your seat belts. Here we
go!
The first lesson: the Valley of Dry Bones
God said to Ezekiel “These bones are the whole house of
Israel.
They say “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is
lost…”
Therefore prophesy, and say to them,
I am going to open your graces, and bring you up from your
graves, O my people. I will put my
spirit within you and your shall live…
then you shall know that I, the Lord have spoken and will
act.
Advent is a time of hope and anticipation of what is
coming.
When the Holy Spirit was poured out to all those waiting
in Jerusalem
after
the Resurrection on that Day of Pentecost,
the Holy Spirit came as the second advent of Christ, this
time as Christ in us.
We have waited with advent anticipation
for
the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus to become incarnate in us.
Hope.
The second lesson:
The Genesis Creation Story
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
On the sixth day God said,
“Let us make humankind in our image, according to our
likeness.”
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God
he created them.
And God saw that it was good.
Each Christmas either as the Gospel reading for Christmas
Day
or
for the first Sunday of the Christmas Season we hear the Prologue of John:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
All things were made through him,
and without him was not anything made that was made.
In him was life, and the life was the light of the world.
To as many as received him, he gave them power to become
children of God…
And the Word become flesh and dwelt among us, full of
grace and truth;
and we have beheld his glory…”
In the Christmas season we
celebrate the Incarnation, Emmanuel, God-with-us.
Incarnation, when you come to think of it, is an act of
self-creation.
The uncreated Light from the God-head, the fountain head,
the Source,
takes form and manifests among us.
Resurrection, when you come to think of it, is also an act
of self-creation.
Christmas – Christ in us, the hope of glory.
The third lesson: The Exodus Story
The story of God’s mighty acts
that bring about the liberation of an enslaved people:
“Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians.
Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the
Egyptians.
So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord.”
Epiphany is the manifestation of God.
The parting of the Red Sea was
another Epiphany/manifestation/a showing forth of
God’s power and glory in a long line of such manifestations.
The purpose of this story is for us to have an epiphany,
a
revelation, an awakening and get it that our salvation is an act of God and
we are liberated from bondage and death.
We are delivered from death
through the waters into new life – Resurrection Life.
The fourth lesson: A New Heart
“Thus says the Lord God: I will sprinkle clean water upon you,
and you shall be clean.
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put
within you.”
Lent is a time of penitence and repenting,
but it is God who works the action of repentance in us,
turning
us around from the destructive ways we go when on our own,
the
ways that complicate our own suffering.
God intervenes by putting a new heart in us,
a
heart that is open to turning to God,
and
a new Spirit, the Spirit of Resurrection Jesus.
And we are cleansed, purified and changed from stone to
flesh
so
that we may grow into our full human potential, which is the image of God.
Lent: God
works in us the process of repentance into new Life.
Now, the Epistle Reading from Romans chapter 6:
This
is the quintessential choice for baptisms at the Easter Vigil.
These words contain the glorious and mysterious truth
embedded in Baptism.
“We know that
Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again;
death
no longer has dominion over him.
The death he
died, he died to sin, once for all;
but
the life he lives, he lives to God.
So
you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
This is the definition of baptism, what has just happened
for Ron.
Our task is to realize this truth of our being,
not
just as an intellectual idea, nor a liturgical ritual,
but
as a heart knowledge, an experienced reality,
the
ultimate answer to the question, “Who am I?”
And finally the Gospel.
The women come to the tomb, and hear from two strange men
in
dazzling bright clothes that the body of Jesus is not there.
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
The women remember what Jesus had been teaching them,
although
the men won’t believe them and don’t get it yet.
This is only the beginning of the Resurrection story.
Notice that there is no actual Resurrection appearance by
Jesus yet.
We need to read the whole 24th chapter of Luke for
it all to make sense.
The story builds and builds slowly
as
the disciples are being prepared to grasp what has happened.
You must go read the rest of Luke 24.
May the recognition of Jesus in Resurrection build and
build in us
and
come to fullness in our hearts, our inmost being.
There you have it, the Church Year as a deliberate
progression of hope.
The Easter Season, the season of Resurrection,
begins
now and continues for 50 days, culminating on the 50th day
with
the ultimate Resurrection appearance on Pentecost.
Resurrection is the realization of our hope.
As it says in Colossians 1:27 Christ in you, the hope of glory.
Alleluia!
Christ is risen!
The Lord
is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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