Easter Vigil B March 30, 2024
Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13 [The Flood]
Genesis 22:1-18 [Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea]
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]
Baruch 3:9-15, 3:32-4:4 or Proverbs 8:1-8, 19-21; 9:4b-6 [Learn wisdom and live]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]
Zephaniah 3:14-20 [The gathering of God's people]
Romans 6:3-11
Mark 16:1-8
To do an inclusive homily for the Vigil, I would like for us visualize a special rosary consisting of beads, and each bead on this rosary represents an event of memory in how our relationship with God has been understood and record in Holy Scriptures. Let us ponder the inherited insights which we have received to inform the stories of our past. Our identity as people has been forged within these great stories and in the Vigil event we return to review these story milestones.
Creation
Our origin story of creation is obvious insight that all that has ever been has come from some great BEFORE. How does awareness of differentiation happen within the plenitude of everything? The Genesis story says it happens when speaking arises. God says, and speech creates the awareness of differentiation of all things. And human beings are at the top of the chain of beings and human beings are speaking beings, beings who name the diversities within their environment. The creation story includes the insight of lost innocence in humanity discovering moral significance, with the real freedom to make bad decisions.
The Flood
The next bead on our rosary of salvation history ponders the circumstances of humanity having the freedom to be so evil that there is a need to start over with but a remnant of people and animals. The story about the great Flood should be seen from the view of the gift of the rainbow in the insight revealed about God. God does not destroy humanity even when humanity interprets the furies of Nature as punishment. We are often caught in the conflict of the systems of nature and the human community, often being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but the rainbow is the promise of life after life, and life after much death and destruction within this glorious system of the free play of probabilities.
Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac
Humanity has had to deal with the issue that time and aging means perpetual loss. Life is perpetually the loss of the state of what comes before to what comes after. How do we come to have useful meaning from the reality of perpetual loss? The past is sacrificed or voluntarily given up for the future. The story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is a story about having faith in God who gives us insights about how to sacrifice for beneficially outcomes. One can see in the story an insight about humanity moving from the false view of God wanting human sacrifice, to the obvious fact of carnivore societies where animals are the meat food for humans. In carnivore human society, animals are sacrificed for the sustenance of people. To be human is to deal with the reality of sacrifice. With faith, we endeavor to make what we must lose work for the benefit of a better tomorrow. Isaac became a sacrificed who lived, bespeaking the notion of being living sacrifices, namely, giving up selfish behaviors for the good of others.
Israel's Deliverance at the Red Sea
There is something sad about needing fantastic deliverance stories. Why? It is the sad fact of human history that people mistreat each other to the point of oppression and slavery. Divine intervention to save a people fleeing from slavery is a wonderful story but how much better it would be for people to treat each other with kindness and share the ample resources of the world? The Bible is often story about humanity's own misanthropic behaviors and therefore needing divine intervention to save us from ourselves. What about the poor chariot drivers who were killed in the sea, each but doing the bidding of the Pharaoh who required them to do so? While the Red Sea story may seem like a heroic one, it is in fact a story about human hatred being overcome by drowning deaths. The human epic is the constant effort to escape from being enslaved, but also never to become those who use power to oppress or harm others. In our efforts against the selfish ego, we need to know graceful moments of being helped by the higher power.
Salvation is offered to all
The writer of Isaiah wrote about a call of God going to all nations. The seeming natural tendency for all people is to try to speak exclusively for God and make God into the totem of one's tribe or people, and even use God as propaganda for the legitimacy of one's own nation. For religion to be honest to God, God cannot be limited to any particular group of people.
Learn Wisdom and Live
The Hebrew Scriptures include wisdom writings. Wisdom is the human ability to use language and thinking to arrive at pragmatic love and justice in life. Wisdom is the discovery of the proper purpose of everything in life, especially in justice being the proper relationship between people.
A New Heart and New Spirit
The Psalmist requested a new heart and renewed spirit. The prophet wrote that the heart is above all things exceedingly wicked. Dealing with the worst of interior motives is a great human dilemma. If we believe that God made us good, how do we get to that which is our original goodness and act from that place? The prophet Ezekiel believe that there would be help for us to discover the deepest creational goodness within ourselves. The image of God upon us can be activated and found to be a new heart and new spirit.
The Valley of the Dry Bones
Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones is a poignant reminder that the situation for those who wrote the biblical books was more often than not dire and unfavorable. If one thinks that they Bible is a book for only the historical winners and triumphant, one is misreading it. Sometimes survival depends upon merely the vision of things being different, even ideal, even utopian and fantastic. For those who criticize people of faith for being people who spin stories of wish fulfillment, we might argue that part of the inherent condition of human goodness is to have hope. That hope always needs projective stories of what such hope might mean in the direction of what is ideal for humanity. The salvation story is a story about people being unapologetic about hope, and having hopeful stories motivate the direction of our future behaviors.
The Gathering of God's People
The gathering is actually a re-gathering. Sometimes we don't not know the value of being at home until we've lived away or in exile. The image of humanity in exile and away from the familiar is evocative of the state of alienation that we often find ourselves in. The gathering is the occasion for collective effervescence being energy of joy and hope in the experience of original blessing.
In the reading from the letter to the Roman, St. Paul writes the goal of Christian mysticism; identity with Christ, or identity with the image of God within each person. According to Paul, we are buried with Christ in his death and raised with him in his resurrection.
And finally, the empty tomb narrative. Christ is not in the tomb, he is risen to be known within each person. Christ is Risen Indeed! In you. Alleluia. Amen.
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