The Vigil as a Rosary Bead of Salvation History

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

Lectionary Link

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.

Requiem for the Demise of the Great Vigil of Easter

Easter Vigil   B      April 4, 2015

Ex.14:10 Canticle 8, Ez  36:24-28 Psalm 42:1-7

Rom.6:3-11         Mark 16:1-8

 Lectionary Link

  The practice of the Easter Vigil has gone the way of being like Civil War buffs who like to dress up and re-enact the old battles.  It is a very specialized crowd who like to do this sort of thing and those who do it really get into it.

  The Easter Vigil is observed similarly in contexts where people have the Easter Vigil tradition but for most modern Christians, an actual Vigil is an unbearable liturgical marathon.  The Easter Vigil has given way to Easter Sunday services which are conducted in the mid-morning time slot and can have Easter egg hunts added to them.  A Vigil that greets Easter morning at the midnight hour is not compatible with modern time sensibilities and family schedules, so in the guilt to keep alive the most important liturgy of the ancient church, many of us present the Cliff Notes version of the Vigil or just plain eliminate most of the long readings from the Hebrew Scriptures.  We use the Vigil to get the baptisms "out of the way" so as save time for the Principal Easter Service on Easter day, which is quite ironic since the ancient church regarded the Easter Vigil to be the Principal Service of Easter.

  If there are baptisms for the Vigil one can be assured of more attendance because of extended families being present to witness and support the baptismal candidates.  But if there are no baptisms, most members have to decide on whether to go to two Easter services or just to one during the Easter Day mid-morning hours.

  I am a realist about the practice of the Easter Vigil even as I am kind of sentimental because I remember the celebration of the Easter Vigil in my seminary community where everyone was completely committed to the celebratory event.  (Also attendance was mandatory). But as in many things, what has a very specialized interest in communities of theological geeks, does not have general interest in the lay populace of most parishes.

  We are who we are and the Easter Vigil practice is what it is for us as we on this Eve celebrate the founding event of our very community identity.

  So tonight we keep the skeletal remains of an Easter Vigil alive in hopes that it may one day may have a renewed general relevance to the lives of more people.  Part of the lack of interest in the Vigil has to do with modernity in the society.  We assume general literacy and we assume immediate accessibility to all Christian knowledge through books and Google.  An annual liturgy in an illiterate populace was a really big deal; it is not such a “big deal” for us since we are inundated by all kinds of word events all of the time.  Our learning and catechesis is continuous and on-going and not limited to a climactic event where the only ones who are educated in the community perform the words for a non-literate lay people.  This situation partly has driven the Vigil to be the preference of the few theological geeky specialists and re-enactors.

  But with this disclaimer let us at least seek renewal in the constituting designs of the Vigil.

  First, in darkness we light the new fire for the Paschal Candle and proclaim, “The Light of Christ.”  We admit that the learning process is the continual movement from darkness into light.  Aha! I see! Christ is witness of our Surpassing Selves; Our Surpassing Selves stand before us as the possibility of many more experiences of, “Aha, I see!”  So in the light of Christ, you and I stand hopeful for more future insights.  I can really honestly get excited about new future insights.  Can you?

  Second, we have been constituted by the words of our lives.  Words have formed our identities.  Not all words have been given to us with equal weight and authority.  The biblical words have been given a privileged weight in the formation of our identities.  In the Vigil readings we acknowledge our formation in the great words of our tradition and we join to do it again because we want to promulgate the importance and identity forming power of these words for ourselves and all into the future.

  Third, we intersperse words with the special genre of words which we call prayer.  And the prayers are topical; we seek to invoke God into every corner of our human experience and the offered prayers of the vigil is the practice of the priestliness of the entire church praying  together.

  Fourth, we baptize and we renew baptismal vows.  We acknowledge the specific time and place of our initiation into a tradition of believing that God created us, loves us, forgives us and asks us to love one another.  We gather to acknowledge that we are “recovering” hypocrites.  Why?  Our baptismal values are so high and ideal, we can’t possibility say that we have completed them.  We preach and make vows toward higher values than we have attained.  And so we profess our cheerful “recovering” in our hypocrisy.  We will not give up the difficulty of our attaining of our values even while we know that we are surely failing.

  Fifth, we welcome new members into our fellowship and we give them our best words of value about the meaning of their lives.  We celebrate that the Gospel has succeeded in each generation since the time of Jesus and so even though we are different from people in the past, we share with them the common Christ-humanity with them tonight.

  Sixth, we welcome the day of hope, the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ.  We do it with a banquet meal, called Thanksgiving.  We are Thankful tonight that hope attained such a wonderful narrative in the resurrection of Christ.  We are thankful that we don’t have to “eat” alone.  We are thankful for this banquet meal given to us by Jesus to keep us together as the family of Christ and to be our constant aspiration for the entire world to be able to sit down at a table together in fellowship, with everyone having enough to eat and with everyone celebrating friendship and mutual regard because of the hope of Christ.

   Even though our Easter Vigil seems weak and impaired in our celebration of it, let us not forget the great constituting principles expressed in the Vigil liturgy.  We may escape attending a four hour Easter Vigil liturgy, we cannot escape the wonderful meanings of the Easter Vigil, the chief one being, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen.  The Lord is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!  Amen.