Sermon for Easter Vigil
April 11, 2009
Texts: Exodus 14:10-15:1, Ezekiel 37:1-14
Remember your baptism? Might as well remember you first birthday. Sure it happened, but what rational adult would think it still matters? For most of us, it’s not even possible. We were baptized as infants. We had no choice in the matter, and we certainly carry no memory of it.
Perhaps our baptism is nothing more than luck. We are Christians because we were born into Christian families, because we were spoon-fed religious mythology, inculcated, indoctrinated, brainwashed before our minds had a chance to fully develop, before we learned to think for ourselves.
We’re adults now, able to make moral decisions without the threat of hellfire to keep us in line. We’re adults now. We don’t need to be coddled with the love of an invisible father figure. We can accept our mortality without the false-hope crutch of an afterlife. We’re adults now. We recognize the church for what it is: a social club for the betterment of society, a useful training ground for future productive citizens, a safety net should something go wrong, and a network of friends necessary for our health and happiness. Remember your baptism? Might as well remember your citizenship, it may inspire you to equal good.
But a few of us do remember our baptism, because we chose it. We were teens or maybe even adults when we made our choice. Someone in this room remembers what it was like to be pressed under the water, to feel it close over your head, and then be pulled back to the surface. We can remember our baptism, because we chose it.
We know the truth, and it has set us free. And now it’s our job to make sure everyone else knows it too, whether they like it or not. We have to hold it in front of their faces until they make a choice. Are you going to believe what I believe and be baptized the way I was baptized, or are you going to burn in hell? Which will it be? Eternal conscious torment, or join the church? Isn’t it interesting that for most people it’s a tough choice? What kind of wretched club are we running here? We have to threaten people with eternal damnation just to get them to join? Is this seriously what Jesus imagined?
Easter vigil is my favorite service of the entire year, because we don’t have to be happy. We finally get to talk about how some of us feel all the time. It’s Saturday night and we stand with the disciples. We feel how they felt, like God is dead and his followers are a joke. We had all these high hopes for the future and the part we could play in it. Now, that hope lies cold and dead in a tomb, behind a rock. And what part did we play? We betrayed and abandoned him. This one day we get to talk about the darkness around us, the darkness within. Sure, we talk about brokenness in church, but always in light of the resurrection. Not tonight. The dawn is coming, but it’s not Sunday yet. So let’s take stock, shall we?
Look around and you will see that we live in a carefully protected island of peace and prosperity. Our city hasn’t known war since Chief Blackhawk walked the earth. It hasn’t known poverty since the great depression, or disease since the influenza outbreaks of 1918. And famine? When has this city even glimpsed famine?
But all you have to do is turn on the TV to know that war, poverty, famine, and disease are still here. All you have to do is read history to understand that they have always been. All you have to do is study a little ecology to foresee that they will come again, if not to us, then to our children. We maintain an unsustainable lifestyle, and we do it at the expense of others, including those who will inherit this place after us. God dropped us in a garden, and we treat it like a mine.
So I have to ask, are we finally ready to give up the myth that we’ve got it all together? Are we finally ready to ask for help? I asked the kids at our church to write out New Year’s resolutions. You know what one girl wrote? “I need to slow down.” She’s in third grade! She’s already stressed out. American kids rank highest in the world for obesity, anorexia, and bulimia. Are we finally ready to admit that our “Gotta do more. Gotta be more” society is hurting us?”
We are not supermen remaking the world in our image. We are created beings playing at godhood, and we’re screwing it up. Don’t you think it’s time to let God be God for a change?
Honestly, I’d love it if he would. I’d love it if he’d crack open the sky and put things right…
Actually I wouldn’t. I’d run away screaming. Then I’d wonder if I’d gone insane. And then I’d get very, very scared. Because I know what lives in my heart, and the idea of a God who sees it too is terrifying.
If only there were some way to know he understood. If only there were some way to know he loved us anyway. The good news of this dark night is that he does know. He knows it all. He walked among us, healed us, and taught us to love God and each other. So… we killed him. Actually, we betrayed him, abandoned him, tried him in a kangaroo court, found him guilty of being who he actually was, mocked him, and tortured him. Then we killed him. And here’s the kicker.
He died.
He could have overthrown the powerful or raised up the weak, but race and class still divide us. He could have made Pax Romana look like an eye-blink, but war and terrorism remain. He could have eliminated poverty, disease, and famine, but he left them for us to fight. He could have called down the judgment of God and solved the human problem once and for all. But he didn’t.
He died.
He said to the powerless, “See, I am on your side.” And to the powerful, “Look, I am no threat.” Given the choice between protecting his own or sacrificing himself, he chose to die. And in doing so left us an example that precious few have cared, or dared, to follow. Why? Because most of us are stuck right here in Saturday night. We’re trapped in the dark with the disciples. We feel afraid, alone, ashamed, and one of us is about to give up hope and hang himself.
We’re stuck with Moses, trapped on a beach with only two choices. Terrifying death at the hands pharaoh’s army, or terrifying death by drowning in the sea. We had the option of slow death by slavery, but God has taken that option from us. Now we’re stuck with swords in our faces, our backs to the water, and nothing but shifting sand under our feet.
We’re stuck with Ezekiel, standing in the ashes of a battle. He foresaw the massacre that saw coming but no one would listen. Now his nation is gone. His people are slaves. We stand with Ezekiel in a valley littered with bones. They are his people, left to rot, picked clean by vermin, bleached white by the sun. Or maybe we’re not with Ezekiel. Maybe we’re the bones, unburied corpses of people who failed to take warning.
We’re stuck in problems of our own devising, stuck in a broken system that we cannot escape. Every night we fall asleep knowing we are both the oppressors and the oppressed. Even when there is enough to eat, even when there is enough left over to save for our future and our children, even when there is no reason left to fight and to hate, we create reasons. It’s Saturday night, and it feels like God is dead, his church a joke. But the dawn is coming, and even now it breaks.
Remember your baptism does not mean remember your first birthday, your citizenship, or your get out of hell free card. It means remember you are dead. You died with Christ, not because you chose to but because he chose you. You died with Christ. As they held you under the water, or poured it over your head, you were sealed with him in the tomb.
Remember your baptism means that the story doesn’t end on Saturday. We can stand with Moses and watch God lead us through wind and water, through fire and darkness, and out the other side. We can stand with Ezekiel and watch God put flesh on bones long dead, and breathe new life into the body.
Remember your baptism means even now darkness is breaking, new light is dawning, and new life is possible. Even now Christ is rising. He holds out his hand to lead you out of the cold, dark tomb into light and life. And isn’t it interesting that this too is a difficult choice?
Will you remember you baptism and step out in faith? Will you trust him to lead you, even though it’s too bright to see clearly and you do not know the way? Or will you stay in your tomb and keep trying to convince yourself that it’s not so dark, it’s not too cold, and you’re not really dead?
