I love the Great Vigil of Easter. I love the tracing of the history of salvation. I love the Exsultet. I love the first fire. And, as a priest, I love that it signals that I am almost to the end of the marathon of Holy Week.
I had initially planned to preach once we got into the Eucharistic part of the Great Vigil service. But then I realized that it was the same Gospel as the Easter service. And I truly don't like when priests preach the same sermon at two different services that have two different feelings.
And so I opted to put the sermon after the five readings from the Hebrew Bible about the journey of salvation. I primarily focused on the deliverance through the Red Sea. But really, all the readings are meant to help us see how God's been with us through our Jewish ancestors experiences...which would lead to our story which picks up with Jesus.
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When I was telling my wife Isabelle about this service and the
readings we were going to hear, she was aghast.
“That’s too much!! That’s like your EfM…where they had you reading
whole books of the Bible!”
Fortunately, this service doesn’t have us reading the entire books
of Genesis, Exodus, Isaiah and Ezekiel. If we had THAT requirement...our
service would be longer…Christ wouldn’t rise from the grave until sometime about
Christmas…and I would agree with her that then it would really be TOO much!
We also aren’t doing ALL nine of the recommended readings. One of
my liturgics professors at seminary insisted that we must do all of them. And
while I appreciate and get his point, I also know the people of God have their
limits. What might have been a good and noble practice in the 1980s has had to
change to accommodate our 21st century attention spans.
But there is one reading of the nine that IS required at this
service, and that’s the one about the Israelites escaping their oppression in Egypt
through the Red Sea.
“But Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and
see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today; for the
Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for
you, and you have only to keep still.” (Ex14:13-14).
The Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again.
The bullies, the tyrants, the ones laying burdens upon you…take heart: God
will buoy you up in these times of fear and chaos…and will help get you to a
safer shore.
If these words of blessed assurance are a comfort to us in
Valdosta, I can only hope and imagine how they can embolden and help those
whose lives are in danger in Ukraine and other parts of the world where war and
civil strife are the rule of the day.
It can be so hard to see and feel God’s presence when we are in the
middle of danger or any kind of crisis…whether it’s being hit with a sudden
loss or even running for our lives. Our aggressors and our troubles seem so
huge. We feel trapped and under their
thumb with little hope of escape. We can
imagine how the Israelites must have thought…escaping a powerful army and
finding themselves standing at the edge of the Red Sea with nowhere to turn. And
we hear it in their complaining…
”Why did we do this? Why didn’t we just stay with the devil we knew
instead of being out here with the devil we don’t know?”
Moses had certainly had his own arguments with God, wondering how
he could help his people…while also taking on the powerful Pharaoh. And each
time he balked at this mission, God reassured him…and even told him how things
were going to go with Pharaoh.
And now…standing before the Red Sea…we hear that God’s work is at
play in him. That confidence has bubbled up inside Moses and he says that
oft-repeated Biblical phrase, “Do not be afraid.”
Fear is the thing that often stops us and keep us from moving forward. Just like the Israelites, we’d rather retreat back into our known lives…even if it means servitude and horrible life conditions rather than taking that terrifying step forward.
Fear tells us we can’t take that step…make that
move…go in that new direction. Faith beckons us to trust that we can and will
be alright. “Don’t be afraid.”
The Pharaohs of the world depend on us being too afraid to act.
That’s how they maintain their status with their hardened hearts. But when we
listen like Moses…calm our fears…the waters part…we see a way forward…and the
Egyptians of old get washed away and no longer hold power over us.
I’ve had many conversations with priest friends about this passage,
and they worry that this story comes off as God hating the Egyptians. If we
take it literally, I guess we could get that impression. But this story…like so
many others…is not literal….but it IS liberating…and shows the enormous freeing
power of God.
The readings we’ve heard this morning…from the First Creation to
the rebuilding of a scattered people ligament to ligament and bone-to-bone…are
the repeated signs of God’s love and determination to be living in Love with
God’s creation. These stories are in the collective consciousness of
Christianity as passed on to us from our Jewish ancestors. And they set the
stage for the start of our own story: just as God delivered Israel…God is delivering
us through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Jesus opens for us a way to overcome whatever metaphorical
Egyptians are pursuing us and trying to drag us down…whatever Pharaoh is
holding us hostage to our fears…and showing us that we shall overcome the
obstacles in our way.
Trusting in this reality of Jesus…we stop and give thanks for the
times in which we were able to get to the other side of turmoil and crisis.
It’s not that we never face trying times again…certainly they will
come. But with Christ in our hearts…there’s the confidence that the Lord will
fight for us if we keep still and stick close to that Holy Presence within who
is our God.
Thanks be to God for that!
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