Great Vigil of Easter

What an evening! We had 5 baptisms--kids from 3 to 10 or 11--& the lessons were all participatory by all the kids. The first reading was "The Creation" from God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson danced by 3 praise dancers in white satin--God as 3 little black girls making the world was awesome! We sang "On Tiptoe" & the children were dry bones for the Ezekiel passage & were resurrected during the reading to dance around the altar & then put together their bones with "Dem Bones". We had 80 in attendance despite the cold rainy weather. We await the joy of the morning!


The Reverend Martha Frances
Great Vigil of Easter
7 April 2007

Texts: Genesis 1:1-2:1; Exodus 14:10-15:1; Ezekiel 36:24-28; Ezekiel 37:1-14


This is a night like no other night. After 6 long weeks of Lent, after the institution of the Eucharist & the washing of feet on Maundy Thursday followed by the stripping of the altar, the emptying out of the church of the old, after the Good Friday liturgy yesterday & walking the Stations of the Cross with Jesus one more time this season, having been present with Jesus at his death, tonight we come into the cross-over time, crossing over from the death that we already know into the new life of the Resurrection. Tonight we wait, waiting expectantly for the Easter morning which we are assured will follow in just a few hours.

We have lit the new fire, the light of Christ which will burn through each service for the 7 weeks of the Easter season, & we have carried our own candles for we are Christ-lights in the world. Through scripture & dance & song, we have recounted the history of the Hebrew people—our own rich heritage—from the goodness of creation through the escape from Egypt into a new land. Then we recall that God's people time after time had to be renewed. As their hearts became hardened into stone, God implanted in them a new heart of flesh. Even during their exile in Babylon, when all seemed lost like a valley of dry bones, God renewed the people, stacking bone upon bone until they could stand again, & then when God breathed the Spirit into them, they could indeed dance once again.

Last night I returned to Church of the Epiphany in southwest Houston where my own spiritual life was nourished for 20 years as God was preparing me for ordained ministry. After leading the liturgy throughout the week, I needed to experience the holiest time of the year as a member of the congregation, & through the Good Friday Project as it is called there, musicians & dancers shared reflections on the crucifixion. Those powerful artistic expressions spoke to me, fed me, in a space where Bill & I had exchanged wedding vows, reared our boys, & launched out in the ministry which I continue today. I am grateful for that community which loved me mightily & challenged me to fulfill God's call to me.

But that is no longer my faith family. YOU are my faith family now. I belong to Hope just as you belong to me. Tonight is all about family, about community. Tonight we gather as a family of faith to welcome new members into the universal Christian family with the initiation rite called baptism. Lighting the fire & re-membering the story recalls for us who we are that we may welcome new Christians into our family, this community of Hope. Ours is only one of a myriad of Christian communities, but it is OUR family which we are commissioned to grow in Christ.

As these parents and godparents dare to offer their children for adoption into a larger family so that we may assist them in guiding these children to embrace their name as Christian, we welcome each of these families to grow with us also. We believe that, just as those bones were reconstituted & infused with the Holy Spirit, so do we become filled with Christ's character as we put on Christ in our church family. Just as the Hebrew people had to be renewed so that their hearts would remain supple hearts of flesh, so we must renew our own baptismal vows, both for our own continued formation but also to be legitimate guides to those whom we touch. Thus, we can live up to the expectation that others will know we are Christians by our love.

It is through baptism we are first empowered individually & as a community to be Christ's reconciling presence in the world. We are people with short memories, so we need to experience over & over that empowerment, which is one reason we need from time to time to renew our own baptismal vows. We will join those who are being baptized & their loved ones in recommitting to those promises.

First, we reaffirm our faith by the words one of the oldest creeds, the Apostles', & then we respond to 5 questions regarding our living as Christ taught us to do. The children who are being baptized & their parents have already looked at what they are promising, & if you're around here very often, you know we revisit these 5 promises often. Listen to them again as you agree with God's help to make them central in your life. They're the directions we need to become those people whom God calls us to be.

After the baptisms, we're all ready to proceed to the altar to celebrate the Eucharist, the Holy Communion. But wait! We have to stop ourselves short to remember that those first disciples who huddled in the upper room on that Sabbath day after Jesus' crucifixion did not have the expectation which we enjoy for tomorrow. Peter, James, John, Andrew, Mary Magdalene, Salome, the Mother Mary--all had been through a tremendous shock just the day before, seeing the hopes & desires of the past three years nailed to a cross in what felt like utter defeat. How had this happened? When had it all gone wrong? They had tried to warn Jesus that he was treading on thin ice with the authorities. Hadn't he cared what would happen to himself? To all of them? What were they to do now?

For us to truly experience the joy of Easter, we have to put ourselves in the place of those fearful & despairing disciples closeted away in the upper room so many years ago. We'll have begun the new life in Christ as we leave tonight, but we're not quite to Easter morning yet. We have no real dismissal tonight for this worship continues throughout the night into the morning when the Son rises—Jesus the Son rises to proclaim that God has indeed trampled death with new life. And the Son invites us to partake of that resurrection in the celebration of Eucharist as Easter people. We wait & watch through the night for the Easter light to dawn anew on the morn. Come tomorrow at 7:00 a.m . or at 10:30 for the rest of the story!