Trampling Down Death - A Homily for the Great Vigil of Easter

A sermon preached by the Very Reverend Tyler Doherty at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Great Vigil of Easter, March 30 2024.

To us, for us, this night, comes the radiant light, the marvelous and holy flame of the resurrected Jesus Christ. He comes in a great bonfire of loving-kindness and mercy, of unquenchable promising covenant to declare to us, for us, the once-and-for-all victory over sin and death. He comes this night–just as he came to the disciples in that locked upper room ripe with fear, loss, despair, mourning, and defeat–into our very midst, plowing through the middle of the darkened congregation hymned symbolically in the Pascal Candle. He comes parting the iron seas of isolation, and sadness. Dispelling darkness, he comes.Trampling down death by death he comes to kindle in our hearts an inextinguishable flame of love poured out for all, that we may now see and live, taste and see that the Lord is good, good, very good and live from His sturdy, seamless, strongholding peace for our neighbor.

This is the night when into our very midst the light of the Resurrected Christ touches each and every one–not one overlooked, not one left lost in the wilderness, not one by grace not sought and found, not one whose proper name is not beloved, not one over whom pardon and forgiveness has not be declared, not one whose death has not been put to death in His Death, not one who does not share in his resurrection–”alive to God in Christ Jesus.” This is the night when in the light of Jesus being snatched from the tomb all forsakenness is forsaken. This is the night when all abandonment has been abandoned, when all casting out is cast out, all dereliction is rendered derelict. This is the night when the light of the Resurrected Christ comes into our very midst (each one finding him strong save, each one!) and banishes the shadows of darkness, self-enclosure, and self-reliance and opens to us the gate of eternal life, even here, even now, to this one, just as we are. 

This is the night when Christ comes not to saints and heroes, or the merely pious, the conventionally good, the self-appointed worthy, or the well-defended brave–but to us widows and orphans in our weakness, our foolishness, our hostility to God. Christ comes to we who are prodigally far off, rehearsing speeches of how we’ll do better next time and this’ll never happen again… This is the night Christ comes as the grace’s quid without a quo. When He comes as sheer running out to greet us banqueting joy—ring on the finger, fatted calf, warm embrace–that this precious little one (here, now, just like this)  who once was lost has now been found and carried home draped over the same striped shoulders that shouldered the cross. 

Christ comes into our drippy-candled mess: into illness and natural catastrophe, into all war, into all progress and stagnation and recession, into all division, enmity, and strife, into all human misery as the light from which all worldly lights receive their illuminitive power, as the still and dancing center around which all else revolves. This is the night Christ for us comes as He who will not be dimmed, diminished–much less quenched or extinguished–as the indissoluable bond of adamantine love forged in baptism–marked, sealed, held, caressed, fed, washed, and raised to newness of life and marked as Christ’s very own, forever. Gripped in that fireman’s hold of covenant love: “I will never let you go…”

Hear again those words of the prophet Isaiah, “Ho, everyone who thirsts come to the waters; and to you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without price.” Neither saints nor heroes, neither strong, brave, worthy, or pious we come with no money to buy and eat without price. Which is to say, simply, like grace-drowned little children, to receive. We come with no money to buy what can only be accepted as gift from the one who is Giver, Gift, and Giving all in one. We come to take and eat of Him in whom true bread and true wine rains down, burbles up, and geyers forth from His pierced side. We come to take and eat of Him in whom true food—that satisfies and starves out all hunger, that dries up all thirst—is to be found. We come to the one whose food has sought us out, found us, fed us and feeds us still. Yes, Lord Jesus, give us this water, give us this bread, always!

To us, for us, this night comes Our Lord, before whom we who stand and fret and plan and strategize about how to roll back the stone at the tomb with our pry bars only to discover–to our great alarm, to our awed terror and amazement–that the stone, “which was very large has already been rolled back.” God, in raising his only-begotten son Jesus from death, has already done the heavy-lifting. It is already finished and accomplished. God’s word that went out from his mouth does not return to God empty. It accomplishes that which God purposes: that everything—from a magnificent supernova churning in the galaxy’s furthest reaches down to the most miniscule dust mite—be now, this night, reconciled in Him who is all in all.

No pry bars needed for this free grace poured out for all. No peace of our own devising needing endless monitoring and maintenance, but His peace. No virtue to be achieved but His virtue that we freely receive. No journey to make in our own strength from here to there for He is the One who journeys to us, to the far country of sin, death, and captivity to bring us banqueting home in Him. No strenuous trek still to be undertaken from darkness to light for He has made the Gologotha journey to and through the cross for us that regardless of circumstance we now know ourselves always at home in Him who knew no home but the Father’s love. No purifying or perfecting work to assiduously pursue, for He–in His gift of Himself to us, for us—is our purity and our perfection. It is Christ Jesus we (amazed, seized) receive with open and empty hands as sheer gift unmerited and undeserved. This is the night when from that empty tomb with the elusive young man in white robes (“Do not be alarmed!”) there is now only the steadily burning flame of God’s love that makes a bonfire of sin and death. A bonfire around which we surprised insiders in the life of God roast marshmallows and chirp and taunt and tease with the Apostle Paul, “O, Death, where is your sting? Where, O Grave, is your victory?” All while whittling sharp our sticks.

This fulminating bonfire is the work that God in his beloved son Jesus has already accomplished for us. Our Lord Jesus Christ imprisoned that we might be free, declared guilty that our guilt might be taken away, suffered that we might have joy, died and rose that we might have eternal life. Barth writes,

In the resurrection of Jesus Christ… God’s victory in man’s favour in the person of His Son has already been won. Easter is indeed the great pledge of our hope, but simultaneously this future is already present in the Easter message. It is the proclamation of a victory already won. The war is at an end—even though here and troops are still shooting, because they have not heard anything yet about the capitulation. The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated. The clock has run down, even though the pendulum still swings a few times this way and that.

The clock’s wound down, but the pendulum’s still swinging. Sin, death, and the devil have been defeated. And in this interim time between the resurrection and Jesus’ coming again in power and great glory we are called to be unstopped ears heeding the cries of the world in a creation still groaning in labor pains to be born. We feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the unhoused, heal the sick, visit the lonely and those in prison, comfort the afflicted…. Yes! But from an entirely different place than the delusional fever-dream that it all depends on us and our efforts: “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” The God of the Promise doesn’t fail to keep God’s promise. The God of the Promise is still working, even if we get hypnotized now and then by the swinging pendulum of a run-down clock 

This is the night where we keep our hearts firmly fixed where true joys are to be found. In Him. No cooked up human confection, the in-breaking Easter joy we receive in Him this night. His joy through whom all things came to be and not one thing came to be without Him. His joy beyond opposites. A passionately responsive joy that confronts injustice and oppression wrought by rulers, princes, and the indolent rich. A passionately responsive joy that prevents us from walking to the sunny side of the street and steering clear from the calling face of our neighbor in the ditch whom we are called to serve as Christ Himself. 

The victory has been won, AND the work we are given to do remains to be lovingly, and concretely ministered until His coming again in power and great glory. We labor on in this graced in-between not sorrowing as those without hope, but confident, truly hopeful, that even on our very worst days and in full face of the world’s very real horrors–God is at work reconciling all things to Godself in his only Son. And with Mary and Mary and Salome and the rest of the disciples we go with Sabbath haste to meet our Lord already ahead of us in the Galilee of our pots and pans everyday lives. Pots and pans everyday lives illumined now in His glorious light: His love singing on our lips and dancing in our lives poured out for others. It’s a song you know because it’s Isaiah’s song, your song, my song, our song, His song: “You who thirst come to the waters; and to you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without price.” This is the night without price bought for us at great price. Amen.