easter vigil sermon
You had longed for fulfillment. For a few inescapable moments you thought you had found it. You had followed a man, the greatest man you had ever met. You gave up everything you had for him, your family, your livelihood. He was supposed to be the answer to all the questions, the one to solve all the problems the world face. Every issue, every law, every bit of the religion you have brought up in was supposed to be found true and whole in one man.
A few days ago you watched that man, every ounce o hope you had die. Horribly, painfully, muttering what seem now as crazed ramblings to the very end. Now partly out of honour and respect partly out of desperation and lack of anything else to do you are trudging towards his tomb, to finally place the balms and ointments of the dead upon him and begin to mourn in truth.
So you get to the tomb and the soldiers are knocked out, the stone before the tomb is rolled away, and perched on it, probably lounging feet kicking back and forth in the air, is an angel, one of gods messengers. He tells them that Jesus is raised, to look where he once lay…. They probably do just that and see where the body should be an empty tomb, and at the angels behest they run to tell the others and as they do as they run he is before them.
As the bow before him and touch his feet, they feel the same flesh that one of them, so long ago, had bathed with her hair. As they touch the feet and feel the holes torn into them by the nails they know that in a way they never thought possible that the longed for fulfillment had occurred.
There is no way to bring to bear upon you what a feeling this must have been for them. We have read long lessons from the Old Testament this evening; we know something of what these women had been looking for in Jesus. If tonight we can bring a small spark of what it must have been like to touch the feet of the risen Christ then Easter will be with you.
Christ was the fulfillment of the laws; he was the end of an older order. He is also the beginning of the new. He is each of our beginnings. All of us have died. Each of us died on that cross, we were brought into death by baptism as the water cascaded over you the priest took you into the land of death, you followed Christ into hell, and when the water had finished washing over you rose again into life. You were nailed to the cross and your feet rose again to sit on the earth outside the tomb and be felt by women who had come to prepare your body. We have died with Christ and we are now alive with Christ.
Now we shall remember how we have died and how we live as we renew the vows of death the vows of rebirth.
A few days ago you watched that man, every ounce o hope you had die. Horribly, painfully, muttering what seem now as crazed ramblings to the very end. Now partly out of honour and respect partly out of desperation and lack of anything else to do you are trudging towards his tomb, to finally place the balms and ointments of the dead upon him and begin to mourn in truth.
So you get to the tomb and the soldiers are knocked out, the stone before the tomb is rolled away, and perched on it, probably lounging feet kicking back and forth in the air, is an angel, one of gods messengers. He tells them that Jesus is raised, to look where he once lay…. They probably do just that and see where the body should be an empty tomb, and at the angels behest they run to tell the others and as they do as they run he is before them.
As the bow before him and touch his feet, they feel the same flesh that one of them, so long ago, had bathed with her hair. As they touch the feet and feel the holes torn into them by the nails they know that in a way they never thought possible that the longed for fulfillment had occurred.
There is no way to bring to bear upon you what a feeling this must have been for them. We have read long lessons from the Old Testament this evening; we know something of what these women had been looking for in Jesus. If tonight we can bring a small spark of what it must have been like to touch the feet of the risen Christ then Easter will be with you.
Christ was the fulfillment of the laws; he was the end of an older order. He is also the beginning of the new. He is each of our beginnings. All of us have died. Each of us died on that cross, we were brought into death by baptism as the water cascaded over you the priest took you into the land of death, you followed Christ into hell, and when the water had finished washing over you rose again into life. You were nailed to the cross and your feet rose again to sit on the earth outside the tomb and be felt by women who had come to prepare your body. We have died with Christ and we are now alive with Christ.
Now we shall remember how we have died and how we live as we renew the vows of death the vows of rebirth.
posted by koraps at 5:12 PM
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