HOMILY AT THE EASTER VIGIL

So, I begin this evening with a confession. Sometimes when I have occasion to do premarital counseling with a couple who have come seeking an officiant at their wedding, I ask them to tell me why they love each other. Isn’t that ridiculous? They tell me of course various things they love about their chosen one—I love his sense of humor, I love the way she cares for others—I love her smile—I love the way he loves me. Whatever! But no one yet has told me why they love the other person. The really important things in life are not that easy to explain. Really. Who can explain the whys of love. Who can even explain how you know that love is love? In our Tuesday morning study group we have just finished reading a book by Desmond Tutu called, God has a Dream. This is a book that affirms that our world is not just a world where Jesus died, but it is a world where Jesus lives. It’s about the resurrection power of God at work. . . Our next study is of a book by Elaine Pagels called Beyond Belief. Cute huh? The juxtaposition of these two books summarizes the challenge and wonder of this night of all nights when we gather to celebrate the resurrection. God’s Dream. . .Beyond Belief. If seeing is believing then its no wonder the resurrection is so often dis-believed. We have no details. It happened at night. No police report. No eye witness accounts. No video footage. Celsus an outside observer of Christianity long ago pointed out that everybody saw Jesus die, but “only a crazed woman and a few fanatics” saw him risen from the dead. And there are many today who can only agree. They might think Jesus a noble sort of fellow—a man of high ethics, a wisdom teacher—but they have to draw the line at resurrection—that is clearly beyond belief. Whatever this story of the risen Jesus is about, it is about these women going to see the tomb where they expect in a reasonable sort of way to find death. Instead, they find themselves at the thin edge—that liminal place between this world and the other. Their eyes so attuned to seeing the expected—the utterly believable--are shocked open to catching a glimpse of the world beyond belief. The world that Desmond Tutu would say is the very real world of God’s dream. People get “hung up” on these resurrection stories. I think perhaps because they apply reasonable expectations and rational thinking to them. They are seeking proof of the resurrection. They want proof of the world beyond belief. Even in the earliest days of Christianity the followers of Christ moved around in this arena of the liminal seeing and believing different things. That’s one of Pagels points in her book. The folks who beheld Jesus saw differently. Their eyes tuned so well to the believable found the going more challenging when dealing with the unbelievable. Some saw Jesus as God incarnate, some followed him as a faithful Jew, some saw him as new humanity, some as the messiah, Some took his words at face value, others tripped over them into more ethereal spaces. There was room in these early days for varieties of understandings. And then of course in the 4th century church leaders saw fit to try and define belief—and draw lines around the real Jesus. They did so in a way that left out a lot of folks who considered themselves followers of Jesus. Battles and even wars have been fought over these understandings. And even today there are a good number of Christians who tell me that they are secret heretics. They have their doubts about certain aspects of the faith as it has been defined. (Even some priests fall into this category of Christian) Generally they feel like they need to keep those to themselves even though the consequences are probably no longer life-threatening. And then there are those followers of Christ who as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it have beheld Jesus and found their own eyesight so richly tuned that they can see glory everywhere they look—they find the divine not only at the ocean or on the mountaintops, but in a sweat lodge, or a mosque, or at the feet of Thich Nhat Hanh. I’ve met more than one Episcopalian who claims to be a Unitarian, Buddhist, Episcopalian. Whatever truth there is in the resurrection, it is NOT to be found in any set of rational beliefs or explanations. We can’t prove the resurrection. We can’t. But we can live into it. We can participate in Christ’s risen life. The resurrection can be found in the lives of the faithful—whether heretics or not—who live in a world in which Christ not only died, but in which he lives. This is a broken world, you and I know that only too well. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord”—“Oh, oh, yes,” we say. That we have seen. That we witness every day. But, the great good news of this night is that brokenness and death even when it is just what we are expecting and looking for—brokenness and death do not have the final word. God’s dream of resurrection life is not some fantasy—rather it is alive and well, and in our midst. The divine energy is at work in us and among us and out there too. The church is the community that lives the dream—however imperfectly, however hesitatingly. We do it as we eat the meal, as we share the love, as we reach out to others, cross unbearable boundaries, speak words of truth not always welcomed, stand firm with the powerless, look at the world with the eyes of the heart. We do it as we support one another in our explorations of the thin edges of life where things are porous and godness pours thru. At our best we gather as we have this night to let our memories, candles, colors, stories, songs, music, laughter, and dance carry us to the dream beyond belief. It’s like trying to explain why you are in love with someone. There is nothing more real. Nothing more important. Nothing more difficult to describe or explain. Nothing more impossible to prove. “Were you there when God raised him from the dead?” “Oh, oh, yes”. Sometimes, it causes me to tremble. tremble. tremble.