Easter Vigil Sermon
Apr. 3rd, 2010 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chrishansenhomeI'm glad that I didn't preach to the readings tonight, but to the occasion. The Vicar hadn't told me what the Gospel was, and I picked the wrong one (Luke) out of the Lectionary. I also managed to preach an Easter sermon and mention Jesus precisely once. Could be a record…
April 3, 2010 Easter Vigil
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 7 pm.
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
One of the little secrets about Christmas is that we have no evidence that it happened on December 25th, or in December even. Shepherds watching their flocks by night is something that happened mostly in the spring, when the ewes needed help with the lambing and the shepherds thus stuck around the fields to assist should the ewes get into trouble during birth. So if the Gospel narrative is anything to go by, Jesus was born in the spring.
Easter, however, is another matter. As the narrative is so tied up with Passover, we are relatively certain that it took place sometime in March or April around the first third of the 1st Century AD.
Although you wouldn’t know it from our weather lately, spring is the period of re-creation. As residents of England, we can all look back to winters, not just the one recently past, but winters over the past decades. Winters in England are pretty bleak. I think of a typical winter here as consisting of a lot of cold rain interspersed with overcast skies. Occasionally there is snow. Everything stops for Christmas, and then we all wait for the first daffodil or snowdrop to push its way out of the ground.
So now at Easter we put winter behind us and concentrate on the new creation that is all around us. The symbol of Easter, along with the cross and the empty tomb is just as often an egg, or the Easter bunny. These are all useful metaphors pointing us to what Easter actually is.
Let’s consider the egg for a moment and put the Easter bunny aside—while the bunny is just as powerful a symbol of re-creation, the egg has the advantage that it’s easier to speak about it in church.
Eggs are symbols of new life. No matter the animal or bird which produced the egg, every egg carries with it the promise that its species will go on. Life will not become extinct with this generation but will continue as long as eggs continue.
Eggs also can give us nourishment too. As objects of the cook’s art we enjoy eggs in all sorts of food. An elderly woman I knew in my childhood used to tell us stories of how she was anemic and sickly as a child herself. She was fed a raw egg in a glass of port every morning for several years and she ascribed her regained strength to this. Today with salmonella looming around every eggshell no one would dream of feeding raw eggs to a child. But to her, those eggs meant re-creation and renewal of life and strength.
We are used to hearing about hens laying eggs for years, most of which do not produce chicks but are only used to make breakfasts more delightful. Some animals literally give their all to their eggs. Octopuses, for example, live for only a few years at most. The females produce a clutch of eggs and tend them until the young hatch. The mother does not eat during this time, and by the end of it she is so exhausted and emaciated that she normally does not survive. So the older generation sacrifices itself for the continuation of the species in a way that hens do not. The old octopus dies so that the young ones may live.
Recreation is something that we don’t often connect with the inside of a church. In my American hometown a former church has now been turned into a badminton club, thus connecting “recreation” and “church” much more closely. But Easter, and re-creation, are and ought to be, closely intertwined with the church and the activities that go on here.
Each time we attend Mass and take Communion, a little re-creation happens. God is made manifest before our eyes. This is not in an abracadabra-way or a pulling the rabbit out of a hat way.
It’s a way to make the memory of what the Gospels say happened during Passover week alive for us today: re-creating the sacrifice and resurrection each and every day of our lives.
Communion in itself also helps us to re-create ourselves. The bread and wine which we eat and drink contribute to our bodies and make the presence of God in our lives something real and tangible.
The idea of re-creation doesn’t just end in the church building. The Eucharist stays with us as we leave church and should serve as a permanent reminder of God’s presence within us, re-creating us continually.
Easter especially helps us to recall God’s re-creation in us, and the surprise of the women at the empty tomb should force itself into our minds and hearts today. A re-creation, or a new beginning, is what the resurrection means to us. Life does not end with our physical death. The resurrection is the promise of God that we do not totally perish when we die, but are re-created as beings devoted to pleasing and praising God.
Tonight we carry our re-creation with us as we leave this building. Show it off in the world, make of yourself something new tonight, tomorrow, and every day. That is the true symbol of resurrection and re-creation: the spirit of the Lord living on in us, re-created at Easter and every day of our lives. AMEN.
April 3, 2010 Easter Vigil
Sermon delivered at St. John the Evangelist, 7 pm.
In the name of God, the one, the Undivided Trinity. AMEN.
One of the little secrets about Christmas is that we have no evidence that it happened on December 25th, or in December even. Shepherds watching their flocks by night is something that happened mostly in the spring, when the ewes needed help with the lambing and the shepherds thus stuck around the fields to assist should the ewes get into trouble during birth. So if the Gospel narrative is anything to go by, Jesus was born in the spring.
Easter, however, is another matter. As the narrative is so tied up with Passover, we are relatively certain that it took place sometime in March or April around the first third of the 1st Century AD.
Although you wouldn’t know it from our weather lately, spring is the period of re-creation. As residents of England, we can all look back to winters, not just the one recently past, but winters over the past decades. Winters in England are pretty bleak. I think of a typical winter here as consisting of a lot of cold rain interspersed with overcast skies. Occasionally there is snow. Everything stops for Christmas, and then we all wait for the first daffodil or snowdrop to push its way out of the ground.
So now at Easter we put winter behind us and concentrate on the new creation that is all around us. The symbol of Easter, along with the cross and the empty tomb is just as often an egg, or the Easter bunny. These are all useful metaphors pointing us to what Easter actually is.
Let’s consider the egg for a moment and put the Easter bunny aside—while the bunny is just as powerful a symbol of re-creation, the egg has the advantage that it’s easier to speak about it in church.
Eggs are symbols of new life. No matter the animal or bird which produced the egg, every egg carries with it the promise that its species will go on. Life will not become extinct with this generation but will continue as long as eggs continue.
Eggs also can give us nourishment too. As objects of the cook’s art we enjoy eggs in all sorts of food. An elderly woman I knew in my childhood used to tell us stories of how she was anemic and sickly as a child herself. She was fed a raw egg in a glass of port every morning for several years and she ascribed her regained strength to this. Today with salmonella looming around every eggshell no one would dream of feeding raw eggs to a child. But to her, those eggs meant re-creation and renewal of life and strength.
We are used to hearing about hens laying eggs for years, most of which do not produce chicks but are only used to make breakfasts more delightful. Some animals literally give their all to their eggs. Octopuses, for example, live for only a few years at most. The females produce a clutch of eggs and tend them until the young hatch. The mother does not eat during this time, and by the end of it she is so exhausted and emaciated that she normally does not survive. So the older generation sacrifices itself for the continuation of the species in a way that hens do not. The old octopus dies so that the young ones may live.
Recreation is something that we don’t often connect with the inside of a church. In my American hometown a former church has now been turned into a badminton club, thus connecting “recreation” and “church” much more closely. But Easter, and re-creation, are and ought to be, closely intertwined with the church and the activities that go on here.
Each time we attend Mass and take Communion, a little re-creation happens. God is made manifest before our eyes. This is not in an abracadabra-way or a pulling the rabbit out of a hat way.
It’s a way to make the memory of what the Gospels say happened during Passover week alive for us today: re-creating the sacrifice and resurrection each and every day of our lives.
Communion in itself also helps us to re-create ourselves. The bread and wine which we eat and drink contribute to our bodies and make the presence of God in our lives something real and tangible.
The idea of re-creation doesn’t just end in the church building. The Eucharist stays with us as we leave church and should serve as a permanent reminder of God’s presence within us, re-creating us continually.
Easter especially helps us to recall God’s re-creation in us, and the surprise of the women at the empty tomb should force itself into our minds and hearts today. A re-creation, or a new beginning, is what the resurrection means to us. Life does not end with our physical death. The resurrection is the promise of God that we do not totally perish when we die, but are re-created as beings devoted to pleasing and praising God.
Tonight we carry our re-creation with us as we leave this building. Show it off in the world, make of yourself something new tonight, tomorrow, and every day. That is the true symbol of resurrection and re-creation: the spirit of the Lord living on in us, re-created at Easter and every day of our lives. AMEN.
