The Great Vigil of Easter 2014

Great Vigil of Easter-2014 “Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. This excerpt from Mary Oliver’s poem, “In Blackwater Woods” wonderfully captures what we do on this night. Tonight we gather to tell the stories of our faith, and in some mysterious way, we are present in those moments of salvation history. We sit in the dark of creation as God forms us from the dust. We run panicked through the dark in the midst of waters of the Red Sea, and we witness the death and destruction of God’s enemies. We sing the song of our salvation while we are still in the dark, still in the middle of the water, still wondering if we will actually make it out alive. We stand in the valley of bones with Ezekiel and we watch as God’s breath knits the scattered bones together and remakes them into a people. We who have walked into this church that is as dark as a tomb, walk with the women in the dark to Jesus’s tomb, and we share their fear and their confusion when we find it empty because it is so far beyond our experience, our understanding. We gather in the dark to renew the words of our baptismal covenant, to remember the light of Christ that is given to us in and through our baptism, and to see this night, what a difference this light can make in the face of death and darkness, fear and loss. “Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” We have experienced the black river of loss; we acknowledge the fleetingness of this world, this life, and all whom we hold dear. And we rejoice this night in Christ’s resurrection, in the way that we are brought through the black river of loss into the mystery of eternal life waiting on the other side.