The liturgy we are now celebrating is the mother of all liturgies. The Easter Vigil is the most important celebration of the entire liturgical year. Tonight our Christian high holy days reach their zenith. Tonight, sisters and brothers, we celebrate the true Passover: Jesus Christ.
Jesus alone, the only begotten Son of God in the flesh, was able to pass over from death to life everlasting. The opening words of Pope John Paul II’s first encyclical letter, Redemptor Hominis, sum this up well: “The Redeemer of man, Jesus Christ, is the center of the universe and of history.”1
Christ’s resurrection from the dead marks the final stage of God's plan of creation. God did not create in vain. By virtue of our common Baptism, God invites us to be his co-creators in bringing creation to full realization.
The Easter Vigil is not a commemoration of something that happened nearly 2,000 years ago. The question we ask this holy night is - Where is the risen Jesus now – for us?2 Rather than questioning Christ’s resurrection, we need to let his resurrection interrogate us. In a few minutes, you will have the opportunity to let yourself be interrogated by Christ's resurrection.
The interrogation in which you are invited to engage takes the form of renewing the promises you made at Baptism. The main purpose of Lent, after all, is to prepare for renewing your baptismal promises at Easter. When answering these questions, it is important not to engage in empty ritualism, simply going through the motions, as it were. You need to listen to each question, examine your conscience, and answer or choose not to answer, from your heart. Interrogating yourself using these ultimate questions demands nothing less of you.
Resurrection is something you can see and experience. In a few moments, you will witness Katie’s paschal death, burial, and rising to new life with Christ through the waters of Baptism. I am not being overly dramatic in stating it in that way. In our epistle reading, we heard the words with which St. Paul interrogated the Christians of ancient Rome: “Are you unaware,” he asked them, “that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”3 Answering his own query, the apostle continued: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death.”4 Because we died and were buried with Christ in Baptism, Paul concludes: “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.”5
St Paul’s point is that eternal life does not start after mortal death. For those of us who are baptized, eternal life is now! Living your new life in Christ requires you to constantly be open, allowing yourself to be interrogated by the Holy Spirit.
When they went to the tomb in which Jesus had been laid in order to dress his dead body according to Jewish burial custom, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James found the tomb empty, they were interrogated by the two angels, who asked them- “Why do you seek the living one among the dead?”6 The same question posed to the women by the angels might well be asked of us and often.
“To be a Christian,” Luke Timothy Johnson insists, “means to assert that Jesus is alive...”7 “To consider Jesus simply as a figure of the past,” he continues, “means to consider Jesus not from the perspective of a Christian but from that of one who stands outside of Christian conviction.”8 “If Jesus is dead,” Johnson points out, “then his story is completed. If he is alive, then his story continues.”9
Jesus’s story continues through the Church, which is his very Body. Jesus’s story is truly the never-ending story. By our Baptism, Confirmation, and on-going participation in the sacramental life of the Church, particularly the Eucharist, Jesus’s story becomes our story. Stated a bit more poetically, Jesus writes us into his story. One scriptural phrase that captures Jesus writing us into his story is “those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.”10
Katie, at the beginning of Lent your name was written in the Book of the Elect. Tonight your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life. You and Piper being fully incorporated into Christ’s Body mark the beginning of new chapters in Jesus’s story.
On this holy night, it is important to be reminded that “Easter is not something we remember.” Rather, as Christians, Easter “is something that we live and breathe.”11
1 John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, sec. 1.↩
2 Jim Friedrich, "Preaching on Easter Sunday isn't about convincing people," The Christian Century.↩
3 Romans 6:3.↩
4 Romans 6:4.↩
5 Romans 6:4.↩
6 Luke 24:5.↩
7 Luke Timothy Johnson, Living Jesus: Learning the Heart of the Gospel, 5.↩
8 Ibid.↩
9 Ibid.↩
10 Revelation 21:27..↩
11 “Preaching on Easter Sunday isn’t about convincing people.”.↩
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