April 11, 2009
The Great Vigil of Easter
Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13; Genesis 22:1-18;
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21; Isaiah 55:1-11; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Ezekiel 36:24-28;
Mark 16:1-8
The stories we have heard tonight are the stories that Jesus heard. They are the stories in which his soul was steeped after years of hearing them told by all of the adults in his life – likely he didn’t read them, but was told them – stories of faith passed from one generation to the next. Stories he knew the way we know the story of baby Jesus and Mary and the angel Gabriel and the prodigal son and the story of the first Eucharist and the story of Easter.
Jesus could recite these passages we have heard tonight by heart, sing them, for that is often what the people did to remember them, put them to tunes that made them a hymn to God recounting God’s glory and his covenant with them. Jesus could quote them.
Jesus sang the story of creation as a faithful Jewish child, not just the one we read tonight. Jesus likely knew the other one, too, the story of Adam and Eve and the snake and the Garden of Eden. He sang it, even as it also true that He was the One who sang creation into being with the Creator. He knew of Sabbath rest, and he knew how keeping the stories and the law marked him as one of God’s own people. He knew what it was to be part of the chosen people.
Jesus knew the story of the flood and the rainbow and the promise that God would never again destroy the earth or his people. Jesus knew the story of Abraham and Isaac and what it was to live by such faith, even to die if God asked it of you. Jesus could recount the story of Moses parting the red Sea and saving the people he promised to remain in covenant with. Jesus knew the reading from Isaiah about the abundance of God’s provision, that salvation was freely offered to All! Jesus knew of the dry bones brought to life and the promise of a new heart and a new Spirit from Ezekiel. He knew these and all the other stories, the law so carefully recorded in Leviticus, the ways of practicing what the people, his people, God’s people, preached and believed.
Jesus loved his religion because it was for him the expression of his love for God and God’s love for him.
And as he grew and he observed the people, his people, and the other people of the other gods around him, he couldn’t miss that the stories and the laws and the ways of being God’s people were used by some as a means to an end, a means that glorified themselves instead of God. And he was outraged about that. He knew what a blessing it was, these stories, this relationship with God, the prayers and the keeping of the laws. All of it was what defined not only him and his people, and to see that which was so holy to him, desecrated for the gain of a few, to be used as tools of power, control, and political gain for those in certain positions, had to infuriate him and so he began to be determined that his calling was to reform his faith so that it could not be abused by the few to subjugate the many.
I truly believe that Jesus didn’t intend to be a messiah; he intended to be a reformer. His humility would not have allowed him to truly think himself the Son of God apart from all the other sons and daughters of God.
Yet as time went on and the word messiah was whispered about him, spoken to him in hushed tones, and then open declarations made time after time, he became more and more willing to explore that with the Abba with whom he had such a close and intense relationship because he knew the stories and the ways of being good Jew. But even as “messiah” he never wanted to change what he had grown up with, what had nurtured and formed and trained him about being Jewish. He wanted only to purify it, reform it, bring it back to what God intended for God’s own people so that the people, Jesus’ people, God’s people, might live more fully into their covenant with God, loving and being loved by God ever more deeply.
Modern biblical exegesis and history tell us that as Jesus went through what we now call Holy Week, he became more and more aware that he was truly a messiah, but not a political leader, that he was called to serve the people, his people, God’s people, and, strangely, all people, to bring them into the full measure of the stories and lessons and laws he had been steeped in since birth. I think “strangely” because he truly began as a Jew who saw the Jews as a people apart from the others, and he came to realize that God’s covenant was not just with the Jews but with all people. _This was a heresy at the time, of course, but he saw it not as heresy but rather as reform.
And because of what Jesus did with his teaching, taking the old stories and telling them a new way, bringing to light a truer intention, a holy meaning and wholeness for all people to behold and claim that all might be God’s own, because he transformed the teachings, those who followed him were expelled from the synagogues and were not allowed to teach the new ways.
And now we Christians, who have followed Jesus and the new teaching, hearing the old stories as we have heard them tonight, as we hear them each week in church, we need to guard ourselves that we do not let them loose their true intent and holy meaning for us, that we do not allow ourselves to tame them, or to use them for our own purposes of power or self-aggrandizement, or to claim we know the holier way. We need to let these stories seep into us even more deeply and define our relationship with the God who lives in our hearts and souls that we might be open to living these stories as Jesus was willing to live them and to use them as the means of bringing freedom and redemption to those who were not so blessed as we are.
It is all of these stories, as well as the stories of the new “Christian” religion that followed because Jesus was such a reformer, these stories, all of them Hebrew and Christian alike, define us and lay claim to our hearts as people of faith. For me these stories are one of the main reasons I am a Christian and a woman of deep faith. For it is the stories told by generations, told and retold, that give my faith the timeless connection to all of God’s people. It is the fact that we tell our story each time we celebrate the Eucharist, and I feel the connection with those generations and with Jesus who dared to tell them in new ways.
May this Easter season be for us a time of constant retelling, reframing, and daring to find a deeper and true meaning to the stories we already know so well that we might truly follow in the way of the One who died and rose again for us, that we might know Him and know God’s intention for us and for the world. Dare to retell the stories! Dare to find the way of Christ in them! Dare to be a follower of Jesus!
Let us recount the deep story of our faith by saying together the Baptismal Covenant that ties us to each other, to Christ, and to all people of faith, who dare to step into the abyss of holy space, as Jesus so often did, and trust that God will show us all the true way by retelling the old stories in new ways.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd