Trinity Episcopal Church
A Parish of the Diocese of Los Angeles
4274 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
The Great Vigil of Easter
A Homily given on the Fifth Sunday in Lent,
March 13, 2005
Trinity Church, Los Angeles
John 11:1-45
"Jesus wept."
"Lazarus, come out!"
"Unbind him and let him go."
The story of Lazarus was often seen in the ancient Church as the story of the whole human race, his rising from the tomb a sign of the liberation promised to all humanity in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Eastern Christians have long observed the day before Palm Sunday as "Lazarus Saturday" and called it the "announcement of Pascha", pointing as it does to the next, the Great Saturday, "the day of the life-giving tomb".
We rejoice that there is now provision for the observance of Lazarus Saturday in the Episcopal Church, and once every three years the Lazarus gospel is read on this Sunday. Previously and still today in some parts of the Anglican Communion this Sunday was seen as preparing us to observe the death of Jesus on Good Friday. But in the revised lectionaries of the 1979 Prayer Book, as well as those of a number of other communions, Lent has been restored to its original emphases. The Passion themes are held off for another week and this Sunday, like all the Sundays in Lent, looks forward through Good Friday to the celebration of the Great Vigil of Easter, the central liturgy of the whole Christian year.
So this morning we're going to look ahead a couple of weeks and spend some time talking about the Easter Vigil. St. Augustine called it the "Mother of all Vigils" and observed that all other liturgies were only the repeatable portions of this one.
The Great Vigil, although now much shorter than it ever was in the past, is a long liturgy, as we know all too well, and not always easy to grasp. For one thing it is not a "Vigil" at all in the modern sense of a preparation to celebrate a feast on the following day, but the true and original celebration of Easter itself.
It is complex, being composed of many layers of symbolism incorporated over thousands of years from many different cultures and religious traditions. Liturgical anthropologists believe that in one or another of its manifestations this feast may well be the oldest continuously observed festival still in existence among human beings.
First, perhaps, comes a natural impulse to rejoice at the return of spring, to give thanks to a dimly perceived deity for the lengthening days, the warmer weather, the budding of the plants and trees. Long before Moses bands of nomadic shepherds were celebrating the birthing of the spring lambs. One would be slaughtered, cooked, and shared by the whole community with its God, through which the bonds of community would be strengthened and enriched with new life. Among the Cananites, an agricultural people, there was a similar festival of unleavened bread.
When the Israelites, escaping from the tyranny of Egypt, arrived in the area, they incorporated elements of these festivals into their own yearly observance of their deliverance -- their Passover or Pasch. And Christians, of course, again retained and enriched all of this with their own Pasch, always seeing the death and resurrection of Christ in the light of the previous liberation from slavery -- as being, somehow, very much the same kind of thing.
And they kept the image of the sacrificial lamb, now, however, carrying a banner of victory, as over our baptismal font.
The borrowing and adapting didn't stop there. From the Jewish liturgy came the lighting of lamps at the beginning of the vigil, and we are told that in the fourth Century "the whole town was illuminated, torches lighted the streets, while the faithful, candles in hand came to the liturgical assembly." Something of that survives in our celebration as we, with our candles, follow the Paschal candle into the church. As our rose window depicts, and the early teachers of the Church insisted, it is the "whole town", all sorts and conditions of human beings, without exception, who are invited to enter the joy of this feast.
The paschal candle, by the way, appeared as early as the third century in some places and in late medieval times could be quite imposing. Salisbury Cathedral had one 36 feet tall! We can't match that, but it will be, for us as well as for them, a symbol of the presence of the Risen Christ in our midst. The paschal candle also has parallels with the pillar of fire that led the Israelites through the desert during their flight from Egypt. It is a sign of the victory of life over death, the triumph of an emancipating God over all the powerful forces that enslave and destroy God's creatures.
In other areas Christians began reinterpreting the Celtic bonfires that flashed from hilltop to hilltop announcing the return of spring. For them, the fires became symbols of the Resurrection and were incorporated into their liturgical usage. Both customs - - the New Fire and the Paschal candle -- continued to spread, and when they met up in Rome were simply, if somewhat awkwardly, combined, as they remain in the present Prayer Book -- and in our courtyard.
The Great Vigil is so rich, such a cascade of symbol after symbol, layers and layers of meaning! It calls on us to lay aside some of our preoccupation with texts and literal meanings, to get our noses out of our books and just let it all wash over us.
As I browse the web looking at other parish websites, I find that many of them have a section entitled "Who are we?" I generally avoid reading them on the grounds that if they don't know, it's not up to me to tell them. But it's a legitimate question, and one, I think, which no descriptive paragraph or page or entire book of reasoned text could answer anywhere near as well as our participation in what is done at the Great Vigil of Easter.
So, after we have set up our candle and blessed God for it, we begin to answer that question in one of the oldest and most sensible ways that human beings have ever come up with. We sit around for a while and tell each other stories, old stories about our predecessors that tell us more about ourselves than we know, stories about creation, liberation, water in dry places, tired, dusty old bones coming to life again. There are many stories and we no longer use all of them every year, but they're all there. And, of course, we punctuate them with the singing of old folk songs, freedom songs: "I will sing to the Lord for he is lofty and uplifted; the horse and the rider has he thrown into the sea."
And then, being mindful of who we are, we incorporate new members into our company through baptism. If there are no candidates locally, we renew our own baptismal vows, bless water, and are sprinkled with it in solidarity with those who are being baptized this night all over the world.
Baptism lies at the heart of the Great Vigil. What the Vigil celebrates is not just "the exceptional destiny of a man who was God, but the wholesale entry of [all humanity] into a new life: the Lord is risen and gives resurrection to the whole world." Melito of Sardis sings in the second Century, "He has brought us from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from death to life, from tyranny to an eternal kingdom."
And 200 years later, St. John Chrysostom says, "As soon as the newly baptized come forth from those sacred waters, all who are present embrace them, kiss them, rejoice with them, and congratulate them, because those who were heretofore slaves and captives have suddenly become free men and women and sons and daughters and have been invited to the royal table."
It is to this that the budding plants, the spring lambs, the unleavened bread, the Red Sea, the fires and the candles and the stories have been leading us: the coming into being of a new humanity. A people who, in baptism, have made a U-turn from the death-dealing powers of this present age. A people stepping out of all their Egypts, past and present, material and spiritual. A people who know they live in a liberated zone.
A people who are a lot like Lazarus, still groping our way out of our tombs, blinking at the brightness of God's new day. But, perhaps for that very reason, a people who, risen with Christ, proclaim to the world the good news of its own resurrection: "Lazarus, come out!"
And so, at the end of the Eucharist that concludes the Vigil, we are sent out as a people with a job to do. St. Gregory of Nyssa, preaching at a Paschal Vigil in the fourth century, tells his congregation, "Dismiss sorrow from your afflicted, anxious souls, as the Lord has dispensed you from bodily mortification. Transform those in infamy to honor, the downtrodden to happiness, those lacking freedom to liberty. Bring out from their corner, as from the tomb, those who are cast down. Let the glory of the festival day shine and reign like a flower in all. "
Lazarus awaits us, in every corner of this neighborhood, this city, this world.
Unbind him, and let him go.
-- Ted Mellor
Trinity Episcopal Church
Phone: 323 660-1110
FAX: 323 660-8954
E-mail: TrinityLA@aol.com