by CCW | 4 April 2015 21:00
We can only watch and wait. That is the nature of our looking upon him whom they pierced. It is actually in some real sense the meaning of our Christian lives. We watch and wait upon God. We “look upon him whom we have pierced,” looking for the redemption of our souls and our world, looking for what is accomplished in the events of the Passion.
What we look for we also celebrate. All of our looking upon Christ crucified this Holy Week is only possible through the fruit of his passion in the Resurrection. We look upon him whom we have pierced and “behold, it is I, handle and see, a spirit hath not flesh and blood as ye see that I have.” Christ is risen! Alleluia, Alleluia! The Resurrection makes possible the Passion even as the Passion helps us to understand the true joy of Easter. No Passion, no Resurrection but paradoxically, no Resurrection, no Passion!
The events of Holy Week concentrate our attention on Christ crucified but only through the optic of the Resurrection which gives those events meaning and significance. Tonight we have watched and waited for the great and grand act of Resurrection. And what is that except God making something new and wonderful out of the nothingness of our sins and folly?
At Easter and throughout Eastertide we shall look on him whom we have pierced and contemplate in his wounds the very nature of divine love, the love which restores and redeems, the love that makes us lovely. Without that we are nothing. The Resurrection is about the something more of God’s love seen on the Cross but is more than the Cross. That is the point. Easter is about a new and greater creation, about redemption, about a reality that is more than the mundane experiences of our everyday lives. We live for God and with God because of his Passion and Resurrection.
It changes our whole outlook on life and gives us the strength and courage to persevere knowing that love is the weight and measure of our lives. Nothing else matters.
The Evensong lessons from Job (19.21-27) and John (2. 13-22) underscore the new note of the Resurrection. “I know that my redeemer liveth,” says Job, and John relates the story of Jesus at an earlier Passover festival cleansing the temple and speaking about his own Death and Resurrection, things which the disciples later remembered that he had said.
The great Vigil of Easter recalls us to the Passion and the fruit of his Passion for us. It is new life, the radical new life of the Resurrection which opens us out to living in communion with the God who makes communion with us and gathers us into his endless life. The Resurrection does not eclipse the Passion; each returns upon the other to provide us with a deeper joy, a joy that can only be known in and through the sorrows of the Passion.
We look upon him who we have pierced even on the great Vigil of Easter because what we behold is the great power of God who makes something and even something more out of the nothing of sin and death. Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia!
Fr. David Curry,
Easter Vigil 2015
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2015/04/04/sermon-for-easter-vigil-2/
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