by CCW | 11 April 2020 21:00
“The night is come,” the Paschal Praeconium proclaims exultantly. This night marks the beginning of something new, a new creation, not through the destruction but by the renewing of creation. What is new is what the great Easter proclamation, known as the Paschal Preconium, signals. Resurrection. That is the new creation. That is God’s great work of making something out of nothing, indeed, out of the greater nothingness of human sin and evil.
How can there be a greater nothing? Only as a figure of speech, it might seem, and yet in another way, that is exactly the great joy of the Vigil and of Easter. We wait expectantly for God’s great second act; such is the Resurrection. Sin and evil seek to unmake the creation and even, folly of all follies, to unmask and dismiss God from every human horizon. Sin and evil try to make creation and God nothing. God takes human sin and evil, and out of its greater nothingness, out of its vanity and folly, makes a new creation. There is Resurrection not by a denial of the past of the Passion and Death of Christ but by its transformation. God makes something out of the suffering and death that we have caused. “The night is come.”
“The night is come” when we can shout with exceeding great joy that Christ is Risen. Alleluia! Alleluia! What that means is signalled in the liturgy of the Vigil. It means that death has been completely changed, overcome; it has undergone a radical make-over. Death is no longer the terminus ad quem, the end of the road, the end to which all must succumb; death has been transformed into a transitus, a means to greater end. We pray that our “corrupt affections,” our sins being “buried with Christ,” “we may pass to our joyful resurrection” “through the grave and gate of death.” The grave cannot hold him and God seeks something more for us. We only live when we live in him.
“The night is come” that out-nights all other nights including the love-duet between Lorenzo and Jessica in the Merchant of Venice, each seeking to gain an advantage over the other in references to the ancient stories of love and its powers. “The night is come,” the Paschal Praeconium says “wherein thou dividest the sea and madest the children of Israel to pass over as on dry land”, the night, too, in which the people of Israel are led and guided by a pillar of light. The imagery recalls God’s deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery in the Exodus. So this night builds upon that story and its importance for the understanding of Israel. Christ’s Resurrection is framed in terms of God’s deliverance of the ancient people of Israel from death and slavery and extends it to the whole of humanity.
“The night is come,” then, when “all that believe in Christ upon the face of the earth” are “delivered from the shadow of death” and “are renewed and made partakers of eternal life.” Such is the radical nature of the Resurrection and its universal extent.
“The night is come, wherein the bonds of death were loosed, and Christ rose again in triumph.” The great Easter prayer goes on to speak of the theological concept of felix culpa, O blessed fault or fall. “For wherefore should man be born into this world, save that being born he might be redeemed?” That is the greater act, redemption, accomplished in the paradox of divine love: “to redeem a servant, [God] delivered up his only Son.” Such is the wonder of the atonement, of Christ’s redeeming sacrifice and of the divine justice which seeks the ultimate good of his creation. It is not made in vain despite the vanity of our sins.
“The night is come … when our Saviour Christ rose again from death unto life.” The effects of this night are such that “the night is as clear as the day” and the mystery of “this holy night” is fully revealed. “The mystery of this holy night putteth to flight the deeds of darkness, purgeth away sin, restoreth innocence to the fallen, and gladness unto them that mourn: casteth out hatred, bringeth peace to all mankind and boweth down mighty princes.” It is a wonderful and complete picture of the redemption of our humanity.
But only because of the greater wonder of this night. It is the night “wherein heaven and earth are joined, and mankind partaketh with the Godhead.” The Resurrection is about the radical restoration of our humanity to God.
Following the Paschal Praeconium, the service turns to Scripture readings from the Old Testament interspersed with scriptural canticles. The readings are prophecies; passages from the Jewish Scriptures seen in the light of the Resurrection. Following the Prophecies comes the renewal of baptismal vows which is a critical part of the Easter Vigil liturgy. The Vigil was the preferred time for baptisms and confirmation. We renew our vows. In so doing we recall who we are in the sight of God. The renewal of vows focuses on the Apostles’ Creed. After the renewal of vows, our ‘country’ Easter Vigil ends with the early morning office in the monastic traditions of Lauds with a Psalm framed by an antiphon and then the Morning Prayer canticle, the Benedictus Dominus Deus also framed by an antiphon before closing with the Easter Collect and the Easter Proclamation. Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia!
With the Vigil we end on a note of rejoicing even as on Palm Sunday we began on a note of rejoicing. The difference and thus the greater joy is what we have gone through in between in the Passion of Christ, things which the Paschal Praeconium highlights. The night is come in which we find all our joy. Alleluia! Rejoice and be glad. Christ is risen.
Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, April 11th, 2020
Posted not preached owing to the Covid-19 outbreak
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2020/04/11/sermon-for-easter-vigil-6/
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