Sermon by the rev'd. John Bauerschmidt

The Easter Vigil

The Easter Vigil
April 14, 2001
Christ Church, Covington

"A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you" (Ez. 36: 26).

Tonight is a night of transition, when great events are afoot that lead from death to life. Tonight God’s People have kept vigil, waiting for his mighty acts. Tonight is the Christian Passover, in which the Church looks back to God’s delivery of Moses and the People at the Red Sea, and recalls that Jesus Christ himself is "our Passover" (1 Cor. 5:7), by whom we pass from slavery to sin into true and lasting freedom.

Tonight is the night of the Lord’s resurrection, in which Jesus Christ makes his Great Passage from death to life. The resurrection is not a magical trick, but the powerful sign that God is renewing the world and triumphing over sin and death through Jesus Christ. It isn’t magic, but it is a miracle, in which the broken body of Christ and the crushed hopes of his friends are transformed by the loving power of God. "This is the night", we sang when we began this Vigil, "this is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave". This is the night of the Great Passage, the time of transition that marks out a new universe of meaning and understanding for God’s faithful People.

For this is a night of transition for us as well. Think for a moment how we began this Vigil: in the Garden, in the resting place of the remains of our fellow parishioners, literally at the grave. We began at dusk, in the evening of the day, as activity is winding down to the end. Now we stand in the light, and in the presence of the newly baptized; no longer at the grave, but in the presence of new life.

The newly baptized are the most powerful symbols in the Church tonight, the great example of transition and passage that is given to us as the fruits of this feast. "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?… For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his" (Rom. 6:3, 5). God is doing a new thing, in giving rebirth and new life to these persons. God is giving them a new identity in Christ Jesus. As the Apostle Paul wrote to the Church in Galatia, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Gal. 3:27). It is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (cf. Gal. 2:20).

The newly baptized remind us of the new heart and the new spirit which God has given us through the gift of new life. Ezekiel prophesized it long ago, and now through the resurrection of Jesus Christ that prophecy is being fulfilled. We have been washed in clean water, and our sin has been forgiven; our heart of stone has been replaced by a heart of flesh. We have come into the land that God has promised, making our own passage from death to life, from slavery to freedom. God has made us a new People in Jesus Christ, in this awesome night of transition.

The Rev’d John Bauerschmidt is Rector of Christ Church, Covington.

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