This sermon was preached for the Easter Vigil service on Saturday, March 30, 2024 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation], Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13 [The Flood], Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel's deliverance at the Red Sea], Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit], Romans 6:3-11, Psalm 114, and Mark 16:1-8.
Filmmaker Orson Welles, who directed one of the most famous films of all time, Citizen Kane, had a habit of adding lines into the screenplays of his films. He added these words into the script of the 1987 film Someone to Love, for his own character: “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
After spending forty days this Lent pondering the theme of loneliness together as a parish, I can definitely say that this quote, at least from the Christian perspective, is absolute garbage. It’s just dead wrong.
It is individualism and aloneness that is the illusion.
So why do we often feel so differently? In Terrence Real’s book Us: Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship, Real identifies two different and interconnected strands of individualism that dominate American culture. On the one hand, we’ve got the rugged individualism of the self-made man that most fears being subjugated and so seeks to dominate. On the other, there’s the romantic individualism that fears enforced conformity and so values self-expression and personal authenticity over all else. Whichever individualism you’re pulled towards, individualism at its heart is loneliness - and is also a lie.
We are who we are only in relation to other people. This isn’t some kumbaya idealism either - the way the neurons in our brains literally fire is by mirroring the people around us, our limbic systems are in actual fact regulated by the bodies beside us, our hearts beat and our lungs inflate in tune with one another’s.
Welles also clearly has never witnessed a birth. Birth is one of the least alone times we’ll ever have. You’re quite literally emerging from another human being.
Then, if you are lucky, someone who loves you will have you baptized. And in that moment, especially if you are destined to be Episcopalian, a priest will trace an indelible mark of oil on your little forehead and declare that you are Christ’s own forever. And you are. You will live in Christ and you will die in Christ, too. Never alone.
Tonight is the night for baptisms, and remembering ours, whatever age we were when it happened. Just as the Vigil readings zip us from creation and crucifixion, the Red Sea to the resurrection all in one service, baptism collapses birth and death into one moment. We both drown and emerge from the waters of the womb all at once. We die and are born and are alive with the risen Lord and we do none of it alone.
On this night, along with thousands of Christians all over the world, along with millions of faithful who have come before us, we remember and recommit to our baptismal covenant. In doing so, we promise to overcome the barriers that hold up our illusion of separateness - we promise to pattern our lives for reconnection. Look back at the six questions at the heart of our covenant, and our Episcopal faith:
1) With God’s help, we pledge to continue in fellowship with the faithful. 2) We refuse to let our mistakes get in the way of returning to God. 3) We commit to sharing our joy with others, 4) to serving others, 5) to fighting for others, and 6) to recognizing our interconnectedness with all of creation.
Love and friendship don’t create an illusion - they reveal our truth. The essence of humanness is connection, relationship. As is the essence of the Triune God we worship - and in whose image we are made.
This is the night we declare that death is no longer the end of our story. That death no longer has dominion over us. Most of all, we declare that for us even death - the stilling of hearts and the sputtering out of neurons - even death ceases to be a moment of separation: neither separation from God nor one other.
On this night we celebrate the harrowing of hell, Jesus’ descent down to liberate the dead. This is the night when we read the immortal words of St. John Chrysostom:
“Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry: Hell, said he, was embittered, when it encountered Thee in the lower regions. It was embittered, for it was abolished. It was embittered, for it was mocked. It was embittered, for it was slain. It was embittered, for it was overthrown. It was embittered, for it was fettered in chains. It took a body, and met God face to face. It took earth, and encountered Heaven. It took that which was seen, and fell upon the unseen.
O Death, where is your sting? O Hell, where is your victory?”
This is the night that the illusion of aloneness is shattered forever.
Alleluia! Amen.
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