This sermon was preached for the Great Vigil of Easter, Saturday, April 8, 2023 at St. Mark's in East Longmeadow, MA. 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, and Matthew 28:1-10.
When I was young and got upset or mopey about one thing or another, my mother would often say to me, it will all be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
I have come to believe that these were not just simple words of comfort, but are actually a profound theological statement. This moment we are in right now, whatever moment that is for you in your life, it is only a small part of a larger story. The story of your life, yes, but even bigger than that, the whole, huge entire story of creation. Tonight is the night we zoom out to the largest, longest view we have: the arc of salvation history. And we know the ending of the story already.
We start at the very beginning. We see that God created everything as goodness and for goodness. And God saw that it was very good. Then we remember the covenant God made to every living thing, of which the rainbow is a sign: never again will God wipe life off the face of the earth. There will always be another chance with God.
If we really wanted to be here all night, we’d do all the readings for each successive covenant: God’s covenant with Abraham and with his descendants, with God’s people with Moses and with the Israelites on Mount Sinai, and God’s promise to King David that one of his descendants would be the Messiah, savior of his and every nation. God’s final covenant through Jesus Christ is offered to every person for all time. Every one of God’s promises still stand. Each covenant is not a redo or an abrogation of the previous but rather God underlining God’s faithfulness over and over in the way God’s people can hear it best in each particular moment in time. It will all be okay in the end. This is not the end. Not until love wins, not until love is all in all.
Each covenant offers a way to help people know and experience God’s love. In turn, each covenant asks us to be God’s love to the world: to be fruitful and tend the earth, to be resilient and hopeful, to live ethically, to govern justly. To be Christian is to hear God’s message of love through the words of Jesus Christ, through the symbols and rituals of the Christian tradition, and to experience and practice God’s love through the work of Christian community.
When we say yes to God in our baptism, we commit to loving our neighbor as ourselves and to strive for justice and peace among all peoples. In doing so, we recall that we are not just characters in a play. We are authors right alongside God, co-writers of our small part of the larger story.
We also know the ending of our and every story. And it is not death. Our death is not the end of our story.
Jesus’ resurrection declares, once and for all time, that death will never be the final word for any story. The empty tomb points to God’s final promise: that just as we were created in goodness in the beginning, we will be raised into goodness on the last day. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.
When a young man named Daniel died tragically, suddenly, at age 28, his family knew that his death could and would not be the end of his story. A few months later, they received a letter with definite proof that it hadn’t been. Daniel’s heart saved the life of another young man, a 32 year old. His liver was given to a 54 year old mother who had been waiting for a liver for more than a dozen years but could now expect a full recovery; the rest of his liver went to a one year old boy. Daniel’s pancreas and left kidney saved the life of a 36 year old man; his right kidney saved a 6 year old boy. Daniel should not have died; and yet death would not be the final word in his story. There was still so much of his story yet to be written; now it would be written through the lives of five others who live and breathe because of him.
This is my body, given for you.
I can’t tell you how many times people have shared with me about the moment they knew death was not the end of their loved one’s story. A rainbow. A butterfly. The words of a song on the radio. Or simply just a feeling one day of a mysterious presence still operating in the world. Sometimes people are a bit sheepish about sharing these moments with me, as if I’ll think it preposterous or cliché. But I believe them every single time.
It will all be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. We don’t know much for sure about the details of the end of this huge, epic, collective story. We don’t know how exactly God will accomplish it and certainly we don’t know when it will be. But we know its essence will be goodness, through and through.
Our Bishop reminded all of his clergy this past Tuesday that what we say with ashes on Ash Wednesday is only half of the story. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. Today we proclaim with the water of baptism: Remember you were created in love and to love you shall return.
Amen.
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