Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City,
April 15, 2006, The Great Vigil of Easter, Year B
by The Reverend William A. Greenlaw, Ph.D.

Genesis 1:1-2:2
Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13
Exodus 14:10-15:1
Ezekiel 37:1-14
Romans 6:3-11
Psalm 114
Matthew 28:1-10

            “Mortal, can these bones live?”  I answered, “O Lord God, you know.”             

            In this wonderful lesson from Ezekiel, the prophet is placed in the middle of a valley.  The valley was filled with bones, and the bones were very, very dry.  The Valley of the Dry Bones was the valley of death.  Death writ large.  Death everywhere.  Overwhelming death.  Despair.  Hopelessness. 

            What an image for the world in which we live.  I think it highly likely that many of us here tonight could count the ways in which we seem hell-bent on death, hell-bent on courting death, of doing our best to corrupt and pollute the good earth God has created.  Of wars and rumor of wars where it seems we can imagine once again using nuclear weapons in war—the only nation ever to have done so might actually do so again.  Of a social policy that continues to look out for the rich first and foremost—with a still-widening gap between rich and poor. 

            Of a cautious and timid Episcopal Church over against an Anglican Communion increasingly dominated by churches whose ways are so very different from our own.  A situation where we are in danger of losing any sense of the prophetic and the cause of simple justice and equality as central to our identity and mission—where unity seems possible only by once again emphasizing very plainly that there are once again outcasts in the Episcopal Church—which of course makes a mockery of the unity that seems to be valued over everything else. 

            Of the multitude of individual ills and issues all of us are up against to a lesser or greater extent at any moment in our lives. 

            Yes, the image of the dry bones is an apt one.  “Can these bones live?”  The only possible answer would seem to be, “O Lord God, you know.” 

            But to give just a bit of perspective, if our world conjures up such an image as apt for us here in New York City on this holy night, I do think most of us if challenged could imagine there are plenty of places in the world where a sense of hope and possibility would seem even father away—say, for example, a refugee camp in Sudan. 

            While brooding on our sorry state of affairs and wondering what message I could bring to you on this holy night, I happened on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter Message to his own Diocese of Canterbury.  Rowan Williams prefaced his main point by noting that there is a special word, the “A” word that is not supposed to be uttered in Lent.  In fact it is not supposed to be uttered until that special point later in our service tonight when we finally have our Easter Acclamation. 

            Well, the Lord Archbishop observed Ash Wednesday this year in a visit to a refugee camp in Sudan in searing heat and humidity.  He wrote, “Pretty well everything, every aspect of that environment, seemed set to remind us that we still lived in a world where the cross was the immediate reality and resurrection hope was definitely a thing of the future.  Hunger, desperate poverty, the traces of unspeakable trauma and violence, and the present reality of the same unspeakable brutality not too far away in Darfur—this surely, was a world untouched by Easter….  These were people whose whole life was a particularly awful and crushing ‘Lent.’” 

            And yet, contra to everything he had believed and practiced liturgically all his life, the Archbishop of Canterbury found even the Ash Wednesday Liturgy in Sudan was punctuated with “Alleluias” without end.  There was an unshakeable sense that God was present, uniquely and wonderfully present, even on Ash Wednesday in the midst of so much that to our eyes would call everything into question. 

            In reading this account, I was reminded of the stories we heard this past fall from Father Tim and Bob Chaloner concerning their respective experiences in South Africa and Swaziland. 

Such accounts also reminded me of a truth I have known and marveled at again and again in my own ministry.  And that is that the dying, and I mean persons in the depths of our devastating AIDS crisis a few years back, as well as persons with advanced cancer, have known and felt and believed something that utterly humbled me in my own impoverished faith.  For so many came to a closeness and a faith in a loving and redeeming God—when, to more “normal” eyes they would seem to be the embodiment of abandonment. 

            And so, to give this night a chance, might I suggest that we really try to pull back, to step back from our consumption and immersion in the terrible crises of our day here and elsewhere, and try to be open to the wonder that can be present even to us, the jaded and the cynical, this holy night.  Let us consider for a moment just what it is that is being proclaimed in our service tonight.   

            The very first words we heard tonight are so very powerful, if only we can stop long enough to let their meaning penetrate: “Dear Friends in Christ:  On this most holy night, in which our Lord Jesus passed over from death to life, the Church invites her members, dispersed throughout the world, to gather in vigil and prayer.  For this is the Passover of the Lord, in which by hearing his Word and celebrating his Sacraments, we share in his victory over death.” 

            The new fire was struck, the Paschal Candle lit, and the glorious Exsultet sung: 

            Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church.  Resound with the praises of your people. 

            This is the night when Israel was brought out of bondage and led through the Red Sea on dry land. 

            This is the night when all who believe are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace. 

            This is the night when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave. 

            How wonderful and beyond our knowing. 

            How holy is this night, where wickedness is put to flight and sin is washed away.  Innocence is restored to the fallen, joy to those who mourn.  Pride and hatred are cast out.  Peace and concord are given to us. 

            How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined, and all humanity is reconciled to God. 

            And then we heard these astonishing words in as we are reminded of the drama of our salvation, made new once again this very night. 

            And God saw that it was good.  Indeed, creation was and is very good. 

            And God said, this is the sign of the covenant: never again shall all flesh be cut off.  I have set my bow in the clouds.  The Lord of hosts is with us.  The God of Jacob is our stronghold. 

            I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously.  The horse and its rider has he hurled into the sea.  With your constant love you have led the people you redeemed.  You bring them in and plant them.  The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. 

            “Mortal, can these bones live?”  “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.”  But, thus says the Lord, “I am going to open your graves…and I will bring you back…O my people.  I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.” 

            What amazing things have unfolded, will unfold this evening!  Wherever we have been, wherever we are, whatever we have been through, however hopeless it may have seemed, tonight, everything has changed, everything has been made new for each one of us here. 

            The Great Vigil of Easter is the remarkable liturgy that it is because it truly lays before us in the grandest way possible, our salvation history.  It has the possibility of bringing that history to life, making it accessible and real, helps us find our way into it, invites us in and transforms us in the process.  And nothing can ever be the same again.  For all things are made new, most especially ourselves. 

            Holy Baptism is that singular action by which we are invited in.  And all of us who are already baptized are invited into reliving, remembering that experience once again as Elliott receives the sacrament of new birth this evening.  For in baptism we go down into the dark, mysterious, primordial flowing waters of the earth, and are washed there and made new, born again, coming up into the new life in Christ, sealed in the spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever. 

            Baptism is, before it is anything else, the establishing of a relationship.  Before anything else is said or done or acted upon, baptism tells us that God loves us, that God loves you, accepts you, calls you ,gives you a name.  Remember the biblical notion of naming conferring something very special on the thing or on the one that is named.  Being given a Christian name in baptism, which is of course what the word “christening” means, refers to that new sense of identity as none other than a child of God, of being named in and through Christ.

            The unconditional love and nurture that a parent at least ideally offers a child, only begins to hint at the unconditional love that is offered to each one of us by God.  We are not alone.  We are not abandoned.  We are not forsaken.  We are offered forgiveness again and again.  We are offered nothing less than a share in the resurrection life of Jesus who is the Christ. 

            Also, baptism as we practice it is not simply having that holy water poured over our heads as we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  For a further action takes place in the sealing, where the celebrant’s thumb, dipped in Chrism, marks the sign of the cross on the baptisand’s forehead with these words: “Elliott: you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” 

            Chrism is that special olive oil, blessed by the bishop.  It reminds us of the anointing of Jesus.  It is a sign of our share in his royal priesthood, in his death, in his kingship, in his resurrection life. 

            But there is more.  For it is of course the olive tree that gives the olive from which the oil is pressed.  This action is, if you will, God’s olive branch—of reaching out to those of us who have rebelled so often and so well, of reaching out in love and peace, even if we have cut ourselves off, even if we sometimes think we are beyond forgiveness. 

            We are reminded of the story of Noah.  After the rains subsided, Noah sent out a dove from the ark.  But the dove found no place to set its foot, and so it returned to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the earth.  But seven days later, Noah again sent forth the dove.  And the dove came back in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly picked olive leaf, so Noah knew the waters had subsided.  The enmity between God and his creation had passed.  The dove and the olive branch would become signs of harmony and peace. 

            But now, to bring it all right down to us, gathered here this evening in our world of dry bones:  In baptism we are grafted like an olive branch into a tree, a new community, the church, the community of faith, the body of Christ, where we are given the continuing nourishment and grace to grow and develop and mature in faith.  Where we are to worship and to be all we are meant to be by virtue of being Christ’s own.  To be his agents, to be a part of his royal priesthood.  To reach out in the same sort of peace and love with which we have been received.  To see those around us as our sisters and brothers in the faith.  To reach out in love and to seek justice in the world around us, knowing that the battle has already been won. 

If only we can remember that, then we can  see the love of God we have been given not as a limited, finite resource to be guarded and preserved, hung onto because it might slip away from us.  On the contrary, this love grows not as it is hoarded, but rather precisely to the degree that it is spent in loving and serving others, and in showing forth the light of Christ that burns within us and through us.        

            One final thing.  We have been called out, called together, given a new life before we do anything else.  And we are to feast.  To feast together at the heavenly banquet where we are given a foretaste of the resurrection life that is ours.  Our Easter communion is precisely that.  And the feasting is to be with joyous abandon.  We are not meant to be staid Anglicans—certainly not tonight, at any rate.  We are all invited to join in and sing the Hallelujah Chorus as if we meant it, gustily and even lustily.  We join in because on this night we can’t stand to have that glorious piece of music performed for us, not this night.  And we certainly don’t sing it thinking that somehow David will consider us as candidates for our wonderful Holy Apostles Choir.  We sing it even imperfectly this night because we must, because we can’t help ourselves as we express with joy the Easter faith that has come to life in us.  And then, this being Holy Apostles, our famous Easter party beckons.  I say to each one of you, stay tonight if you possibly can.  For tonight, of all nights, we have something to celebrate, together.. 

            “Can these bones live?  ... “ O my people: I will put my spirit in you, and you shall live.”  Amen.

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