The Great Vigil of Easter 2009

Saturday, 11 April 2009
The Rev’d Lloyd Prator

New York City

The more ancient the rite, the more powerful the symbols. I suppose that is true because, in one way of thinking about it, since liturgy is a living and growing thing, it has lived a long time and grown in different directions in the two centuries since the Light of Christ was first proclaimed in a darkened church. In our time, liturgy has become simpler and cleaner, shorter, and perhaps more focused, more direct and more accessible.

But at important times of the year—and this is the most important—the church invites its members to take a journey into antiquity. Not just from antiquarian interests, as compelling as those might be. But from the priority of proximity. Let us see what the liturgy would have been like at the closest time to the events which it purports to re-enact. Let’s get as close as possible to the action and see how people responded to it.

They responded to the interplay of light and dark. Today, if we enter a darkened room, we can fix that with the flick of a switch. Not so for our ancestors. Darkness had its own terror because it was intractable, hard to do anything about. Darkness connoted death. So, to wait in a darkened church was to be in that tomb with Christ and to feel the loss of life, the hopelessness of death, the pain of separation.

A burst of light, such as a bonfire at the beginning of liturgy, was a powerful symbol of resurrection. Light conquering darkness. Some people even suggest that the custom of praying with one’s hands upraised—as the celebrant alone does in our liturgy—is actually a ritualized response to a burst of flame: suddenly raising one’s hands in amazement and surprise.

Our ancestors also responded to the deprivation of sounds of joy and triumph. It had, and has been, weeks, since we heard that praise shout which dare not speak its name for a few minute yet—the dreaded “A-word.” And yet in a moment, we will open the door and allow that ancient chant to echo again through our liturgy.

Our ancestors, who lived in a desert culture, responded to the absence of water and to its sudden restoration. After three days in a church where there has been no water in the baptismal font, where we have indeed thirsted for the living God, we are suddenly in a baptismal rain shower and in that shower we remember just how it was that we first felt the power of the risen Christ—we felt it by drowning in the waters of baptism. And tonight the water is back.

Light in darkness, fire in the cold, shouts of praise, a deluge of water on a dry soul. In these ways, and with these symbols, we celebrate the risen Christ. I invite you now to reflect upon these mysteries and then proceed to sign on to the covenant of your baptism as we renew the vows and promises by which we entered the new life of Christ.