Easter Vigil

What does it mean to be in “union with Christ?” After all, in tonight’s epistle, Saint Paul writes, “For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection.” In other words, what happened to Christ will happen to us.

But even that is not enough. The union that Saint Paul talks about joins us with Jesus in his death. Paul says, “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into his death.” I want you to think about what that means. We died with Christ and we were buried with him, even though his death and burial took place over two thousand years ago. And likewise, although Jesus rose from the dead over two thousand years ago, we shall rise again with him at the end of our journey. That doesn’t mean we’ll have a resurrection like Jesus’s – we share in his resurrection.

Unless you realize how God messes with time sacramentally, you’ll be tempted to think that we’re simply repeating a commemoration of what Jesus did two thousand years ago over and over, year after year, day after day.

God is the creator of everything that exists. That means he is the creator of time. As time’s creator, God is not bound by it. For him, there is no yesterday and no tomorrow – only now. We’re not just commemorating important historical events like the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We’re not even reliving the death and resurrection of Christ. In fact, we’re living it because it’s happening in that eternal “now.” It’s happening in us and to us right now. In us, Christ dies and in us Christ rises from the dead because we are one with him and he with us.

This evening’s second reading is the telling of the Exodus story, where God’s people passed over from slavery to freedom. The Hebrew word for “telling” is Haggadah. And the Passover Haggadah begins with the words, “We were slaves in Egypt.” Not “the Jewish people were slaves in Egypt.” Not “our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. No. We were. This happened to us who are involved in the telling. This is our story.

The Greeks have a word for this: anamnesis. It means “remembering,” but it means the opposite of what we mean when we say we remember something. We remember by going back into the past and calling to mind what was happening back then. But anamnesis means bringing the past event into the present and living it here and now.

This celebration of Jesus’s resurrection is our Haggadah – our “telling” – and this is our anamnesis – our living it here and now. Yesterday, we stood at Golgotha and we were raised up with Christ on the cross. Tonight, we stand at the door of the empty tomb, marveling at the place where we were once laid to rest, in profound awe at the power and loving-kindness of the Father who would raise even such as we from the dead. This is our Passover feast. This is our Body and our Blood. This is our death and our resurrection. And so, we cry out with Saint Augustine this evening, “We are an Easter people and Alleluia! is our song!