The Great Easter Vigil & Easter Day Year A

Homily based on: 
Matthew 28:1-10

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O God our Strength and our Redeemer.

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We’ve been journeying towards this night for a long time. This is the Great Easter Vigil, the night for celebrating Christ’s resurrection. It is the night when we celebrate and proclaim the gift of new life and Christ’s promise that death will not be the end of us, and is not the end of human meaning and hope. It is the night when we renew our baptismal vows, as Christians have been doing at Easter time since the early centuries of the church.

We have been preparing for this celebration by journeying through the season of Lent; 40 days is a symbolic length of time in the Christian faith tradition, and it reminds us of other journeys, especially the journey of the Israelites in the wilderness for 40 years before entering the promised land, and the 40 days that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public ministry. 

In recent years, many of us have also lived through seasons of disruption and uncertainty –  wilderness seasons – times when our roots have been shaken and our path ahead unclear. And it seems another such season is coming upon us.

What does it mean to celebrate resurrection when we are facing so many challenges – the climate crisis, economic instability, the insanity of war driven by ego and greed? 

What does it mean to say Alleluia, when our economy is facing massive disruption, with all the edges of inequality and struggle that will be sharpened as a result? 

I believe with my whole being that it matters that Christ is risen – but living that out in these days could be harder than it’s ever been. We will need our faith, we will need one another; we will need the stories of the resurrection. 

I was struck, as I pondered the story of the resurrection in Matthew’s gospel, by the repetition of the words, ‘Do not be afraid…’ The angel of God who appears after the earthquake, prosaically sitting on the stone that they had rolled away from the tomb, is the first to say ‘Do not be afraid…’ And then Jesus himself, meeting Mary Magdalene and the other Mary as they ran to find the disciples, speaks the words again – ‘Do not be afraid…’ These words are offered, I think, as a comfort, as an invitation – but also a recognition that those who encountered the risen Jesus were afraid. Resurrection does not erase fear – it meets us within it.

The women who went to the tomb at dawn and encountered not the body they were planning to wrap, but instead the earth shaking beneath them and a bright angel, were frightened. They were taken by surprise – they weren’t all organised; they weren’t prepared, or feeling particularly holy. 

They were simply doing what was expected of them, in terrible circumstances, as best they could – they were taking care of ordinary things in a holy way, in the midst of grief and crisis.

There is a lot in that memory for us today. Perhaps especially now, when so many people are simply trying to carry on – doing ordinary things as best we can in the midst of uncertainty and grief and even fear.

I think the bright joy of the resurrection gospel is powerful precisely because for those women, it emerged out of a journey of such darkness and struggle and trauma. 

There’s room in the Christian faith for these very human experiences that are part of all of our lives, but that we most often keep hidden. And it’s out of those experiences – the difficult times, when we feel we have lost ourselves in the wilderness – that we rise to new life: this is resurrection, touching us here and now, where we are – not some other day when we have life all sorted out. Jesus came to meet Mary Magdalene and the other Mary in the grey light of dawn, in the midst of fearfulness and confusion and uncertainty. 

And in those moments, his resurrected presence radically changed – and changes – everything. Like a pebble dropped into a pond, the resurrection sends ripples outward – beginning with the desolation and shame of the disciples, and reaching into all the darkness and uncertainty and struggle of the world. But it begins here, in each of our hearts – that deep awareness that each of us is met, known and called by Christ – called as Christ’s own, forever (as the words of our baptismal liturgy say).

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary rushed to tell what they had seen – to share their encounter. We know their news was met with disbelief, with fear, with confusion. But they insisted on resurrection because it is so good, so essential, so life-giving. It is the good news we need to hear and carry in our hearts, so that we can live it out in our daily lives.

Because our world still needs this news, today more than ever. Especially as we face so much that makes our world feel frightening and precarious, a new wilderness of sorts. But the sorrow will not be forever – the grave is empty – the same Jesus who conquered death is alive among us. 

We still need to hear those words ‘Don’t be afraid’… we need that angel who met the grieving women at dawn to accompany us too as we find our way towards a new encounter with Christ in a very different world. But remember – all is not lost. Christ is risen – and he tells us again, as he always has – do not be afraid!

Alleluia! Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. 

Amen.