Sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter, 2022                                                                        Gospel text: Luke 24:1-12

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Hallelujah!

You have come to know that I love audience participation, I love a call and response, and on this holy and blessed night, we are invited to rejoice and to sing praise to our God, to shout “hallelujah” over and over again, because the power of sin and death have been overcome by the glorious resurrection of Jesus the Christ. It’s finally here, beloveds. This is the night.

This is the night when we get to ask my favorite questions, brought to us by the prophet Hosea and the Apostle Paul, “Where, O grave, is thy victory? Where, O death, is thy sting?”^[1] Not here. Vanquished.

This is the night. This is the night where we do not fear the darkness, for it, too, has been vanquished.

This is the night. This is the night when we hear stories told from throughout the history of God’s people. In the full and exhaustive Great Vigil of Easter, we would have heard a dozen stories, which would have carried us from the darkness of the tomb into the resurrection dawn. As we are a modern and practical community of faith, we have heard merely six stories this evening, and they have been good ones.

Voices from throughout our congregation have told us of the creation of the universe; of the exodus and Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea; prophecies about what it is to live and to breathe as a community. The Apostle Paul insisted that we are moving from death to life. And the women gathered at the tomb of Jesus, looking for the living among the dead.

We heard poetry, we heard prose. We heard history, we heard allegory, we heard prophecy. We heard hopes and dreams and visions. We heard assurances and admonitions.

The Great Vigil of Easter invites us to listen for the whole story.

Somewhere along the line in our institutional church history, we leaned not into the voices of the women at the tomb, but of those who failed to believe them. We determined that some voices were not welcome in the church, that some people were not worthy to proclaim the Gospel. It is clear, simply from this evening’s readings, that we got this very wrong. The first proclaimers of the good news—Jesus is not dead, but alive—were women. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who had come with Jesus from Galilee are the Gospel’s first preachers. In order to be Biblically accurate, it could be argued that only women should preach on Easter. I digress.

These women had been with Jesus on the way. They had traveled around the Judean countryside, providing invaluable service to the community. We know that they were exceptional women, given that they traveled with this band of radicals rather than staying put and keeping a home in the village of their husbands. They famously sat at the feet of Jesus, learning from him and sharing the good news that he proclaimed. But we also know that their roles as disciples were likely related to the care and keeping of the men; feeding, clothing, mending, cleaning, tending. We know that they had not abandoned this responsibility, as they approached the tomb of Jesus in the early dawn hours. They came to tend to the body of their friend, the last act of service they would ever do for him.

When we don’t listen to the whole story, because we do not hear from everyone involved, we are very likely to miss out on something important. In some instances, it might be interesting details or context. In some instances, it might be the whole point.

We know from the historical record that it is almost always the winners who write the story of the war. It is always those with power whose voices are loudest, whose expertise is acknowledged, whose contributions are applauded. But if we stuck to that version of the story, in the case of Jesus’ death, all we’d know is that some rabble-rouser was executed and nobody ever thought twice about it again. Thanks be to God, we have the testimony of these women.

Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother of James, and “the other women who were with them” spent their sabbath day afraid and unsure about what the future would hold. They relied on their tradition to point them toward action, to move through the rituals of grieving together. These women probably fed their families, and gathered to pray in the candlelight. Then, before anyone else was awake, I imagine them meeting, quietly, at one of their homes, and gathering the spices they’d prepared. I imagine them looking one another in their scared faces, taking a few steadying breaths, nodding resolutely, and walking out into the dawn.

These women are some of the most courageous people in our whole scripture. While they were doing their sacred duty to their friend, they were making their way to the grave of a convicted political criminal. They took a significant risk to themselves and to their terrified community, showing their faces at this place, where Roman guards likely still stood. But in the chaos and turmoil, they had courage.

When they arrived to do their work—the practical, mundane, sacred work of tending to the dead—they were met, instead, with an empty tomb and two dazzling strangers. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” One of the strangers asks. “He is not here, but has risen.”

Not only did these women have the courage to show up at the tomb of their friend when all hell had broken loose, but they had the courage to believe it was true that he was alive again. And then, the courage to run home and tell their friends this unbelievable truth. It is, at face value, an absurd proclamation. He is risen? Could it be?

But as the people of God, who have heard the stories of God’s work in the world over millennia, we are perhaps familiar with such odd things.

“Let there be light,” God says, and it is so.

“Go into the ark,” God says, and Noah goes.

“The Lord will provide,” Abraham says, and Isaac nods.

“Do not be afraid,” Moses says, and the Israelites cross the Red Sea.

“Prophesy to these bones,” God says, and Ezekiel breathes.

“He is not here, but is risen,” the stranger says, and the women believe.

They believe, but their friends and coworkers in ministry fail to believe them! They are dismissed, their proclamation of the gospel truth disregarded as an idle tale. How many women—and how many marginalized and minoritized people, across time and space—have told the truth and not been believed? How many times have people insisted on their lived experiences, only to be ignored or invalidated or even punished? This cannot be the example we follow in a post-Easter world.

We, hearers of these stories in the Year of our Lord 2022 know the truth, and the truth has set us free, because, for centuries, people have had the courage to tell that truth. And the person they told it to trusted them, believed them, and continued to tell the story. Our ancestors in faith have told the stories of the people of God, and told them again, and again. Year after year, night after night, telling the stories. The simple stories, and the weird stories, and the confusing stories, and the complicated stories, and the gruesome stories, and the uplifting stories, and the liberating stories.

And in the same way, each of your stories is part of God’s story. Your lived experiences, many and varied, are reflected in the pages of our sacred texts. Your victories and your defeats, your hopes and your fears, your joys and your sorrows, all of you belongs here, in the story of God.

The truth, as hard as it is to believe, is that Jesus, who was once dead is alive again. You, who were once dead, are alive again in Christ. Hallelujah! Amen.

^[1] 1 Corinthians 15:55 / Hosea 13:14