THE GREAT VIGIL OF EASTER

April 8, 2023

Christ Episcopal Church, Woodbury, N. J.

 

 

The Easter Vigil is not only, in my opinion, the most exciting and powerful service of the entire Church year, but also one of the most ancient Christian liturgies we have on record. By the third century it was firmly established in many places as the Church’s annual occasion of administering Holy Baptism. While practices varied from place to place, the typical pattern was for adult converts to undertake a period of preparation for baptism lasting as long as three years or more. During this period, they were called catechumens. The final forty days before Easter – which gradually evolved into the season of Lent – comprised intensive instruction in the essentials of the faith, as well as fasting and prayer undertaken by the whole Church together with and on behalf of the catechumens.

 

Finally, between sunset and sunrise on Easter Eve, a long vigil service would take place, lasting many hours. (What we’re doing here this evening is a highly abbreviated version of that.) Down through the centuries, various ceremonies evolved to punctuate this liturgy: kindling new fire; lighting the Paschal Candle; chanting the Exultet; proclaiming the Easter Alleluia. 

 

From the earliest days, however, the heart of this liturgy comprised three basic components: first, a lengthy service of readings from the Old Testament, each pointing by way of anticipation to Christ’s death and Resurrection; second, the administration of Holy Baptism; and third, the celebration of the First Eucharist of Easter, at which the newly baptized adults would receive Holy Communion for the first time.

 

From the beginning, then, the Church’s celebration of the Great Vigil was paired with Holy Baptism – so nothing could be more appropriate than administering the Sacrament of Holy Baptism to our three candidates this evening. And the point I want to emphasize is that this pairing of Holy Baptism with the Easter Vigil was neither accidental nor arbitrary, but deliberate and intentional. To see why, we need look no further than our Epistle for this evening, from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Romans.

 

Here, the Apostle describes Baptism as a kind of virtual participation in Christ’s death, burial, and Resurrection. “Do you not know,” Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

It’s a remarkable passage. Here baptism appears as a symbol not only of washing and cleansing, but also of death-by-drowning. And Paul is saying that this enacted sign of death-by-water becomes for Christians the means of participation in Christ’s own death and burial. In other words, Christ saves us not merely as external beneficiaries of, but rather as active virtual participants in, his crucifixion and entombment. And the vehicle by which we share in his death and burial is none other than the Sacrament of Holy Baptism.

 

It’s not really that Christ pays the price of our sins on the cross for us as a kind of divine bookkeeping transaction. The supernatural reality at play here is more organic than forensic. We participate in Christ’s death through baptism, so that, as Paul writes, “we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin.” In the background here is the ancient understanding that a slave is a slave only for life, but in death the slave gains freedom from the former master. So, by participation in Christ’s death through Baptism, we receive liberation from the former mastery that sin and death held over our lives.

 

And through Baptism we participate not only in Christ’s death but also in his Resurrection. This sharing in Christ’s risen life is both a future and a present reality. On one hand, Paul writes, “If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” That’s the future aspect: the hope of sharing in the glory of resurrection on the last day. But at the same time, Paul writes, “The death he died, he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” In other words, through Baptism we enjoy an anticipatory foretaste here and now of the life of the world to come, making possible new lives in this world marked by love, joy, hope, self-giving, and sacrificial service to others. As Paul puts it, we were buried with Christ by baptism into death, so that “we too might walk in newness of life.” 

 

Holy Baptism is, then, the link between the first Easter Day two millennia ago, and our life together in the Church today. The Easter Vigil liturgy commemorates not only Christ’s victory over death, but also our death to sin and our resurrection to new and eternal life in him. On this most holy night, then, we have fittingly renewed our baptismal commitment, and we celebrate the power of Christ’s resurrection in our lives today.