Easter Vigil
Cycle A
April 19-20, 2014 7:30pm
Saint Margaret Parish, Bel Air
God’s Story
Tonight,
we hear God’s story – or maybe we should say God’s story about God and us.
The Story of Goodness
The Word of God begins with the story of “the beginning, when God creates the heavens
and the earth.”
And as each part of creation is brought into being, we keep
hearing the words: “God saw how good it
was.” “God saw how good it was.”
These words really grab our attention and they call us to
approach creation positively, to see the goodness that is here. One Catholic author speaks of the need to
affirm what he calls human flourishing.
His point is that wherever we see accomplishments that
enable human beings to flourish – in technology, in art, in medicine, in food
distribution, in the provision of potable water – wherever we see human
flourishing, we are to acknowledge its goodness. It may not be done explicitly in the name of
God or of Jesus or of Catholicism.
But if it promotes human flourishing, it is good. The story of creation calls us to see this.
The Story of Our Response – 1
God’s
story then tells us that we have sometimes not acted as God wants.
Sin
has entered our world. The second
reading gives a glaring example of this in the oppression of the Israelites.
Thankfully,
the story goes that God frees the Israelites from slavery through the
Exodus. So, God once tamed the water in
the act of creation, and here God tames the water again and allows his people
to pass through it safely.
And
in doing this, God wants us to remember the past – the social injustice in
Egypt. One reason God calls us to
remember this is that social sin can still happen.
We
see it, for example, in ethnic cleansing, in racism, and in the allowing of
poverty. Positively, God calls us to be
agents for justice and peace and human flourishing, and not cooperators in social
sin.
The Story of Our Response – 2
God’s story goes on to remind us of personal sin.
The prophet Ezekiel in our third reading tells God’s
people that they cannot just blame others all the time. They too, personally and individually, have
disregarded God’s ways.
Ezekiel promises that God will sprinkle clean water upon
them to cleanse them. So once again,
water is at work in God’s action.
Here, God expects his people to accept responsibility for their
behavior. It might be the neglect of our
parents or tearing down the good name of others or whatever.
God expects us to admit and repent of personal sin. Positively, he expects us as individuals to
do what we can for the human flourishing of ourselves and of those in our
personal lives.
The Story of
Resurrection
Ezekiel’s promise of new life
finds its fulfillment in Jesus.
God’s story in tonight’s gospel
announces Jesus’ resurrection. It begins
with the words, “Very early, on the first
day of the week…”
This first day hearkens back to
the first day of creation in Genesis. It
tells us that a new creation is happening here.
We even see this newness when
the angel proclaims the resurrection to women and tells them to go and tell
others. This happens in a culture where
the testimony of women did not count – so something dramatically new is
happening here.
And, of course, this something
new is Jesus risen from the dead. This
is what Paul proclaims tonight.
Paul hearkens back to the waters
of Genesis and Exodus and Ezekiel. He
tells us that now we are given the transforming water of baptism.
Through baptism, we are attached
to Jesus Christ and this attachment brings us a new life. It is the beginning of living our human journey
with the One who is our life and our resurrection.
So, that is tonight’s story:
God’s story about God and us. That is
what we are now celebrating and renewing.
