Easter Vigil Sermon

Here is the sermon from our Easter Vigil, on Saturday, March 30.

You glance down at your watch or at your cell phone.  It very plainly displays 2:13.  You take another quick glance at the door, and then another brief look around the room.  They were supposed to meet you there at 2:00, and they had given you every assurance that they would be there.  But as you glance down once again, you watch 2:13 turn into 2:14.  An impatient breath streaks out of your nose as you push your lips tighter together, wondering what the hold up could be.

You’re in your kitchen.  You had been looking forward to getting together with your friends for a few days.  Everyone had been looking over their schedules for weeks, and everyone had finally found a date that would work.  Through a flurry of emails and text messages, you lined up the different foods that everyone would bring.  Only now, the day has arrived.  Your contribution to the meal is still sitting there in the oven.  It sure doesn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to get done.  You feel like you’ve almost poked it to death, waiting for it to cook all the way through, watching the clock tick past the time when you were supposed to be there.  Not only do you have to wait for this yummy contribution to get done, but you then have to jump in the car and get there as quickly as you can.

You’re sitting at the airport.  You know how the security lines usually are, so you got there plenty early.  The only thing is, since you got there so early, of course, the line wasn’t very long.  Your stuff passed through with no problem.  And then, it turns out that your plane is at one of the closest gates to the security point.  You had planned for the usual 45 minutes or more to be early, but everything went a lot faster than it usually does.  Now, you sit down in one of those so very comfortable airport chairs.  Only a couple of other people are there at the gate.  As you look out the window, you see that your plane hasn’t even arrived at the gate yet.  There’s really nothing else for you to do but to sit there and wait.  And you start to wonder why you insisted on leaving so early, but you know that if you had delayed even five more minutes, there would have been traffic problems, and a long security line, and then a dash to the other end of the airport.  You did everything you were supposed to do, and now all you can do is sit and wait.

Patience is said to be a virtue, isn’t it?  And if that’s the case, we all have to admit that we aren’t all that virtuous.  I live just about one mile away from the church right now, and I have two lights that I have to drive through.  I’m so impatient that I really get a little upset when one of those lights is red.  If patience is indeed a virtue, then it’s a virtue that seems to be in great demand.  I’ve met very few people who say that they have more than enough patience.  Usually, it’s just the opposite.  I wish I was more patient.  I wish God would give me more patience.

With that in mind, travel with me for a moment back to that Friday afternoon and evening long ago.  Jesus was hung up on the cross around 9:00 in the morning.  From the biblical accounts of the Gospels, around noon, the sun stopped shining.  Then, right around 3:00 in the afternoon, we have Jesus speaking a few words, with His last cry being, “Father, into your hands I commit my Spirit.”  And then, we’re told that Jesus gave up His life.  All of this around 3:00 in the afternoon.

That started a flurry of events.  All of these things were happening late in the day on Friday.  Saturday was the Sabbath, the day of rest for the people of Israel.  And their day, according to their calculations, began at 6:00PM.  From 6:00PM on Friday to 6:00PM on Saturday, they would observe the day of rest.  And with this particular Sabbath being the one observed as part of the Passover remembrance, it was a particularly special one. 

But that meant a few things for the body of Jesus, as well as those of the two criminals on the other crosses.  Their bodies simply couldn’t be left on the cross on the Sabbath.  So as the day began to wind to its end, a few people realized that they needed to do something.  First, they had to make sure that the men were dead.  So a few of the authorities went to get Pilate’s permission to break their legs and hurry along their deaths.  As they came to the two criminals, both sets of legs had to be broken.  But when they arrived at Jesus, they discovered that He was already dead.  So, rather than breaking His legs, a soldier took up his spear and thrust it up into Jesus’ side, up into His heart.  No need to break His legs.  Jesus was already dead.

Then, Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked if he could take charge of Jesus’ body.  While Pilate was surprised that Jesus was already dead, he gave permission.  So Joseph and Nicodemus went and took the body of Jesus down.  They quickly wrapped it up in linen cloths along with burial spices.  And then, since the Sabbath was rapidly approaching, they took Jesus’ lifeless body to a nearby tomb that had been cut in the hillside for Joseph.  They laid the body there, and then went off to observe the holy Sabbath day.

That rush of events then gave way to a period of waiting.  And for quite a few people, that day of waiting went on and on and on.  A group of men who had been following Jesus for a while, who suddenly didn’t know what the future held in store for them.  Would they be next on the hit list?  Could they just go back to what they were doing before, since they now knew so much more about God?  Or, was it all even true?  Jesus had been their hope, and now their hope lay lifeless in a tomb.  Jesus had shown so much promise to them, and now that promise seemed to have died along with Him.  How could they ever go back to how things were before He came into their lives?

For a group of ladies, that same day of waiting must have seemed to stretch on and on.  They had followed Jesus around.  Some of them had even given of their own treasures to support Jesus as He ministered to others.  A few of them had even received miraculous cures from His hands.  And so that day of waiting seemed like it would never end.  They wanted to honor the man who had done so much for them.  Even though He was no longer with them, they wanted to make sure that He received a proper burial.  And so that Sabbath day of rest seemed as though it would never end.

Waiting.  It probably wasn’t any easier for any of those individuals than it is for you and I.  Patience may indeed be a virtue, but there are times where we simply do not want to be very virtuous.  And yet, that’s exactly what we are doing tonight as we gather for worship.  We’re waiting.  We’re being patient.  We have heard, over the past couple of days, of Jesus instituting His holy meal.  We’ve followed Him to the mountainside to pray.  We’ve watched Him be arrested and tried, and eventually sent to the cross.  We’ve seen Him be crucified, and heard as He gave up His life.  And so today, we wait.  We have patience as we await the morning.  And we have patience because, unlike those disciples or women, we know what to anticipate in the morning.

And yet, we still engage in this time of waiting, and of patience.  Part of that waiting is spent in prayer.  As we think about it, what better activity do we have to engage in as we wait?  We can be impatient, and snarl about how slow time seems to be moving, or curse at the things that we have to wait for, or we can approach the Father in conversation.  We can appeal to the one who holds all time in His hands, asking Him to move things along according to His timeline, even when that timeline seems to involve far more waiting and patience that we seem ready for.

Times of waiting and patience are great opportunities for reflection.  We have the opportunity to share those things that we are thankful for with our Father.  We can lift up the situation in which we find ourselves waiting, asking that He would work His spiritual gift of patience in our lives.  We can reflect on the sin of our impatience, confess it to Him, and know that He has forgiven it because of that event which we will be celebrating in the morning.

Prayer can lead us to a more fruitful waiting, rather than an impatient, sinful approach.  We have that fruitful waiting because we know what happens in the morning.  Our waiting and patience is not in vain.  God does what He had set out to do.  We anticipate resurrection.  Death could not hold God’s own Son.  We anticipate resurrection and new life.  True, there were few on that particular Sabbath day years ago who anticipated resurrection and new life, but we are blessed to be on this side, where we know what would happen at the end of their time of waiting.

That means that our time of waiting this evening is a time of thankfulness.  It’s a reason to engage in conversation with our Father, to be thankful for what He has revealed through His Son’s resurrection, and through those chosen servants who shared that message that has reached all the way to our ears today.  We wait for our celebration of resurrection, knowing and believing that God has accomplished His will.  Even His own Son waited for the day of resurrection, and so we join with Him in our waiting. 

Fruitful waiting.  That’s what we are about tonight.  We eagerly anticipate the early morning message.  “He is not here.  He has risen, just as He said.”  But in the meantime, we wait.  We pray.  And we ask God our Father to make all our times of waiting a fruitful waiting, guided by His Spirit, who leads us to seek Him out in prayer.  In the eager anticipation of the resurrection of Jesus our Lord.  Amen.