In the resurrection account in Matthew’s Gospel the angel tells the women, “He is not here, for he has been raised.” I wonder if the women felt cheated. But we want him to be here, they might have said. We want to see him, to touch him, to feel him. We want him to take away the ache in our hearts. Why isn’t he here when we need him the most! That is an all too human a response when we find ourselves overwhelmed, overcome or overdone. Yes, I am a person of faith and believe that “he has been raised.” That doesn’t help me at this moment of loss, of suffering, of loneliness, of grief when I don’t feel God’s presence. We are like the little girl who wouldn’t go to sleep. “I need a hug,” she moaned. Her mother tried to calm her. “But honey, God is here and God is hugging you.” “I know that,” the girl answered, “but I need someone with skin.” Knowing about the resurrection and feeling that Jesus is here right now are not the same thing.
The liturgy of the Easter Vigil is the Church’s way of demonstrating that God has skin in the game. All of the different movements of the service tonight are designed to demonstrate that Jesus is here, that we can encounter him if we have the eyes to see. We start with fire, with lighted candles. This shows that God is with us in the basic elements of the earth – in the sunshine, in the moon beam, in the starlight. All we need do is look around and understand that we are bathed in the light of God’s presence at every moment of existence. The Bible stories we read give witness to God’s presence throughout all of human history. God has been involved in the lives of people from the beginning of time: in the garden, through the tragedy of slavery and liberation, in the everyday life of farmers and workers, in the political realm of kings and empire, in the spiritual activities of priests and prophets. It is in our humanity that we can find God. The blessing of water, the anointing with oil reminds us that God is present in the very stuff of life. We use oil and water all the time and that God has chosen these basics of life tells us that we need not look beyond our homes, our kitchen in order to find God. And most importantly we see the skin that God has in the game in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup. Jesus is truly present as we gather around the altar as he told us to do. How does the song go? Jesus is here right now. In this bread and wine his peace you’ll find Christ Jesus is here right now. The entire liturgy this holy night presents some aspect of the presence of God.
It is, perhaps, the very ordinariness of the presence of God that we find hard to grasp. We imagine the extraordinary, the dramatic, the show would be a better medium of God’s presence. In 1969, the early days of the liturgical reform for the old timers out there, the seminarians wanted to do something special for the Easter Vigil. When it came time to do the Genesis reading the Church was completely dark as the lector said the opening line: In the beginning when God created the heavens and earth, the earth was a formless wasteland and darkness covered the abyss. When he said the next line: Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, a theater spotlight switched onto the lector and the music from Also sprach Zarasuthra started playing over the loud speakers. Da-Da-Da-TaDa, with the tympani pounding in the background. (2001: A Space Odyssey had come out the year before.) Everyone loved it but looking back I can help but thing that trying for the dramatic made us miss the true message of the Bible – that like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz if we ever go looking for our heart’s desire we don’t have to look any further than our own backyard. There’s no place like home.
That is not to say that Easter is not extraordinary. The Resurrection of Jesus was a one time event that changed the arc of human existence for all time. But we, on this holy night, are being challenged to find Easter in the ordinary, to find the new life Jesus won for us has permeated all that we are and all that we do. Yes there are troubles galore in the world, in our families, in our hearts. But Easter tells us to look around and see that God’s love is deeper and wider than any worry or woe. Look at a child and see the potential for life that they possess. Look at the farm and see how new life comes out of death. Look at your own story and find that, no matter how dire things seemed, you have come through and are still able to grow in wisdom, age and grace. To understand the angelic word, “He has been raised,” we can use another image from the Wizard of Oz. When Dorothy went over the rainbow everything shifted from black and white into beautiful technicolor. The Resurrection of Jesus enables us to see a world, not where the black and white have been blotted out, but where the true colors of love and hope and joy are what fill our world.
