The silent day of choice (meditation) The Great Vigil of Easter

Sermon – April 19, 2014
The Rev. Rebecca S. Myers, CSW
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Corbin, KY
The Great Vigil of Easter

Today is such a quiet day.  No, I don’t mean quiet in the sense of not busy or no noise.  But did you notice the deep silence today?  God is in the tomb.  We said we were tired of listening to God.  We wanted to choose our own path and our own way.  The way of life with Jesus is too hard and anyway that happened so long ago; it’s not relevant to my world with computers and fancy phones.  So, we silence God from our lives.  We silence Jesus from our hearts.  Did you notice?  How does it feel?  What is your day like without God?  What is your day like without Jesus?  This is the day when we examine that question.  

And this is the night when we choose…whether or not to have God and Jesus in our lives; whether or not to open our lives to the teaching of Jesus and to the Will of God.  All over the world tonight, people are being baptized and we renew our baptismal vows.  Our readings are about water and its power and about restoration of life.  The waters of baptism are meant to overwhelm us, nearly drowning us.  We emerge washed and into a new life and a new way of living.  That is the choice you are asked to make this night….  Whether to go through the waters of baptism, drowning out your old life and your old ways of being?  What will you choose?

Holy Saturday
Rebecca Myers
Holy Saturday 2006

Today is the day you let us hear your absence
Let us know what life could be like without you
That’s what we said we wanted
Because your love feels hard
It is not of humans

Your love forgives when we want revenge
Your love gives away when we want to hoard
Your love is fearless when we want to be fearful
Your love calls us to die to gain abundant life
When we want to live in abundant death

But on this day of silence
The presence of the absence
We see what we have done
We long for you to return
We know our only hope for abundant life
Is your resurrection

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

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