The sermon text is below the sermon audio.
Sermon preached at Trinity Church, Newport RI
Saturday March 31 2018, Easter Vigil
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Carriers of Light”
Will you think me mad or silly if I tell you that sometimes I talk to, sometimes shout at, characters on television… as if they could hear me! One regular situation that provokes such behavior is watching a thriller (or creepy movie) when the character moves into a dark room… they walk in without even an attempt to turn on the light… and this provokes the insane in me as I cry out “Turn on the light!”
Good Friday, post crucifixion, and Holy Saturday, pre Vigil, is one of those times when I feel that urgent need to shout… turn on the light.
The utter, wretched pathos of Good Friday is past; the exhilarating triumph of Easter is yet to be… and meanwhile the ennui, boredom, tedium of Holy Saturday. “Please, someone turn on the light!”
I have an idea, based on personal and pastoral experience, that much of our lives is spent in Holy Saturday mode… we manage, by and large, to escape heart-wrenching suffering but neither, constantly, enjoy wild and frenzied moments of delight.
It is because of this that my friendship with Vigil services has not been one of unbridled affection, I used to feel that they robbed me of staying in Holy Saturday mode but patient and constant colleagues have helped me grasp the truth that holy, effervescent light insists on breaking in, erupting into my melancholy love affair with Holy Saturday… thanks be to God!
The Vigil Service presents to us a great truth… that even in utter darkness God creates a new light.
In a flooded, drowning world the sun rises to banish darkness.
In a valley reeking of death and decay light comes to announce renewal.
And the Vigil presents another great truth… we are to be lit from this fiery light and then be carriers of light into a darkened world… sometimes in gentle ways as we offer a word of encouragement or gratitude or those triumphal ways when we have opportunity to witness to the divine light shared so abundantly with us.
And so the women in Matthew’s Gospel behold the Lord of Light ablaze with light and receive the charge, “Carry this even to Galilee.”
I know not the liturgical reason why we stop three times in procession to declare “The Light of Christ… Thanks be to God” but it resonates with me because often in “carrying the light” I start and then I stop, I start and then I stop… but in all I am moving forward… and, thanks be to God, I do this in community. The lighting of candles from one to another is no mere logistical device… it speaks eloquently of our need to give light and to receive light from one another.
In the midst of this church, fully alight and fully alive, I am, I feel bold and strong enough to remind myself, and you, of dark places that we carry and dark places into which we often have to move. “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness can neither understand not overcome it.”
In fact we become members of a blessed society (coined by a colleague of mine in Philadelphia) SOTO… The Society of the Overwhelmed.
The powerful light of resurrection has invaded even the darkest of places (death and hell, judgment and abandonment) and this powerful light, wrestling with darkness has, in a moment, announced victory.
It is our joy to celebrate this light!
It is our vocation to carry this light!
The light of Christ – thanks be to God.
Alleluia, Christ is risen – The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia.