a garden, out of darkness

A sermon for the Great Vigil of Easter

This is the night. The great triumph of the Resurrection. This is the sermon I have preached during the liturgy of the Great Vigil of Easter. It is different from nearly every other sermon I’ve ever preached. Perhaps it is more like a sort of cosmic story for the fireside. I share it with great hope that wherever it finds you, you know a measure of Christ’s peace this night.

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This evening, I’m going to tell you a story.

It began in darkness. “The earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep.” But upon this darkness rested a gaze that knew no beginning or no end, no shackles of time or distance or space. A gaze that regarded the breadth of all that could be, that looked deep into its bearer’s own heart and prepared a place for something new. And into this place of darkness - within the heart of all possibility - the bearer of the gaze uttered a Word. Here was a singular Word to fill the darkness. A Word to bear the Creator’s own voice into the formlessness. A word that marked the very first beginning. And the word was Life. 

And then there was a garden. From the lips of the One who gazed upon the void, from the imagination of the heart that devised this astonishing new idea of a “beginning,” there was gathered up a place where this new Word, this Life could begin to answer back. The garden was filled with the voice of the Creator: his whisper, his songs, and his delight. A word, and here was fresh, green woodland. A word, and here were splendid creatures with wings and whistles and legs that galloped with joy. A word, and there was water – lively springs and lakes in which the light itself appeared to gather. But this was only the antiphon before the hymn. For at the center of the beauty of this new and strange thing called a “beginning,” there the Word placed the ones for whom he had ever begun to speak at all. 

After the verdant green, and after the winged and crawling and galloping creatures, and after the fonts that sprung forth from the new earth, the Bearer and Beginning of all things walked in the midst of this infant creation. He walked and he walked and he walked until he came to the edge of the water in which the light itself seemed to gather. He stopped at the place where the waves of the lake met the dust of the earth. He bent forward, gazing once again, this time upon his very own image. And from the silt at that place where the water met the dust, he formed the creatures who would bear his own likeness. Like him, they would begin in darkness. Like him, they would create and name and build. Like him, they would love. And into their hearts he carved a place that only his Word of Life could fill.

But creativity and freedom are gifts that are easy for creatures, even marvelous ones, to misunderstand. Because if there is any word that can make one doubt the Word of Life, it is a different word, and the word is Death. In time – the story of the ones made lovingly by the One who gazed upon himself to form their likeness – in time, the story left the garden. The story spread out into the wilderness and the desert, sending the image-bearers into exiles and conflict and captivity. They forgot the freshness of the green and the light of the water. But the place carved within each of them was still there. Each heart still held within it its own formless void that only the Word of Life could fill. 

And so the one who was the first beginning began again. He began in darkness. A womb, this time - it’s own sort of formless, capacious void. This time the Word of Life spoke to a young woman, a whisper in the dark, a woman whose own image-bearing hands would cradle all of creation - the One who spoke the woodlands, the winged, whistling creatures, the water and light - all of it- against her breast. This time the Word of Life did not lovingly form his image from the clay, but took upon him the form itself. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Life became blood and bone, knit within his own courageous mother, and from this Life came healing, wisdom, grace, and mercy, a person into which all of the light around him seemed to gather. 

And then there was a garden. “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.” The Word of Life had grown, all of eternity bound up within the body of a man who traveled no more than a mule ride’s distance from the place of his birth. He had reminded creation where it had come from. He had sung the ancient song of the first trembling steps of creatureliness. He had preached the promise of new creation and filled their hands with bread. He had reminded them of the special, carved-out place within their hearts - that its emptiness was never meant to be a curse, but to be filled by God. 

But if there is any word that can make one doubt the Word of Life, it is a different word, and the word is Death. And so Life weeps blood into the soil of a garden. Late into the night, outside the city that will kill him, the Word of Life takes refuge in a garden where he cannot stay. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me, yet not my will but yours be done.”

It begins in darkness. The Word of Life is silenced by Death. They gather his Body, lifeless, from its humiliation upon a tree, and now the void is formless again. The darkness of the stopped-up tomb covers the city and the wilderness. The carved-out place within the heart is no longer an absence, but a wound, nauseous and yawning with need. What was ever the point of a beginning if this would be the end. What was the point of the songs and the story and the lakes and the light. What was any of it for if it was all just dust, abandoned to collapse into darkness.

But outside the tomb, there was a garden. “On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.” Why do you look for the living among the dead? 

This is the night. This is the very night where it is revealed that death, for all its strength and horror, is defeated not only in one tomb, not only in one place, not only in one time, but forever. Because if there is any word that can silence the word of death, it is Love. The One who speaks and gazes and creates gives us his Son, a promise of love stronger than death. He is not here. He is Risen.

This is Love, sweeter than water and light. Love, which existed before the beginning. This is Love that spreads before itself the canvas of eternity and writes upon it our own name. This is Love, humble and kind. This is the answering song to every need, every fear, every grief, every horror. This is Love that calls right down into the grave, and out from it walks a Risen Son, whole in living, breathing, resurrected Body. 

This isn’t just the story of the universe. It’s the story of all of us. It’s the story of you. It’s the story of truth, goodness, beauty — of life itself.

And it’s all true.