Year A Easter Vigil 2023 Heilsgeschichte and Me

Year A Easter Vigil, 8 April 2023

St. James the Less Episcopal, Ashland, VA

“Heilsgeschichte and Me”

Collect: O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Matthew 28:1-10

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, 'He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.' This is my message for you." So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, "Greetings!" And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, "Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me."

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” In Christ, humility is a virtue. But tonight, I do want us to think of the self. I want you to think about you, your very self and your place in this Heilsgeschichte, the fancy German theological term for our “salvation history” that we just went through. God loves you enough, that if you were the only person who ever lived it would have been worth the effort God made to bring you home.

We filter EVERYTHING through this mortal body. We cannot help but do it. Every thought and feeling, and ache and pain, and glory and failure are filtered through you. It is not a bad thing, but the reality of our existence. As we increase in our maturity, we can start to separate the information that we gather from our tools of gathering, but it is the only way we can exist. Life goes through our senses, and it influences our perspective as it filters through us.

Throughout the late winter and early spring, we have had a group reading through C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. It had been close to 20 years since I last taught this book. I had forgotten how many gold nuggets are tucked away in this short tome. It is mostly a series of lectures given by the good professor on the BBC as short radio talks, seeking to be a comfort to a war-beleaguered United Kingdom in the throes of World War II.  

The foreword, written by Kathleen Norris, says this of the faith C.S. Lewis presents:

The Christianity Lewis espouses is humane, but not easy: it asks us to recognize that the great religious struggle is not fought on a spectacular battleground, but within the ordinary human heart, when every morning we awake and feel the pressures of the day crowding in on us, and we must decide what sort of immortals we wish to be. …As Lewis reminds us, with his customary humor and wit, "How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different the saints." p. xx 

Lewis is seeking each of us to do what Joshua had said before, “Choose you this do whom you will serve.” By losing ourselves we find ourselves, by letting go we gain it all. That last bit of how similar the tyrants are, remember the context. These were the days of Mussolini, and Stalin, and Hitler when Lewis was speaking to the Brits via the wireless. The tyrants were apparent, which made the saints all the more needed.

But notice even more that last bit. “How gloriously different the saints.” We find ourselves, you find yourself, when you step fully into your faith in Christ. It is the same for me. 

And how do we do that? Daily, taking up our cross (a.k.a. dying to the self) and following Jesus. We lose nothing, and gain everything. That is what is so counterintuitive to those outside the faith.

The great lie of Satan with which we started the readings tonight, and all the steps along the path we followed, goes back to the same idea.

WHAT ABOUT ME?!?!?!? 

When we put ourselves first, we are babies. That is what babies do, they know no better. But as we learn and grow, we begin to see the bigger picture. We are our brother’s keeper, and our neighbor’s, and our enemies’, too. We have the responsibility for the whole of humanity, just like Christ.

To be me, I need to let go of holding on to me. Lewis says it better than I ever could. 

“The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first– wanting to be the centre– wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race. Some people think the fall of man had something to do with sex, but that is a mistake. The story in the Book of Genesis rather suggests that some corruption in our sexual nature followed the fall and was its result, not its cause. What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could ‘be like gods’– could set up on their own as if they had created themselves-be their own masters invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history– money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery, the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.” p.49

Or as philosopher Blaise Pascal put it, “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made know through Jesus Christ.” I quote that a lot. Apologies, but it all comes back to that.

Christ came and did all he did, not to make us feel good, or to be happy, or to get our act together. He came to enable the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the dead to rise. This is metaphorical and literal. This is what he wants. This is also what he expects.

Start the Lord’s Prayer with me.

“Our Father…” 

That’s good enough. That is Jesus’ intent. Not a kind feeling that God is nice and maybe likes us, but God is our parent in fact. If God is our father, then what Jesus wants us to see and what Jesus wants us to be, are the daughters and sons of God. This is not something we can make happen. It is hopeless, pointless, and even ridiculous for us to even attempt. But is also Grace. It is the undeserved gift that is the point of all creation. 

We see it so clearly, and we cannot do it partially or incrementally. You cannot clear a chasm in two leaps. We are all in or we are not in at all.

Tomorrow, when God gives you the gift of another day, you have a choice of the life that you will live. You can take up that cross that Christ set out for you. Or not. My mother used to set out my clothes for me when I was little. I knew she loved me and had a plan for what I needed to wear that day. She knew what was going to happen, and what I needed and how I needed to be dressed. Do you think Jesus is any different?

“Humility is not thinking less of yourself, but thinking of yourself less.” We have said enough, at least for tonight.

Tonight we see the utmost proof that Jesus had the authority to say what he said, to teach what he taught, and to call for us to trust him and his way of loving God and living this life. His Resurrection shows us that everything else he claimed is true.It was the proof in the pudding, as it were.

If you want to be who you were created to be, your calling is to give that wonderful-ness away. As Axel Munthe put it: “What you keep to yourself you lose, what you give away, you keep forever.”

We only get one ride on this merry-go-round, so it makes sense to ride this ride like the owner, creator, and sustainer of said merry-go-round says to. Is it his ride or not? Will we trust him enough to get the most out of it that we can? It is up to you each and every day, because of all this, ALL OF THIS, was done just for you. Amen