Readings for the Easter Vigil (Year A)
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea]
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Zephaniah 3:14-20 [The gathering of God’s people]
Romans 6:3-11
Psalm 114
Matthew 28:1-10
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA at the Great Vigil of Easter on April 8, 2023.
After lighting the paschal fire, we listened to the record of God’s saving deeds in history, a record that is drenched with references to water: the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt by crossing the waters of the Red Sea, Isaiah invites us to quench our thirst by drinking from salvation’s living spring, and Ezekiel promises us that God will cleanse us by the pure water of His sprinkling asperges. Each of these stories reflects a dimension of Holy Baptism, the sacrament by which we enter God’s beloved family, receive the blessings of Abraham, and experience our own liberation through the washing away of our sins.
Throughout Lent, we’ve been exploring how the five senses can point us to deeper spiritual realities. Water engages our sense of vision, touch, taste, and hearing. (Remember the Hebrew word for Heaven is Shemayim, which is composed of two words shema which means listen and mayim which means water. Listening to water is heaven.) I invite you tonight, as we renew our baptismal vows, and bless the water in the font, and prepare for tomorrow’s baptisms, to let your senses feast on the gift of water and let them symbolically point you to the deeper realities of God’s refreshing, liberating, and life-giving presence in your life.
Although pure water does not really have any smell (it’s odorless), it still has had an important historical and spiritual connection to smell in our country’s history. In a few moments, we will sing the African American spiritual “Wade in the Water,” which was sung by enslaved peoples in the antebellum South. On one level, the song is a reference to the Israelites crossing the Red Sea (“looks like the band that Moses led”). On another level, it’s a reference to Holy Baptism (“see that host all dressed in white / The Holy Ghost a-coming on me.”) And on yet another level, the words of this song functioned as a secret form of communication among the enslaved peoples as they were planning their escape. Remember Moses was also the name given to Harriet Tubman, the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad who helped liberate numerous people from slavery (– looks like the band that Moses led). Singing “Wade in the Water” was sometimes an enslaved person’s way of telling others to meet them by the water that night to escape. If slaveowners overheard them singing, they could just say they were singing about a beloved Bible story so the slaveowners wouldn’t think twice. The water was an especially strategic place for the escapees to meet because it was by wading in the water that they would not only hide their tracks but also disguise their scent since slaveowners would send their dogs to find and catch runaways.
The African Americans would begin to remove the scent of slavery by singing the spiritual “Wade in the Water” as a form of coded communication and planning and then by literally wading in the water. This clever and strategic ploy reflects the ancient understanding of the Cross when Jesus played a trick on death. Just as the enslaved peoples appeared to be submissive to the slaveowners by singing “Wade in the Water” but were in fact troubling the waters of the slave system by planning their escape so too did Jesus appear to submit to the powers of death and scapegoating violence, while in fact he was exposing and dismantling them. According to the early church fathers, the devil thought he had won the day by crucifying Christ when in fact there was a deeper meaning, a “deeper magic” at work which ended up unravelling and destroying the devil’s entire plan. God was stirring up and troubling the waters of sin and death.
When blood and water gushed out from Jesus’s side on the cross, he washed away the odor of sin and death so that all the baptized can be liberated and ultimately free of the scent of sin and corruption. Death no longer has dominion, and the hounds of hell can no longer track us down. See, taste, touch, and listen to the flow of holy water and let it wash away the scent of whatever might be hounding you or haunting you tonight. Victory and liberation are yours in Christ, who has conquered death once and for all and who invites you to wade in the water of new life because God’s gonna stir up some good trouble and he wants you to join him. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 