Easter Vigil – April 7, 2012

Easter Vigil
April 7, 2012
Rev. Cameron Ayers

A couple years ago the Chronicle had an article which is a real Easter story. I saved it and have thought about it several times over the years. The story was about John Meehan, the 62 year old director of Groceries for Seniors, a nonprofit program for low income seniors in our city. Mr. Meehan’s story is quite remarkable. He grew up in an abusive household and turned to petty theft, heroin and burglary. He was in an orphanage, a gang, and ended up in the state reformatory of New Jersey. When he arrived in the Haight in 1967 at age 22, he got back into heroin and spent several stints in the county jail for breaking into cars. When he was in a state prison at the age of 30 he made a promise to God that if God helped him, he would help others. His life began to turn around and he eventually became the founder of the Hamilton Soup Kitchen in 1983. He served as director there for 15 years. Eventually he earned a bachelors degree from San Francisco State and enrolled at USF in a Master’s program in non-profit administration. He started the Seniors Emergency Grocery Bag Program in 1998 which evolved into the current Groceries for Seniors. As the Chronicle article says, “John Meehan represents everything that is good about San Francisco-a city ripe with redemption, reinvention and the spirit of giving.” The rituals we celebrate tonight are ancient. Christians have been gathering in the dark of Holy Saturday night to keep watch for the resurrection since the earliest centuries. The Paschal Candle and all our smaller lights proclaim symbolically our faith: when it is darkest, the dawn shines in the distance. Jesus rose at dawn; that was no accident. Every morning, the very physical fact of dawn reminds us of the resurrection. When we feel most alone, most abandoned, that is the very moment of Easter potential. I love the scriptural reference in John’s gospel to the time of the resurrection. He is the only one of the evangelists who says, “On the first day of the week, while it was still dark.” The other three gospel writers say that it was already dawn, but John emphasizes that it was still dark. For each one of us, God breaks through our darkness, the dark of hopelessness, the dark of depression, the dark of all our fears. Good Friday was real. Jesus really died. The Son of God, the love of the Father in human form, was actually tortured and killed. And Jesus has continued to be tortured and killed ever since. Every war, every genocide, every act of individual hatred and violence since that infamous Friday, has continued to incarnate the power of death on our planet and in human experience. It’s not just the cosmic evils and big examples of pain that challenge our faith. Individual problems and hurts are in evidence everywhere. The year was 1812. A three year old boy was playing with his father’s leather tools and accidentally blinded himself with an awl. Seventeen years later, as a youth of twenty, he invented a system that allows the blind to read. His name was, of course, Louis Braille. His tragedy was turned into a blessing for many thousands. Helen Keller said of her handicaps: “I thank God for my handicaps for through them I have found myself, my work and my God.” Such inspiring examples of triumph in the midst of tragedy are more frequent than we suspect. The Hallelujah Chorus was written by Handel when he was fifty-six years old and paralyzed on his right side. Mozart wrote some of his best music while living in poverty, Beethoven, when he was deaf. The miracle of Easter is that in the soil of death is the seed of resurrection. Even as Jesus breathed his last and surrendered His spirit, the power of death was undone. The overwhelming, unbelievable, fantastic news of the Christian faith is that death is not the last word, the last experience. Life is the final word; life and love and goodness are ultimately triumphant. The resurrection is not simply the historical event of Jesus rising from the dead. It is also the dynamic, ongoing gift of our Creator to all of us. We begin to be raised from the moment of our baptism. In Confirmation the Spirit completes the mystery of our baptism. Each time we receive the Eucharist, the death and resurrection of Christ are given new life in us. All of our acts of charity and sacrifice, all our prayer help to perfect what the sacraments of initiation plant in our hearts and souls. At our death, the Lord completes what He began in us in the sacraments. May we spend the next fifty days of Paschaltide realizing this mystery and miracle! All the symbolism, the ritual, the pageantry that we celebrate tonight are meant to transform us. The dark, the fear, the places of death in us are summoned to rise. The true light has begun to shine and Christ is risen indeed. I want to close with the last part of a poem by the Jesuit, Gerard Manley Hopkins. It is from “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection.” Hopkins own struggle with depression and sadness gave him a depth to proclaim the miracle of Jesus’ rising. “…Enough! the Resurrection, A heart’s-clarion! Away grief’s gasping, ‘ joyless days, dejection. Across my foundering deck shone A beacon, an eternal beam. ‘ Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; ‘ world’s wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond.”