The Great Vigil of Easter & Baptism of Hope Thalmann: Washed clean of all that was

Lectionary: Genesis 1:1-2:4a; Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21; Isaiah 55:1-11; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 6:3-11; Luke 24:1-12 

Tonight, we gather to celebrate the gift of new life given to us by Jesus through his resurrection from the dead. The image of water is preeminent on this night from the story of Creation in Genesis, through the Baptism Hope will receive tonight.

We experience water in many ways - spiritually and actually. In the beginning of our love story with God, recorded in the Bible, we hear about the wind or breath of God, in Hebrew ruach, sweeping over the water as the formless void was being transformed into the complex beauty of life on earth. The waters described in Genesis were initially chaos-waters into which the breath of God brought order, peace, harmony, purpose, and unity of being.

That pretty well describes our lives, doesn’t it, both individually and communally? The breath of God calms the chaos of our inner and outer worlds - and always has, giving us peace, purpose, and unity of being with God and with one another.

Water is also where humanity actually begins - in the wombs of our mothers. This may be why the sound and sight of water is a primal experience for so many of us. Sitting on a beach, gazing at the ocean that extends to the horizon, hearing the rhythmic sound of waves rolling onto shore, our bodies settle into a deep calmness, and we know peace, awe, and wonder.

Living in WNC, I often hiked in the Bue Ridge Mountains and was inevitably drawn, almost magnetically, toward the many waterfalls. Standing there in the spray of water, hearing the steady rushing sound of it, being almost hypnotized as the water cascaded down to the river below, was somehow healing for my body and soul. Science says waterfalls offer a gift to our bodies - negative ions, that actually make us happy and more relaxed.

Water can also be humbling and destructive, reminding us how small and helpless we are. Ask anyone who has ever been caught in a rip tide or watched flood waters submerge their home or city. In those moments, we rely on the greatness of the Creator of the water to redeem the destruction and lead us to safety.

We also rely on our community connections, which I fear are in short supply lately. God, who is Trinity in Unity, is a community and created us to be in community. Those connections are life-giving to us and essential for our survival.

Water is also essential to our survival. Without water, we die - and it doesn’t take very long. Science says our bodies are about 65% water. We are literally made of water… water and the breath of God, who calmed the chaos waters and brought forth all of creation, including us, from God’s own breath, God’s own self.

We are made in the image of God. We are, every one of us, an icon of God, and as God said in Genesis about everything God had created, it is good. We are good. Very good - just as God made us.

Our love story with God repeats this theme of water and ruach in the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth from the stories of Moses and Noah in Genesis to Pentecost in Acts. God always leads us from death to new life. The beautiful thing is, it doesn’t matter to God how we found ourselves in chaos, whether the fault was ours or someone else’s. It only matters that God’s love is ever present and already redeeming. We matter that much.

That’s why we don’t fear death. Not the death of our bodies or of ideas, habits, or past identities. We are new every morning, washed clean in the living water of Christ.

In our Baptismal rite, we acknowledge that it is through water that we are reborn by the Holy Spirit, the ruach, the breath of God. Whatever defined Hope’s life before, and for whatever reason, Hope is being made new, reborn in the powerful love of God.

We who witness Hope’s rebirth are ourselves reborn as we promise to love Hope as family, to uphold her and walk with her in her Christian journey, which is our journey too because we are inextricably connected and unified in God.

As her family in Christ, we will notice when someone or something is disrupting her peace, which in consequence disturbs our peace, and we will stand firm with her against any threat. And together we will notice our neighbors who suffer the loss of freedom or dignity, or are ensared by unjust systems, and we will bear the powerful love of God to them, by being present with them, knowing God’s redeeming love will set them free. We may not know how God will redeem, or even when, but our faith assures us that God loves all God has created and that God is always redeeming all things, all the time.

Each age has a Promised Land to reach, a place where freedom, harmony, compassion, joy, and abundance are manifest on the earth. In the beginning, Moses led the people of God out of slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land in Canaan. In the 1960s, Dr. King led America toward racial freedom. In the 2000s, gay rights advocates led us to marriage equality.

Today… well, we clearly have plenty to do together to make the Promised Land manifest for all of us, don’t we? It helps to remember what anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

That’s as true for us now as it was for the first small group of committed followers of Jesus. It’s in our spiritual DNA.

When Jesus stood up in the grave, shook loose his burial linens, and left that tomb empty, he made marching to the Promised Land a continual, communal pilgrimage - God with us - eternally Emmanuel, until the peace, harmony, and unity of God is manifest on earth as it is in heaven.

Today, we welcome a new member into the mystical body of Christ by the sacrament of Baptism, someone uniquely gifted to join this pilgrimage of love. May God grant Hope and us, the grace to live the new life being given to us, a life washed clean of all that went before; a life that promises peace, freedom, unity of being, and eternal, abundant joy. Amen.