Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18

Exodus 14:10-15:1

Isaiah 55:1-11

Romans 6:3-11

MATTHEW 28:1-10

The Great Vigil of Easter – April 7, 2007

“Nothing Will Be Impossible With God.”

The situation looked hopeless.

Genesis 6:5 tells us: “The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.”

God was sorry that he had made humanity. Since God could unmake the Creation faster than God had made it – just changing one of the fundamental laws of physics would do it – things indeed looked bleak for humanity in this mythic story from the time before time.

But there is a great theme which runs through both the Old and New Testaments of which this primeval story is the first example. When things looked hopeless later in Genesis, an angel said to Abraham and Sarah, who had laughed at the idea of bearing a child in old age, “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” Centuries later another angel said this to a young virgin in Nazareth who could not imagine how she could conceive a child: “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

Despite the depravity of the human race, Noah and all his family were found to be righteous by God, and through his faith and actions a hopeless situation was transformed. A fresh start for humankind and continued biodiversity were both assured due to the faith of Noah lived out in his actions: building an ark before the rain started, and then getting on board a ship with no rudder. He would let God steer. That worked.

God can make a way out of no way. This theme continues in the Bible in its historic accounts as well: the faith of Abraham and Sarah lived out in their matrimonial relationship led to the miraculous conception of Isaac when “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women,” as the Bible genteelly puts it. But four centuries later, the descendents of Isaac – our spiritual ancestors – were slaves in Egypt, then the most powerful nation in the world. The Book of Exodus tells us the Egyptians “set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor…the Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor” (Exodus 1:11a, 14a).

The situation looked hopeless.

The Israelites inevitably were doomed to be ground down and, ultimately, to be absorbed into Egyptian culture – or exterminated, as one Pharaoh planned. Like many other ancient peoples, their existence itself would have been known, if at all, only by the rarest of specialists in ancient Middle Eastern history. Most likely, posterity would not have known they had ever lived.

But…”Nothing will be impossible with God.”

God’s initiative to save people, the response of faith manifested in action, was again a formula which made a way out of no way. God chose Moses, of all people, to be the leader, and demanded faith manifested in action from him, and from the people. The Israelites were not teleported from the slave camps directly to the Holy Land; they had to be willing to walk, to walk a lot more than 12 steps to new and transformed life, to freedom, self-discipline, self-rule, and a profound relationship with God. All this, after they took on an absolute dictator with the most powerful army in the world at his command. “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

Centuries later, the Israelite capital of Jerusalem lay in ruins, its king was in chains, its temple was only a memory, and its elite had been carried off hundreds of miles away into captivity in what is now modern-day Iraq. For half a century of captivity. They were at the mercy of the mighty Babylonia Empire.

The situation looked hopeless.

But, as described in the later chapters of the Book of Isaiah from which our third reading is drawn, God can make a way out of no way. God’s initiative plus the peoples’ faith manifested in action was again the formula which radically transformed the situation. A prophet arose who told the exiles that God would liberate them by using another foreign power – Persia, modern day Iran – as God’s tool for destroying the Babylonian Empire and setting them free to go home to Israel. Even with, ultimately, a check from the Imperial Persian Treasury to help rebuild the temple.

Ridiculous. Just like one man and his family building an ark to preserve the Creation. Just like an elderly couple having a baby and by so doing starting a nation. Just like a man who was wanted for manslaughter and hobbled by a speech impediment becoming the liberator and law-giver for a nation of soon-to-be ex-slaves.

And so it was that the Babylonian Empire collapsed after losing one decisive battle to the Persians and King Cyrus told the Israelite exiles they could go home. Just as Jesus would later tell cripples, “Rise and Walk.” Now people simply had to do it, and then do the hard work of restoration made possible by their deliverance. For this says the LORD in today’s reading from Isaiah 55: “Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.” People could do that, or not. Stay voluntarily captive and in exile, or be free. Stay in slavery in Egypt, or be free. Go with Noah, or miss the boat. Really miss the boat.

The situation looked hopeless.

Jesus of Nazareth, “a prophet strong in word and deed” as he was described by some of his followers, “the Messiah”, the “Son of God” as he was called by his disciples Peter and Martha, had ridden into Jerusalem a week before in oxymoronic humble triumph – and had not escaped alive.

The one who some thought would even restore the Davidic monarchy had been seized in the middle of the night, rushed through two sham trials, brutally tortured and hung up to die in the space of less than 24 hours.

His followers, who had looked like an almost-impressive, certainly disturbing mass movement, melted away to a handful of women from out of town and one male disciple at the foot of the cross. Even the tough and brutal Roman soldiers let the guy’s mother stay within earshot of him – one small concession to decency. Then two other men stepped forward to provide Jesus with a decent burial, rather than letting his body be left for the vultures and the rats.

The sun set on Good Friday on a band of disciples who weren’t even a band that night. Only one of the twelve men even stepped up to care for Jesus’ mother, and then only in response to Jesus’ dying command. The other guys disappeared that night.

It was a Sabbath like no other. Depression and hopelessness for all mingled with shame on the part of those who hadn’t even shown up on Good Friday. And all this at Passover of all times – the celebration of God’s mighty act in liberating them, their people from slavery. The words of the Haggadah now seemed so hollow to them: bitter herbs indeed. It must have felt to them ironic and painful beyond our imagining that Passover was Jesus’ last meal with them. What a cruel joke. Where was God now?

And after all of the indignities heaped upon Jesus, the Romans had even posted a guard of soldiers at his tomb. Would the faithful women even be allowed to come and finish anointing his dead body on Sunday morning, after the Sabbath? Weren’t the Romans willing to even let him be dead in peace? And what might bored soldiers do to unaccompanied, unprotected women showing up at this tomb, outside the city, away from any crowd, at first light? Would the women be taking risks even showing up there to mourn?

The situation looked hopeless.

But…”Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?” No. “Nothing will be impossible with God.”

“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 his has been raised, as he said.’”

And then, running “with fear and great joy” to tell the men, the two women saw Jesus, listened to him, fell at his feet, touched him and worshiped him. This new reality was far beyond any hope they had dared to hope.

“The dove came back to Noah in the evening, and there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf” (Genesis 8:11a). Peace had come to the earth, and life was being restored.

“Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age…Now Sarah said, ‘God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:2a, 6).

“Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea…the Israelites went into the sea on dry ground…” (Exodus 14:21a, 22a).

“Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it, send it forth to the end of the earth; say, ‘The LORD has redeemed his servant Jacob’” (Isaiah 48:20).

“The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end…For nothing will be impossible with God’” (Luke 1:30-33, 37).

And now, the ultimate promise by God is climaxed by the ultimate deliverance, the ultimate making of a way out of no way. Jesus had been dead. Absolutely dead. No way would the Romans have released the body of someone convicted of rebellion against the Emperor otherwise. He was dead and buried – not just for minutes, or hours, but from before sundown on Friday until – well, we don’t know exactly, but until sometime around dawn on Sunday, when Jesus became totally alive, filled with “life squared”, you might say.

All hopes for the future, which in the past had narrowed down to a family, or a people, had narrowed down to just one person, and he had been utterly dead. You can’t have a more hopeless situation than that. Now all hopes for the future blossomed – not just for a family or a nation or an era, but for all people in all times and in all places forever. Resurrection? Then anything good is possible by God’s initiative and due to God’s love. What it takes to experience the blessings is the second half of the same ancient formula: faith manifested in action. We’ll spend all 50 days of Easter Season reflecting on that.

In addition to being reminding that The Big Picture is in God’s hands, what can we learn for our personal lives from these great chronicles of hope and despair?

If you feel rudderless in your life, be like Noah, and let God steer. It sure worked for Noah. And remember – the Titanic was built by experts, the ark was built by amateurs – who followed God’s directions.

If you feel “over the hill” and that your life will not bear any fruit, be like Abraham and Sarah and have faith that God can open up a way for you to have unexpected meaning and purpose late in life. Maybe not exactly like Abraham and Sarah, but there are many kinds of unexpected wonderfulness that God can provide.

If you feel enslaved to addiction, to a relationship, to debt, to a job, to a way of life – let God be your liberator. God is good, and God is good at being peoples’ liberator! And God has had lots of practice, for people have been enslaved and enslaved themselves in so many ways.

If you feel exiled in any way, let God lead you home and help you to experience home in a whole new way. The return of the Israelites from the Babylonian captivity is just one example of this theme in the history of salvation. Every week God invites people who have felt exiled from the community of faith to come home. Leave your “Babylon”, wherever and whatever it is, and come home to the community of faith.

And if you know someone else who feels rudderless or fruitless or enslaved or exiled, tell them of God’s liberating power!

And finally and ultimately, if we feel dead – crippled by sin, by despair, by an awareness of our own mortality or by anything else, let us let God raise us to new life here and now as well as in the life to come. Don’t leave your body in your tomb in any sense. Get a head start on heaven by experiencing and sharing pre-heavenly life now.

Easter is now. Easter lasts all year. Easter lasts forever.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey