Christ Shall Give You Light

    At the life profession of a monk of St. Gregory's Abbey, the monk makes his vows at the offertory of the Mass, and leaves a signed, handwritten copy of those vows on God's altar. Then he lies prostrate on the floor of the choir, in the place where his coffin will someday rest during his funeral. He is covered with the funeral pall, the cloth that will on that day drape his coffin, and the other monks and the congregation chant the litany of the saints over him. At the end of the prayers, the deacon comes to the edge of the pall and says, "Awake you who sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light."
     The inclusion of a funeral rite in the service of monastic consecration is not an exclusively Christian practice. Hindus, for instance, do it too. But for Christian monastics it has a particular meaning not found in other faiths. It is a way of reen acting our baptism. And our baptism is the Church's, and God's, way of uniting us with the saving death of Jesus Christ. As St. Paul writes to the Romans, "Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life."
     There are many differences between God's becoming human in order to share our life and death, and our going under the water to share the death and new life of God incarnate. To begin with, God is the creator of life. The generations of human beings who have given birth to generations of human beings have all been passing on a gift that they received from those who came before. But the Word of God who was born of Mary was the original maker and giver of that gift. The opening of the Gospel according to St. John tells us, "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."
     When we read the story of this creation in Genesis, we find that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. And that rest is not presented as a threatening thing, as the Creator's turning away from his work to tend to his own needs, nor as a withdrawing from interest and involvement in his creatures. It is seen as a good, if mysterious thing, and is celebrated in the command for Israel to observe every seventh day as a day of rest in remembrance of the Lord's rest and as a sharing in it.
     Things appear different when Jesus cries from the cross, "It is finished!" and closes his eyes in the last sleep of mortals. It is a sad and ugly thing to see him on the cross. And perhaps less ugly but more sad to see him laid in the tomb. But there in his borrowed tomb, the Creator picks up where we left him at the seventh day of the creation story: at rest. While his mortal body rests in death, he creates life, his life and ours, anew. His resurrection body, living this new life, is the first dawning of the new heaven and the new earth that are to come.
This triumph of life over death, of light over darkness, is the message the Easter sunrise proclaims to us year after year. It is what we sing about in our Easter hymns, so full of joy and glory:

"That Easter day with joy was bright, the sun shone out with fairer light ..."
"'Welcome, happy morning!' age to age shall say ..."
"Christ himself the joy of all, the sun that warms and lights us; by his grace he doth impart eternal sunshine to the heart ..."
"Come, with high and holy hymning, hail our Lord's triumphant day; not one darksome cloud is dimming yonder glorious morning ray, breaking o'er the purple east, symbol of our Easter feast...."

     And symbol of our Easter feast it is. The rising sun's light and warmth, driving out the darkness and chill of the night, provide a natural and powerful sign of Christ's victory over sin and death. So it makes sense that we find a sunrise on Easter cards and in the last scene of Easter pageants, as well as in the hymns we sing. It makes sense for churches and communities to meet for a sunrise service on Easter morning.
     But the Prayer Book also gives us a service for the night before that sunrise. In the Easter Vigil, we gather to worship in that darker time when the sunrise victory was actually won. We gather, as it were, on the battleground where life fought against darkness and death and the Devil, and fought them on their own turf. We gather to read the Old Testament stories and prophecies of the struggle between darkness and light, life and death. We listen to the deacon chant in a church dimly lit by candlelight, "How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and sin is washed away...How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and man is reconciled to God." And before we begin the Eucharist, with its alleluias and bells and lively, joyful hymns, we recall our Baptism, renewing our vows and being sprinkled with holy water.
     That night service reflects much of the truth of our life in this world. We live in the mixture of light and dark, of death and life, of good and evil. We who live in that condition are called the church militant. We are fighting, struggling for the victory of light, life, and goodness, both in our own personal lives and in our society. We are carrying on the divine works of creation and re-creation. We keep on doing the work God has given us to do until we enter our own Sabbath rest. And when that day comes, we can enter into our rest in confidence and hope because of the one who has gone before us:

"My flesh in hope shall rest, and for a season slumber,
till trump from east to west shall wake the dead in number.
Had Christ that once was slain, ne'er burst his three-day prison,
our faith had been in vain; but now is Christ arisen."