Open to the Light: the tomb opens

The Great Vigil of Easter

“May we open

and open more

and open still

to the blessed light

that comes.”[1]

Are we ready? Ready to move from the darkness into the light? From our brokenness into wholeness? division into unity? death into life?

Voices around us shout: Be afraid. Shut the enemy down. Bomb them. Deny them. Crush them. We cannot be safe if they are allowed to exist.

Are you ready to move from darkness into light? From death into life?

So, what then shall this resurrection mean? We all long to be freed from our prisons: from the fear, anxiety, grief, shame, loneliness, depression, greed, self-preservation, materialism, self-centeredness, pride, vanity, and despair that often confine us.

Listen, beloved, have ears to hear this love story of God’s, this story written to us, for us, by the Creator of Heaven and Earth.

Easter proclaims: There is One who has the key to open every prison door. One who opens the way to freedom and life.  Not without cost. Not without price. Not without death. This One, this God, this Jesus defeats death with death. And in this sacrificial act of love comes life. New, full, rich and abundant life.  A life of wholeness, a life of unity, a life of light. 

The Good news is that we do not have to physically die in order to taste the Feast at God’s banquet table.  But we are called to the Cross.  We are called to sacrifice the ways of life we carry around which deny God’s dream, which deny the Light.  These ways and words, these behaviors and choices that are really darkness, they must be abandoned.

Are we ready? Ready to put an end to shutting out God instead of opening to the Spirit---to leave behind behaviors of independence, self-preservation, individualistic prosperity, blindness and deafness toward the common good?  Are we willing to shout no to those Voices that urge us to live in fear instead of hope, willing to rise up and say yes to God, yes to the Light—even and especially in the face of the darkness?

If we are, when we say yes, then we begin to walk the freedom road, the road to wholeness. Even when it seems the world has dimmed the lights to a dark and foggy mist, we remember: God is in control. God has the final say. Easter proclaims: Grace wins. Love wins.

In the song “Awake My Soul” Mumford and Sons sing:

“In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die

And where you invest your love, you invest your life.

Awake my soul….For you were made to meet your maker.”

It is time to wake up.  To rise.  It is time to invest our love, invest our lives and shine the light of Christ into the darkness of the world.  Let us cast our darkness upon the cross and receive new life.

Are we ready?

“May we open

and open more

and open still

 to the blessed light that comes.

---

[1] Jan Richardson