But if you had less than two hours in which to try to reveal the essence of Christian faith and Anglican worship you would be hard pressed to come up with a better means than this Easter Vigil. This is the night!

It is all here, rich and varied symbolism, a celebration of the two major sacraments, a recounting of the high points of Salvation history from Holy Scripture culminating with an account of the Resurrection. And in the course of this evening we welcomed three brand new Christians who appeared right before our eyes.

Lent ended tonight - forty days of symbolic travel through the desert are now behind us. Five weeks of self-examination draw to a close with the baptism of new Christians and the first Eucharist of Easter. We began Lent with the ashes of our own mortality smudged on our forehead and the invitation to a Holy Lent ringing in our ears. We pledged to spend more time in prayer. We hoped to learn more about scripture. We gave something up or took something on but Lent is over now. We are ending with an abundance of flowers, joyous Alleluias and three baptisms. We are ending with a choice to slip back into our old ways or to risk moving forward into the light of a new way of being.

We did start this night in the dark - it was a fitting beginning that echoes the words of Genesis and mimics the journey toward faith. In the beginning, all is formless and void. We do not have any answers. We may barely be able to voice the questions. But something is shifting and changing within us - something as powerful as dry land beginning to emerge from the previously undifferentiated depths. The spirit of God moved over the water in creation, over the questions within us, into and through the water of baptism held in that font. God is ever creating the world. God is always calling us into fuller being. This is the night!

Light on the Paschal candle came down that aisle. Light flowed out from pew to pew, from person to person to person. Like the Word going forth, it changed our darkness into light. The light of Christ was on your face and in my eyes. It glistened off the silver. It gathered in the font. Like the water we heard pouring three times: singing the light of Christ in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

We named Sydney and Lars and Samantha, but it was Christ who illuminated them. Word cascaded over word, one lesson read after another. They moved us along like waves in an ocean of God. Lifting us. Lifting us from the shores on which we run aground and carrying us to a Promised land that can only be reached by water.

Baptism is the river that flows from the throne of God. Baptism is the tide that carries us into the current that Christ has made by His passage through life and death. Jesus knelt in the Jordan at his own baptism. He hung on the cross at Golgatha. He sank into the lightless depths of death; then rose again like dawn above the sea.

As Christ pulled free from the surface of the water, as He stepped out of the rocky grave, we were released from the grip of all that seeks to permanently hold or submerge us. Neither sin nor death nor anything on earth has ultimate power over we who have come through the water of baptism. This is the night!

When the seal on the tomb was broken by an angel and the rock was rolled away, we too were set free. When the hand of a priest marked our forehead with oil on the day of our baptism we were sealed as Christ's own forever. That unbreakable seal rescues us from lesser allegiances. We may be tempted by all manner of things but we cannot belong to them. We belong to God.

From the moment of our creation through the hour of our death, we belong to God, and God is faithful. From the hour of our death to the moment of our resurrection, Christ goes before us as the life, the way, and the truth.

Christ is not in the tomb. He is not locked away in history, captured in a tale of long ago and far away. Christ is alive. The spirit of God is still moving over the face of the earth.

The spirit of God is moving through this congregation.
We have promised to be people of the water, joined by word and the spirit into common cause. Is this your first night at Saint James? Do not let it be your last. When we promised to continue in the fellowship, the prayers and the breaking of the bread, we were speaking of the Eucharist, of liturgies like this. Keep coming back to be formed like stones tumbling towards smoothness by a river full of grace.

Do you see darkness in the world and wonder how to bear it? Carry the light of Christ out into it. Proclaim by word and deed the Good News of that we have witnessed tonight: God not only made the world, He loved it. God not only loved us he came to be with us. And then he loved us so much that he gave himself as an offering so that we might discover a new kind of life that is stronger than death, deeper than the sea and brighter than the sun.

In the light of Christ we are as beloved as an only child. Through the water of our baptism we are part of the body of Christ. There is no separation between ourselves and others save the barriers we put up. Let us look over our fences to seek and serve Christ in all persons. Then let us take down the wall. Let us roll away the stone. For Christ is alive and this is the night!