The Triduum: Easter Vigil

The Way Home

So far in the Triduum, as we have travelled with Jesus from the Last Supper to the resurrection we have been exploring the theme of home. On Maundy Thursday, in the evening, we talked about the promise of home, as we gave thanks for the Last Supper, we remembered how Jesus made a covenant, agreed a literal mortgage with us to save us, and in which He pays in full through His broken body and His shed blood. On Good Friday we talked about the cost of home as we remembered that homes are made not of bricks and mortar but of people and love as we marvelled at the awful majesty and the dreadful necessity of the cross, together waiting in the silence of Holy Saturday. Tonight we celebrate with great thanksgiving the way home.

As many of you know, my parents and grandparents were expatriates, and so we lived all over the world. A consequence of this nomadic life was that for our education when we were old enough, we were sent to a little boarding school in deepest darkest Dorset. And as I grew up in boarding school, particularly as a teenager, I found it increasingly a slog although I have always been grateful of the opportunity. Not only were you always with other teenagers, so not easy when you needed time alone, it never stopped. The only day we were allowed to do our own thing a little bit was on Sundays and even then, we would be marched off to chapel. But at the end of a long term after 3 months of school, you would get to the last day, and a giddy feeling would descend. You would feel a lightness and a joy. The holidays were beginning, you would finally be free, you would finally be on the way home. I am sure that is true with day schools as well, but it was particularly true when the time to go to the home you longed for suddenly arrives. The day is here and joy is on the doorstep. This was particularly true for the summer holidays, often with the sun out and the breeze cool - you went out with your cases in the glorious summer weather, got in the car and you were on your way home.   

Tonight, Jesus rose from the tomb. The day is coming, the sun will be rising, and joy is on the doorstep, on the doorstep of an open tomb. This night, all those years ago, Jesus rose and our salvation was won. Just before He went to the cross, we hear this in the 14^th chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus says to His disciples ‘In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.’

The interesting thing about this line is the Greek word for dwelling-places is often translated mansions, as it means a house of our own which would have been only for the wealthy, but more interestingly I think is when Jesus says, ‘In my Fathers house’. A more accurate description is ‘in my Fathers home’. Jesus is inviting us, all who love the Lord into His Fathers home, to make that home as well. What Jesus has won at Easter, as the angel rolls the stone away and the guards faint, and Mary Magdalene is shown the empty tomb by the angel, what Jesus has achieved for all of us here is a place in His home with His Father and our Father. A dwelling place of our own in the Kingdom. A spot at the family table. A welcome into love we don’t deserve. A place where no sin or fear or hurt or death can be. The curtain has been ripped in two, we are now part of God’s family and have access to the Father as a child of God.

Our earthly homes, be that our houses, families or indeed our church family are but a foreshadowing of our true homes. They are only for a season, and the best parts of our Earthly homes are just shadows of that point towards our home with God and one another. Just like when you have that feeling of joy going home, so will it be when we go to our true home, either when we meet God face to face after our death or when He comes again and His home is once more among us. It is that joy we experience as believers in the here and now. It is the joy of Easter. A people set free and home prepared. Through the cross and the resurrection Jesus brings that home-joy to our hearts and to our lives. When we enjoy fellowship as part of His family in this church, when we enjoy loving our family and friends, every time we feel joy from helping a precious child of God we taste a little of heaven and that taste is bought and won through the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So, Easter is a profound call to joy, to peace and to love. It is a profound call to continue to listen to Jesus say ‘follow me’ as we love one another and the stranger in His name. It is a profound call to celebrate His victory and to shout out to all who have no hope that hope is alive, and He left the tomb this night. At the Last supper, we made a covenant with God, the promise of a home was given and Jesus signed and sealed it with His blood. On Good Friday, Jesus paid the price of the home he wants for us on the cross so we might be saved. Tonight, during this night He shows us the way home, Jesus was raised and the reward of His victory was freely given to us to share.  Sin and death are defeated, and joy unearned is given to all who believe with their heart and proclaim with their mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord. We are the prodigals come home and the Lord has run down the road to welcome us, arms flung out wide and the hands are marked with the wounds of crucifixion. That is the easter promise and a promise that makes us members of the family, won for us tonight by the risen Christ who is alive and available to this very day. Alleluia!

The way home has been opened for even us at the opening of the tomb. The way home doesn’t end at the open tomb but is only the beginning of our salvation journey that we must travel growing in more love and joy and peace each day. At the end of his Narnia series, on the very last page of the book ‘The Last Battle’ which I commend to you for their theological insights, The children of the story have ended up in with Aslan, with Jesus, in their true home in heaven. They have found the way home. The series concludes with this:

“The term is over: the holiday has begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning”

And as Aslan spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: Which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”