He comes to us as one unknown
a voice unseen unheard,
as though within a heart of stone,
a shriveled seed in darkness sown
and a pulse of being stirred.
(I'm down with the brothers in Big Sur, and got to preside and preach at the Easter Vigil this morning. We do it down here at 4:30 AM! It's especially beautiful down here: we begin out in the front portico in the cold and dark with a fire lit. Then we proceed into the chapel with lighted tapers and listen to the series of readings, sing psalms and pray prayers in the semi-darkness through the first half, before the bells ring and the Gloria is sung and we celebrate Eucharist around dawn. This was my homily.)
There is a moment in the evolution of human consciousness, a kind of a tipping point, that often gets overlooked and underrated––it’s the invention of the light bulb. I read an article in the Spring issue of Tricycle magazine that suggests that from prehistoric times we human beings are actually hardwired to spend a good portion of the nocturnal hours in a resting state somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, those long hours after twilight before sleeping and after sleeping waiting for the dawn. This is the realm of myths, fantasies, dreams and doubts––and the time that we might have sat around the fire and told stories, when we would have been in something like a meditative state. Now with the availability of good cheap light, instead of keeping vigil we are in a state of “jittery hyper-vigilance”––in front of TVs and behind computer screens, in all night drive-thrus and working the late shift at the factory. But our bodies remember how to keep vigil, and so we’re lucky that the church takes us back once a year to the darkness, to sit around the fire and tell the stories again, to remember the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, how it all starts with the Word and ends with Christ, through with and in Jesus.
We sometimes refer to the Easter vigil as the “mother of all vigils.” It’s the oldest and by far the most complex in our church year. It has one unique feature, in that we listen to seven readings from the Jewish scriptures in chronological order, as if we were tracing salvation history all the way from Creation through the entire history of Israel up to the Resurrection to show, just in case we missed the point, that all of this has been leading to the Resurrection. In a sense you could say that Jesus’ rising from the dead is for us a kind of high point of evolution thus far, and everything that has taken place since then has taken place in these “latter days,” including the baptism of new candidates into this history.
But we are also bold enough to claim that the Paschal mystery––the life, death, passion and resurrection of Jesus, along with the Ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost––was a culmination not just of Judeo-Christian history, but a high water mark for all of history. In the theologies of inter-religious dialogue, even the most conservative theologians of the mainline Christian churches speak about a “fulfillment theology,” that one of the reasons we think it is not only acceptable but important to study other traditions is that we believe they all find their fulfillment in Christ. In the words of the ancients the Word of God had been scattered like seed––logos spermatikos, semine verbi–– thrown to the winds of history. And Christianity teaches that it is these seeds that come concentrated in Jesus, who is their fulfillment, in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily.
So I have this idea for another kind of Easter vigil service that embrace some of these elements outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that perhaps could take place some day, somewhere. We might read the story of creation from the first chapter of Genesis, and then read from the Atharva Veda about the skambha–the Cosmic Pillar, On whom is firmly founded earth and sky and the air in between…, and then sing Psalm 104: You fixed the earth upon its foundations..., for example. And then we could read the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, and then something from the epic of Gilgamesh; and then read the story of Moses leading the Israelites across the Red Sea followed by the story of Krishna and Arjuna lined up between the Pandavas and the Karuavas before going into battle in the Bhagavad Gita, and then sing about the Lord who has covered himself in glory in the canticle from the Book of Exodus. And then read from the book of the Consolation of Israel in the prophet Isaiah, and something from the Tao te Ching; and then Isaiah 55, and something from the Dhammapada; and then the prophet Baruch, and something from Nityanaimittika-pathavali of the Jains, and sing Psalm 16: Lord, you have the words of everlasting life…” And then after we read that beautiful passage from the prophet Ezekiel, maybe we could conclude by reading something of Socrates’ famous culminating speech in Plato’s Symposium, since it was specifically these Greek thinkers and writers that Justin Martyr was thinking about when he came up with his concept of the “seeds of the Word,” just as Paul was thinking of the Greeks when he addressed the Greeks at the Areopagus in Acts 17, telling then that their “unknown God” had raised someone from the dead. And then could we proclaim the story of the Resurrection and tell everyone, like Paul did, that this has all been fulfilled! Maybe then we, like Damaris and Dionysius the Areopagite, would really understand the impact of this event. All this wisdom has been so many surprising tributaries leading to the channel that is Christ.
There is another aspect of the Easter vigil though that often gets overlooked: it was originally also celebrated in expectation of Jesus’ second coming, like a little Advent. There was a strong belief among early Christians that Jesus would return in glory before their generation had passed away, and very early on the thought arose that just as Jesus had risen from the tomb during the night that preceded the first Easter, maybe his second coming would take place during the night during the same paschal season. I think it would be well for us to remember this eschatological aspect of this vigil and of Easter in general too, so that we could stay vigilant for the coming of the glorified resurrected Christ. Of course, as the disciples realized, he comes to us in the breaking of the bread, in the Eucharist, which is the body of the glorified resurrected Jesus. But where else might he come? Where else might he have already come? An Indian theologian at the Abhishiktananda seminar told a story about meeting a little Hindu girl who was a great devotee of Jesus and who, he said, showed more fervor and devotion than most Christians he had met. And he said something like, “Who’s the say Jesus couldn’t rise from the dead in the beautiful face of a little Hindu girl?” That reminded me of that beautiful hymn text by Timothy Dudley-Smith (which is the basis of my song “As One Unknown”) that takes off on a line from Gerard Manley Hopkins, alluding to the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus:
He comes to us as one unknown
a voice unseen unheard,
as though within a heart of stone,
a shriveled seed in darkness sown
and a pulse of being stirred.
So, I was wondering if we couldn’t apply the same kind of thinking that made us recognize “seeds of the Word,” and now be on the lookout for “sparks of the resurrection” that might have scattered everywhere throughout human history, if we really believe that this event was the cataclysm we claim it was? Could we not be bold enough to say that everything that followed in human history afterward has been affected in some way by Jesus’ smashing through the gates of death? Could we see the resurrected Christ in the poems of Rumi and Hafez? In the Guru Granth Sahib of Nanak and his fellow Sikhs? In Beowulf and the sonnets of Shakespeare? Could we not see the risen Christ in the great dynasties one after another in China, in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and the philosophy of Shankara and Moses Maimonides? In the discoveries of science and psychology, in the birth of democracy, and Gandhi’s leading the peaceful evacuation of the British from India? Could we not see the risen Christ in the lunar landing in 1969? Or in the tumbling of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of one Communist dictatorship after another, and all the victories over tyranny? In the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil Rights Acts, and the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa? (I could barely breathe when I watched and listened to Aretha Franklin sing the national anthem at President Obama’s inauguration.) Could we not recognize all that as the stream of life giving water that flows from out of the believer’s heart which is none other than the Spirit that Jesus said he would send––to quicken the pulse of our being? Or could we see Jesus rising from the dead in the sublime beauty of Beethoven’s late string quartets, and the colors of Vincent van Gogh and the Impressionists, in John Coltrane kicking heroin and writing “A Love Supreme,” in the films of Akira Kurosawa, or in the grace of Michael Jordan floating through air in the middle of a lay-up, in the Sydney Opera House, and the Hedron Particle Collider? And, most especially, could we not see Jesus rising from the dead everywhere we see human beings break their lives open like bread in love and service for one another when disasters hit, when wars are raging, when people hand their lives over to be persecuted for the sake of justice and liberation and the end of discrimination of all kinds; and every time we see someone pour their life out like wine in service of the poor, or in fighting for the weak, in educating children, in caring for the sick. Could we not claim to see the Risen Christ present everywhere there? Is this not too that pulse of being stirred?
So, it would be well for us to try to stop being so jittery and hyper-vigilant all the time, and instead try to be a little more meditative and vigilant, and watch for where Jesus might be rising from the dead, be on the lookout for surprising flowers sprouting up in the garden of the empty tomb, in unexpected voices and faces, in other “pulses of being stirred,” and continue to celebrate with optimism, creative energy, and unbounded patience and joyful hope.
