Genesis 1:1–2:4 (Vigil)

Year A - Easter Vigil or Hopeless Hope Vigil

April 19/20, 2014

Genesis 1:1–2:4

A Vigil is a religious ritual prior to a special event and/or a watchfulness in place of sleep.

So how much can be presumed in an Easter Vigil?

Do we already know the outcome and so are trying to heighten an experience through sleep deprivation, a variant to drug use? This can lower the liminal threshold to move us toward extraordinary significance that sets our 2014 experience above even a first Mary-at-the-grave experience.

Do we continue Absent Saturday and deepen that with a time to officially recognize our hopeless condition? This can raise the bar of surprise so we will attend to a new way forward for our life and our life together.

Liturgically Easter Vigil is a spoiler alert for Easter Day. It is the beginning of the Easter season, sort of a reverse Ash Wednesday.

And so we begin with a creation story here at what is supposed to be a new creation through resurrection rather than a Word.

Try retelling Easter as a creation story. In the beginning when G*D was resurrecting Jesus the grave was formless void and darkness covered the deeps of Sheol, Hades, and Hell while light was gently breaking from within a stone-cold tomb . . . . (Your turn to take it further—you might try this with a group doing a progressive story where one person starts and the next carries the story one step further and around it goes.)