The Great Vigil of Easter, Year A
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex.

A few weeks ago I went to the movies to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, which has been getting a lot of attention since its world premiere right here in Austin at last year’s South by Southwest festival. The movie is about a lot of things–it’s a high concept science fiction flick–but at its heart, it’s about the damaged relationship between a woman named Evelyn and her daughter, Joy. Evelyn is exhausted and overwhelmed by her life, her marriage is on brink of divorce, and she can’t seem to finish her taxes. As the story begins, she is given the ability to shift between versions of herself, and she gets to gaze across an infinite number of parallel realities, all different versions of the same Evelyn: what if she had made a different choice in that argument with her father? What if she had chosen not to marry? What if by an accident of evolution everyone had hot dog fingers? What if she had turned out to be a chef, or a movie star, or a priest, or a princess, or anything else but what she is? What if she could live in any other world but this one? What if, what if, what if. It’s a tremendous power, to be able to see how it could have turned out, to be able to step out of sync with your own reality, to step out of time, just for a moment.

As Evelyn grapples with her new abilities, she discovers a parallel version of her daughter Joy who has been shifting between realities too. Joy has seen it all: everything, everywhere, all at once, and she has concluded that nothing can fix the pain she feels in the core of her soul. But she thinks she has found a way out: a black hole so dense that it will erase her from every universe. She has built a world around her that is bent on cataclysmic, all-encompassing self-destruction, and she doesn’t care who she takes with her. 

Every year during Holy Week we peer down into the depths of human darkness: our reluctance to care for one another in the way Jesus showed us, the ways greed and complacency and jealousy end lives while we stand around and watch, all the hundreds of thousands of mundane ways we crucify Jesus again every day of the year. In the crucifixion we see all the grief of the world, all the griefs of our own lives, summed up in one man who draws them into the very heart of God. And so too all the rituals and prayers we share this week are not just about us, or just about playacting a particular week in ancient Palestine. Every year during Holy Week the Church steps out of time, out of sync with the world, torn out of our own reality and placed into someone else’s. Every loving caress of the foot of a brother or sister contains every gentle touch in all the foot-washings before it, every song sung to the glory of Christ’s cross is chanted with all the voices that have chanted it before us, every drop of the water of baptism is poured in the same moment as all those who God has claimed in every age and place, from every tribe and language and people and nation. These are not things we do for ourselves, we do them because this very night is in itself the same night God has accomplished salvation for the world. This is the night when the Spirit creates a world to fill with love. This is the night of liberation from slavery. This is the night that God fills the hearts of a people who have been walking as if dead. This is the night that Christ rises from the dead, trampling down death by death, the breakdown of his cells reversing, his slack lungs snapping back to life as they fill with breath, adrenaline coursing through every vein as he tears off the shackles of the grave and raises us all with him.

As Evelyn confronts Joy and the other hurting people she has gathered around her, Evelyn is able to shift into each one’s reality. She finds the words they needed to hear, the healing touch they never felt, the desires left unmet, the joy and connection they missed in one another. She reaches into the far corners of the universe to drag that love and joy and healing and reconciliation into this one, short-circuiting every enemy in her path, giving gifts to each as she makes her way toward her daughter. Right there on the screen, death, despair, and destruction work backwards. One by one, lives are changed, people are made whole, life spreads. At last it’s down to Joy, who begs to be left alone, still convinced that nothing good will last, and for a moment, it looks like Evelyn will let her go. But there on the cusp of annihilation Evelyn looks at her daughter: “Of all the places I could be, why would I want to be here with you? You’re right, it doesn’t make sense. But maybe there is something out there that explains why you still went looking for me through all of this noise. And why no matter what, I still want to be here with you. I will always, always want to be here with you.”

Of all the places in all the universes that God Almighty could have been, God chose to be here with us, with you, this very night. God steps out of time of the dance of Death. God tears us all out of sync with life as we know it, and reaches into every corner of the universe to undo the power of Death. On that first Easter, God in human flesh laid in a grave, and decided that the worst we could do would not be the end of your story. There is not one place, not one time, not one version of you that God is not seeking to make whole, not one death Christ does not seek to unmake. It is not the nature of life to be contained. The resurrection of Jesus Christ spills into every time and place, drawing all of them together into one.

It is into this truth Julius has been baptized. It is this truth we all have reaffirmed and recommitted our trust. It is this truth which we wrap around ourselves. It is this truth that lights the way ahead of us. Wherever you find yourself tonight, cling to this truth: that Christ is at work, whether you can sense him just yet or not; that you are not alone, that death does not have the final word. He is coming for you to bring you out of whatever pain or grief or death you bear, to help you step out of time with life as you knew it,and into time with the dance of the resurrection which fills everything, everywhere, all at once.