My friends,
Happy Easter to you all. This morning we join our voices with Christians throughout the world to proclaim that Christ is risen, that He is truly risen. For today we celebrate, we extol, we delight in the fact that in the early mornings of the first day of the week, the Lord broke the chains of sin and death forever.
Having gone into the Abode of the Dead to free them, those who lived before Him, He now comes to us in the power of the Holy Spirit to give to us, through the gift of baptism, the same victory over sin and death. What He had by the very nature of being God, you and I are given to the great mystery of baptism.
And so my dear friends, I cannot imagine a more appropriate way to celebrate this day than to gather around Freya’s mom and dad, and her sister and brother, and her grandparents and her godparents, and invite this little girl into the very life of God.
Consider what will happen to her. In a few moments we will be at the font and I will pray the prayer of exorcism, and anointed with the oil of the Catechumens as a sign that she is free from original sin, and that the power of the evil one has no hold over her, or over you, or over me.
In using the waters that were blessed last night in the great Vigil of the Holy Night, she will enter in mystery in the Tomb of Jesus, into His death and rise to new life before our very eyes.
And she’ll be clothed, once again, in the white that her parents dressed her as a sign that she is a new creation in Jesus. And then she will be anointed with Chrism. You and I were anointed with Chrism, and in that moment, you and I became members of the mystical Body of Christ. And we are all priests, prophets, and kings in the Risen Lord, to be His messengers of salvation and hope.
And how godparents will receive the light from this one candle, because Freya will be enlightened by Christ and receive the gifts of faith, hope, and charity. What this little girl will receive, every single one of us already has.
And so I invite you this Easter morning, not simply to proclaim with our words that Jesus is risen, but may I suggest that we unlock the power of our own baptism, each of us, to allow the power of the Risen Lord to come through us to this broken, confused, complicated, and in many ways lost world. For His looking (world) looking for direction, the answer to the desires of so many people’s hearts, a world that’s seeking a path to hope and joy. And it only comes in Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. And it is to us to not just speak it, but to live it, and proclaim it in my actions and yours.
And so my dear friends, I’m going to invite you to join with me, as we go to the font in the back of church and celebrate Freya’s new life in Jesus Christ. And in her life, let us renew our own lives in the crucified and Risen Lord.
