As we complete the Holy Triduum (Three Days) and Celebrate the Mystery of the Resurrection we are invited to consider deeply the reality of our human existence and the astounding mercy of our Creator God.  The banquet of Scripture texts, prayers, hymns and sacramental enactments of the Easter Festival provide numerous doors by which we can enter the paschal mystery and contemplate joyfully what God has done and is doing for us.  Perhaps never in our collective lifetimes have we needed those doors as we do this year of 2020 when we seek to celebrate Easter in a pandemic of viral disease that has upended nearly every semblance of the patterns of ordinary life.

Scripture scholars have shared the wisdom that the ancient biblical writers understood water to not only be a source of life and refreshment, but the location for chaos, disorder and radical change.  In the Creation stories of Genesis God separated the waters and brought forth land upon which all kinds of creatures could live and thrive.  Land can host conflict but land itself does not appear to change greatly. It is orderly and stable. 

Water, however, refers to various forms of chaos, change, disruption and danger.  Water itself is restlessly changing from minute to minute, and bodies of water were seen to be the borders of human life where the greatest change took place.  To go into the deep water was to enter into radical change or even re-birth, since it was known and understood that the very nature of human life emerged out of the waters carried in a pregnant woman’s body. 

As we listen to the readings of the Liturgy for the Easter Vigil and Easter Day, we hear the consistent message about entering upon, or passing through, waters.  By becoming human God subordinated the Divine Self to the chaos of human life – and the ultimate chaos of human death. 

In the creation story God breathes over the waters and fills them with the Divine Spirit to overcome the spirit of darkness and chaos, in the Exodus story God lead’s the people through the waters of the Reed Sea to dry land on the other side.  Finally, by crossing the waters of the Jordan River, God’s people come into a place where humans will flourish: the garden of God’s Reign.

Today, in a  time of sickness and death, a time of economic chaos and disruption, a time when ordinary patterns of human interaction – even the patterns of worship of God – have all been disordered by a global pandemic.  It is as if the whole of humanity has entered a boat together, but each along, to sail through an unpredicted storm, on an ocean that was already deep, dangerous, and seems to have no boundaries.  Pope Francis pointed this out several weeks ago when he granted the special blessing to the “city and the world.”  We are a people lost at sea.

Where do we look for meaning and consolation in such a frightening time?

The Christian Tradition sees this moment in the paradigm of Jesus’ Passion and Death.  This is a moment when the body of humanity is enduring the ultimate chaos that signals a way of death; signals the passing away of what has “always” been. We are, frankly, at sea without stars to guide us.

Jesus, the Second Person of God, entered the human experience in the body of a human woman, was born into humanity out of the chaos of the waters, and then lived into the soul wrenching, body destroying murder of that same human life by the agents of sin and death –  injustice and violence, lying and cruelty, corruption and greed. The leadership structures of societies colluded with sin.  Weak and frightened humans, denied, lied and betrayed Jesus.  He who was God-become-human lived into our radical vulnerability and lived through death itself. Just as he chose to be born in water, He chose to allow the chaos of evil to drown his human life.  Making both choices as one choice, trusting that God is ultimately in charge of all creation and will bring victory from what appears to be certain defeat. 

Easter is the ultimate reality. At whatever point we are in creation history, the mystery we celebrate in Easter is what (finally) IS.  Easter promises those who have entered the waters of baptism the ultimate outcome of victory if we choose to believe and live into God’s Reign on earth, as it is in Heaven.  Jesus challenges us to not be afraid; even COVID 19 is subordinate to the will and plans of the Father. The waters of chaos, filled with the Breath of God, have become the waters of baptismal life through the death and resurrection of the God/human, Jesus the Christ. 

He is Risen!  He is Risen, indeed!  Alleluia! Alleluia!