Episcopal Church of the Incarnation

West Point, Mississippi

The Great Vigil of Easter

Ezekiel 37.1-14 Romans 6.3-11

1) Volgograd is a city in central Russia, taking its name from the great Volga River, along the western bank of which it lies.

a) The city is of rather odd geography, being many miles long, along the river, but only about a mile and a half wide.

i) To the west of the city proper lies land which remains mainly uncultivated, open steppe as far as the eye can see.

b) Volgograd is not the original name of the city, which was called Tsaritsyn at its founding.

i) The name, however, by which the city is known generally is that which it bore from 1925 to 1988: Stalingrad, site of the greatest land battle in human history.

2) As reported in 1993, fifty years after the great battle, one could still find on the steppe to the west of the city the remains of the German, Italian, and Rumanian armies which fought and perished there.

i) What kind of remains? Almost all the metal was gone.

(1) There were a few scraps of equipment, even the remnant here and there of a boot.

(2) Mainly, though, there were bones.

(a) This is factual. Fifty years after the battle, bones could still be found, scattered as far as the eye could see.

3) Which brings us to the words of Ezekiel which we heard during the Great Vigil, the Lord’s question to the prophet: “Son of man, can these bones live?”

a) Can they indeed. The bones at Stalingrad are not the bones of the whole house of Israel, referred to in Ezekiel’s vision, but the bones of those who fought for one of the most evil regimes in history.

i) And yet can they live? Can they live if at death they repented of their sins and turned finally to the Lord; if, having once been baptized, they turned at the last to Jesus to seek their union with him?

4) That’s a hard thing to swallow about the Gospel, that even an evil person can be saved, if he renounces his evil and turns to God.

a) But that is exactly what St. Paul reminds us of in the lesson from Romans which we will hear later in this service:

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ... [I]f we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that ... we might no longer be enslaved to sin.

5) I’m not saying that those who perished at Stalingrad were saved. But I am saying that they were all eligible for salvation, for the price of sin was paid, once and for all time in the perfect sacrifice made by Jesus on the Cross.

a) The price of sin, the falleness of humankind, is what we are redeemed from in Jesus Christ, and we become members of His Body by dying to our old selves in the holy sacrament of baptism.

i) In a few minutes we will renew our baptismal vows. In the words used in Book of Common Prayer for the prayer over the water used at baptism, it is by this water and the Holy Spirit that we are reborn and enter the fellowship of those who come to the Lord in faith.

(1) We pray that in baptism, “... that those who here are cleansed from sin and born again may continue for ever in the risen life of Jesus Christ our Savior.”

(2) In the risen life. That, brothers and sisters, is what we here celebrate.

(a) That having died for us, having–in the words of the Apostles’ Creed–“descended to the dead,” our Lord rose again and ascended into heaven.

(i) He ascended into heaven and calls us to the joy of that kingdom, the joy of life everlasting.

To Him “... be blessing and honor and glory and might for ever and ever! ... Amen!”