Sermon for the Easter Vigil 2026

preached by the Vicar, Fr Christopher Woods

Amidst the daily headlines of war and destruction, one story in the past few days has really captured my imagination. At first I scrolled past it, not quite appreciating its magnitude. But then, quite suddenly, I became more keenly aware of how significant it was: the journey of the four astronauts in the Orion capsule of Artemis II, travelling towards the moon, beyond the earth’s orbit, thrust into deep space. The astronauts have been sending back extraordinary photographs of the earth: luminous and suspended in the darkness of space. It is hard not to look at such images with wonder. Human beings have done something astonishing. We have built the means to travel beyond the earth and look back upon our home with awe.

And if we contemplate that image alongside those great primeval words from Genesis 1, with which we began our Vigil (“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.”) we are left mesmerised by the different ways human beings have tried, over time, to make sense of the universe God has made. The words of Genesis are themselves a display of deep human intuition and intelligence, and the passage of time, together with scientific skill, has enabled those words to be understood in new and deeper ways.

Victor Golver, one of the crew on board Artemis II has spoken about his belief in God and his studying of Scripture. He said this to all of us on earth from the perspective of floating in space: “You have this oasis, this beautiful place that we get to exist together..we are the same thing and we have got to get through this together”(from a video). The astronauts have talked of being transfixed and overawed by their experience: how could they not be? Their work as astronauts stretches the limits of human endeavour; and how fortunate they are to be making such an expedition. This generation of humanity, and perhaps the next, is living with an astonishing dichotomy of promise and peril: the promise of astronauts thrust into space, sending back images of our planet, and the peril of war and destruction, of people and ancient places laid waste.

For the same humanity that can gaze at the beauty of the world can also devastate it. The same humanity that can reach for the moon can also destroy cities, poison truth, and ravage nations through war, greed, and indifference. We can photograph the beauty of the earth and still be busy ruining it.

And so, we come to this Vigil holding both truths together: the splendour of creation, and the wreckage human beings make of it.

We know too much to speak cheaply of hope. We know what war does. We know what greed does. We know the cruelty, the waste, the madness of our world. So how do we preach resurrection in a time like this?

Not by pretending everything is fine.

The Easter Gospel begins not in a healed world, but at a tomb. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary go not in triumph, but in grief. They go carrying love, and they go to the place where hope seemed to have ended. That is where Easter begins. And that matters, because Christian hope is not optimism.

Optimism says, “Things will probably work out.” Hope says, “Even if they do not, all shall be well, because God has not abandoned the world.”

Tonight the Church dares to say that the God who made light in the beginning has acted again in the risen Christ. The God who said, “Let there be light,” has spoken once more into the darkness of death.

That is why this Vigil is so powerful. We begin in the dark. We listen again to the story of creation, promise, deliverance, and mercy only by natural flame. And then at last we come to the tomb, and hear the angel say: “Do not be afraid… He is not here; for he has been raised.”, and the light increases.

But let us be careful about the words “Do not be afrai”. That is not a command never to tremble. It is not a denial of suffering. It is the promise that fear does not get the last word.

And St Matthew gives us that marvellous phrase: the women leave the tomb “with fear and great joy.” Again, a paradox; again, a kind of holy contradiction.

That is Easter faith: not joy instead of fear, but joy in the midst of fear. Not escape from the world, but a new way of standing in it. Resurrection does not mean the world is suddenly safe and tidy. It means violence does not get the final word. It means the future belongs not to the tyrant, not to the grave, but to the living Christ.

And that is what we need to keep telling one another in a world of war and madness.

The resurrection of Jesus is not a little religious comfort placed around the edges of a broken world. It is God’s defiance of death. God’s refusal to let cruelty and ruin be final. God’s declaration that even the deepest wounds of history are not beyond redemption.

The women are told, “Go and tell.” Do not stay at the tomb. Do not make your home in the place of death. Go and bear witness.

That is our calling too: to tell the truth. To defend dignity. To resist cruelty. To care for God’s wounded world. To keep tenderness alive. To live as those who know that death has been broken open from the inside by the risen Christ.

Christ is risen, the light still shines in the darkness.

Image credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman