The Rev. Brandon C. Ashcraft
Trinity Church in the City of Boston
Exodus 14:10-15:1
The Great Vigil of Easter (April 4, 2026)
The Night of Our Deliverance
It was still early on the morning of Palm Sunday when the vibrating phone on my nightstand woke me from slumber. The incoming messages read like breaking news alerts: “Crowds are gathering on the road into Jerusalem…Cloaks thrown down, palm branches waving.” Somewhere along the way, I subscribed to the so-called “Holy Week Daily Text Experience,”1This is an offering from the TryTank, a division of the Virginia Theological Seminary, the largest seminary of the Episcopal Church, which is described as “An Experimental Laboratory for Church Growth and Innovation.” so the steady stream of messages has continued throughout the week, announcing, one by one, the events of Jesus’s final week. Given how tethered we are to our cell phones, it’s no surprise that even Holy Week is now delivered to our fingertips. We long for the stories of Jesus’ final days to feel real. To feel immediate. To come within our reach.
Even as the way we tell these stories changes, the custom of gathering to hear them has endured for centuries. Thanks to the letters of a fourth century pilgrim, a woman who traveled more than 3,000 miles to Jerusalem, we know how the earliest Christians kept this very night.2An incomplete chronicle of Egeria’s pilgrimage, was discovered in 1884 in an eleventh-century manuscript. She is widely regarded to have been an abbess or nun from northern Spain or southern Gaul around the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century. They did not go to sleep. They kept constant vigil. Until the light of dawn they sang hymns, lifted their voices in prayer, and retold the great stories of the faith. And so, this is the night when we tell those same stories. Stories of where we came from. Stories of our ancestors. Of their beginnings and their endings. Of their woes and their wanderings. This is the night we tell the stories that shape us. The stories that make us into a people of God. This is the night…
At Trinity, we celebrate a simple Easter Vigil. We tell only a couple of those great stories, but there are so many more we could have told. We could have gone back to the very beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.3The Story of Creation (Genesis 1:1–2:2, the story of Creation). When the earth was formless and dark, and a wind swept over the waters. When God said, let there be light. And there was light. Or we could have told the story of the great flood.4The Flood (Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18; 8:6-18; 9:8-13). How a mighty rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights. How of all the people on the earth, only Noah and his family survived, in an ark, until a dove appeared bearing an olive branch. Or how Abraham, our patriarch, the father of many nations, had a son in his old age, and nearly sacrificed the child he had so longed for.5Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-18). Or we could have told the stories of the prophets. Stories of dry bones brought back to life.6The valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14). Hearts of stone turned to flesh.7A new heart and a new spirit (Ezekiel 36:24-28). Sins washed clean.8 Salvation offered freely to all (Isaiah 55:1-11). An exiled people gathered home.9God’s Presence in a renewed Israel (Isaiah 4:2-6). This is the night…
But there’s one ancient story we can never leave out. Not on this night. Indeed, there’s one story the Church insists we must tell. And that one, we told: the story of the Israelites’ deliverance through the Red Sea.10The Book of Common Prayer’s liturgy for The Great Vigil of Easter offers nine readings to tell the story of salvation history. The rubrics stipulate: “At least two of the following Lessons are read, of which one is always the Lesson from Exodus,” (298) referring to Exodus 14:10-15:1, the story of the Israelites’ Deliverance at the Red Sea. “This is the night,” sings the ancient hymn, “when God brought the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.”11An excerpt from the Exsultet, a medieval hymn of praise also known as the Easter Proclamation, sung each year at the Great Vigil of Easter as the new Paschal Candle is borne into the church in the darkness near the beginning of the service: The Book of Common Prayer, 287. Tonight, we become part of this story. This is not a story we remember. This is a story we enter. And so, we stand in it. We come alongside our ancestors, to join the communion of saints, to take our place in the waters of our deliverance. This is the night…
Under the dark cover of night, the waters surround us on both sides. The soaring columns of water hold, though we cannot see what holds them. And here we stand between them, our feet on dry ground, on a path that has been cleared for us, though we cannot see where it leads. It can feel terrifying between these waters. Hard to trust. Unsafe, even. Our ancestors felt this, too. They expected Pharaoh’s chariots to overtake them. They feared the dry ground would be washed away at any moment. Over the roar of the water, they could hear the clashing armor in the distance, announcing the imminent onslaught of Pharaoh’s army. Even as the columns of water continued to hold, the looming threat was real. However, the scripture tells us, the danger did not come near them. “[The pillar of] cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night.”12Exodus 14:20 (NRSVUE) In the darkness of night, God was with them. Protecting them. Delivering them from bondage into freedom. This is the night…
David, Francis, Jesse, Ryan, and Sid: in the darkness of this night you will be brought into these same waters.13Five candidates were baptized into the Body of Christ at this service. Not to watch from a distance, but to be carried through them. To become part of this ancient story. In the waters of Holy Baptism something in you will die. And you will be born anew. Remade. Marked as Christ’s own forever. On this night, in these waters, God calls you by name. Declares you his beloved. And adopts you as his children. Whatever lies ahead, whatever dangers still lurk, you will never face them alone. Because you are joined to the company of saints who have passed through these waters before you, even as you are united to those who will come after you. And more than that, you are held by God’s promise: that God has gone through these waters before you and will never let you go. It is a promise unlike any other. A promise that will never fail.14“The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.” From the liturgy of “Holy Baptism” in the Book of Common Prayer, 298. This is the night…
Not long from now, we’ll reach that moment in our liturgy that so many of us have been waiting for. Before the chrism on our baptismal candidates’ foreheads has even had time to dry, the lights will come on, the bells will ring, and our voices will resound with the first proclamation of Easter. And yet, not all of us will be ready to cross that threshold into the light. Some of us will still be grappling with illness. Healing from the wounds of regret. Reeling from the pain of divorce and broken relationships. Or gripped by the grief of death. Even in the bright light of Easter, some of us will feel like we’re still standing in the dark. A darkness that feels like it will never lift. Like it will never give way to light.
Sometimes the tomb seems more real than resurrection. The darkness of night more comfortable than the bright light of day. And yet, on that very first Easter Eve, while it was still night, deep in the darkness of that tomb, what was dead began to live. What had no breath began to breathe again. As sure as God parted the waters of the Red Sea, delivering our ancestors from bondage to freedom, God is making a way for us. This is the night. We are standing between the waters. The path has already been made. And the One who brought light out of darkness will carry us through. “[For] this is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.”15From the Exsultet in the Book of Common Prayer, 287. Amen.