In Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved, Baby Suggs, an enslaved woman, is offered an opportunity to gain freedom. Her son Halle works it all out with Mr. Garner, Baby Suggs’ master. Halle’s desire for his mother to find freedom surpasses Baby Suggs’ own desire for freedom. She, after all, doesn’t want to leave still in bondage her sole surviving child, of nine, the rest of whom are absent from her life and are likely dead.
And so, after Baby Suggs “crosses the river” into freedom in Cincinnati, it is a disconcerting, utterly novel experience. It is described this way in the novel:
“[W]hen she stepped foot on free ground she could not believe that Halle knew what she didn’t; that Halle, who had never drawn one free breath, knew that there was nothing like it in this world. It scared her.
Something’s the matter. What’s the matter? What’s the matter? she asked herself. She didn’t know what she looked like and was not curious. But suddenly she saw her hands and thought with a clarity as simple as it was dazzling, ‘These hands belong to me. These my hands.’ Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat.”[1]
On the other side of the river, Baby Suggs finally discovers not only freedom, but herself. Only there in the land of the living does she become aware of her heartbeat. On the former side of the river, in the land of numbness and of death, it was as if she were not even alive.
This is the night for us to become alive once again. This is the night for crossing over. It is the crossing from death into life, from slavery into freedom, from chaos into order, from numbness into awareness of a living heartbeat. The journey is as old as creation itself. It was God who, in the beginning, made the heartbeat of creation sing. From the primal nothingness, God created an ordered, vibrant creation. From a world scattered into chaos and disorder by sin, God sent waters of the flood to wash everything anew and revive the heartbeat of all creation. From the chest pains inflicted by Pharaoh’s cruel grip, God let the Israelites cross over into freedom, where they could once again hear their collective pulse. Into the dry bones of a people living in exile, God could breathe new life and give a new heart of flesh. To a people unable to sing a song in a strange land, God could bring them back home again, where they could see their hands as their own once again and hear the thumping of life in their chests. On this night, the Christian Passover, we learn yet again what it’s like to hear our own heartbeats, beating in sync as one living Body of Christ. We learn what it’s like to move from the land of the dead to the land of the living.
When we started this evening, the death of Good Friday lingered in our minds and hearts. We entered the darkness of this church as if coming to the tomb. There we were, with the women, who went early on that first day of the week. Those women, perhaps like us, were prepared only for death. They came bearing spices to anoint Jesus’s dead body. They went into the dank tomb, ready for the aroma of their gifts to overpower the stench of death. But they discovered something else. And it caught them off guard.
On the other side of an empty tomb, those women, like us here tonight, found something unexpected. With minds and hearts numbed by the tragedy of death, the women could not see beyond the tomb into the future. They couldn’t see beyond the tomb into the past. They were frozen in the death grip of a bleak and stagnant present. But then something happened. They remembered.
The terror and surprise of finding an empty tomb, along with the assistance of two angels, revived their memories. Now, they recalled the words of their Lord, that Jesus had already told them the end of the story. They had already known this, but they couldn’t understand it until they had moved to the other side. It was their memory that ferried them across to the other side. And in doing so, they became aware of their heartbeats. They came to the tomb prepared only for death. But to their amazement, they crossed over into life.
There is always the danger of forgetting. These women were not the first ones in salvation history to forget. The whole history of humanity in relationship with God is a struggle to avoid amnesia and reclaim memory. In the covenants of the Old Testament, God’s people deliberately recited words to remember what God had done for them. They repeated words to recall what God said he would do for them, time and again, lest they forget. We do the same, every time we gather to celebrate Mass, lest we forget that Christ is with us in the breaking of bread.
But too often, we think that God is the one who needs reminding, as if it’s our job to help God be faithful to his promises. We obsessively recall God’s words of promise lest he forget what he said he would do. In the face of a brutal war or human trafficking or subway bombings or a tiresome pandemic, we wonder if God has indeed forgotten to be gracious to us. We wonder if he will indeed save us.
But God has not forgotten. It is we who have forgotten that when it seems like we are living on the death side of the river, we are never really there. God has already helped us cross over. We have been living all along on the other side, where there’s life.
It is we who need that reminding, like Baby Suggs, that our hands are our own, that we can do something with our hands. We need reminding that our heartbeat is there, that we are alive in Christ Jesus and that our individual heartbeats can sound together for the good of the world. We need to constantly remind ourselves that we have already been brought from death into life.
Every year, on this night, we follow a small light, our pillar of fire by night, to remember that we have already been brought onto that other side. On that side, we are amazed anew that a recalcitrant people whom God has helped to cross the river are still called very good. This is the night to remember with dazzling clarity that God will never again let the earth be destroyed in the waters of a flood, and that those waters will be the source of new life in Christ in baptism. This is the night for our memories to recall that even when the Israelites had crossed over into freedom and still got testy with God, he yet sent them manna. God brought them to that promised land in spite of their complaining. This is the night to hear anew that when the Jerusalem Temple was reduced to rubble, God would bring his beloved back home and make them living stones to bear his truth into a dark world.
There is no tragedy or war or human evil that can bring us back to the death side of the river. The current will always want to pull us back, but that side of death no longer has any power over us. For this is the night to remember. It is the night to celebrate that the victory has already been won. We may have come to the tomb decked with spices and prepared only for death, but we have discovered once again that deep within us, our heart beats with new life in Christ.
This is the night. Christ has brought us over into freedom. This is the night. Our hands are ours to give flesh to his Gospel in the world. This is the night. Our hearts beat with Christ’s life. Why do you look for the living among the dead? There is not death on this side. Only life. For he is not here! This is the night. He is risen, that we may rise again, too. Thanks be to God!
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Great Vigil and First Mass of Easter
April 16, 2022
[1] Toni Morrison, Beloved (New York: Vintage, 1987, 2004), 166, Kindle edition.