All Saints’, Dorval
Great Vigil of Easter, Year C
April 19, 2025
Satan being super cranky about being stomped on by Jesus as he harrows Hell
This past Wednesday, I was trying to get ready for the Holy Week services and activities and the following things all happened within the space of a couple hours:
Google Forms kept eating the registrations for the youth overnight, which meant that I had to bother very busy parents to fill out the form a second time.
Zoom had a global meltdown that made the Corporation meeting a comedy of errors.
And my email address suddenly decided that my password was definitely not my password, forcing me to do a reset that involved the diocese’s contracted tech guy (who, thankfully, was checking his email in a timely manner).
At least we had already printed the bulletins, and so far the copier hasn’t gone on strike like it did last year!
Clergy and churchy people joke that this kind of thing is proof that the Devil works overtime during Holy Week, because he’s mad that we’re retelling this story, worshiping Jesus, and being inspired by his presence and example. And it’s a joke but it’s also kind of not a joke. During the most chaotic part of my very chaotic curacy, I remember my mother listening to me rant about the ridiculousness of the situation and then saying, “Well, the work you’re doing must be really important because the Devil sure is trying to keep you from doing it!”
We don’t talk much about the Devil in church in Canada in 2025, other than that passage in the baptismal covenant where – as we just did once again while renewing that covenant – we renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God, and the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God.
In the Messy Church stories, he’s known as the Enemy, a bright red creature with a crest on his head who tempts Jesus, who follows him around to see what will happen, and who finally, in the last story, is vanquished and thrown into a pit.
And the Enemy is here at the Easter Vigil, too, even if you need to look closely to understand how.
We began this service in the dark, bound in Sheol, the place of emptiness and hopelessness where Death has the last word. The Enemy, ascendant in the aftermath of humanity’s bad choice in the Garden of Eden, has been sending people there ever since.
Because Death is the Enemy’s primary weapon, and is the goal of all those spiritual forces of wickedness and evil powers that corrupt and destroy: to imprison humanity forever, in Death, away from God.
But if the Devil can sneakily attack through the most mundane means, like forcing parish clergy to spend time resetting their passwords when they should be working on their sermons, God can be twice as sneaky. He literally went underground, disguising himself as an ordinary person, and came to meet us in Sheol, in that dark, hopeless, boring place. He voluntarily subjected himself to the power of death by which we were held captive.
And what happened?
[Hell] laid hold of a mortal body, and found that it had seized God! It laid hold of earth, but confronted heaven!! It seized what it saw, but CRUMBLED before what it had not seen!!!
Let’s face it: Jesus cheated. But when your enemy is the power of death and hell itself, the ends pretty much justify the means. And so that’s exactly what scholars call this theology of how Jesus accomplished our salvation: the “cheat-the-devil” theory.
If you look closely at medieval depictions of the Harrowing of Hell, you can see that as he stands there watching Jesus knock down the gates of Sheol and lead Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and all the long-dead saints out of captivity, Satan is often depicted with an exaggerated sneer of frustration, looking like he’s bitten on a lemon.
Perhaps one of our goals, as people, should be to put that look on the Devil’s face more often.
Yeah, it’s kind of petty. But this is the Enemy we’re talking about, the forces of wickedness that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. And Jesus was nothing if not delightfully petty in a good cause.
And God knows that our contemporary world provides many opportunities to annoy the Devil. Maybe we can’t all be Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, traveling to the terrifying CECOT prison in El Salvador and refusing to back down until the authorities let him meet with Kilmar Abrego García, unjustly and illegally detained there, and at least obtain proof of life for his family back home. But every day, we have chances to put a sour look on Satan’s face, whether it’s by making art, or putting a twonie in the cup of someone begging in the metro, or sticking up for a trans person who’s just trying to use the freaking bathroom, or whatever other form of holy trouble you may be in the mood to get into on a given day.
The Enemy’s power seems all too prevalent, whether it’s as tiny as trying to muck up our youth retreat or on as grand a scale as fomenting strife between nations. But we have Petty Cheating Jesus on our side, and a sense of humour that the Devil entirely lacks, and each other’s support, and innumerable chances every day to do things that make Satan look like he’s sucking on a lemon.
Christ is risen, and Hell is overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Amen.
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