I want to begin by telling you about the Big Bang Theory.  The Big Bang Theory attempts to explain the facts of astrophysics by proposing that existence began as something called a “singularity”.  A singularity is an area of gravitational pressure so intense that it is infinitely dense; . . . it is infinitely small, infinitely hot, and infinitely dense.  Before the singularity there was no such thing as Time; . . . there was no such thing as space.  The singularity appeared from nowhere out of nothing.  . . . And then it expanded!  It expanded very rapidly with a great deal of heat, and suddenly . . . time and space and energy and matter came into existence to become what we call the universe.  That singularity has been expanding ever since, … for some 13.7 billion years; . . . and we are inside of it.  We are inside an expanding singularity, and we are a result of the intricate and complex interactions of the energy and matter which came into existence the moment the singularity began to expand.

    Now, . . . I want you to remember back to the First Sunday after Christmas when we hear Saint John’s towering discourse on the Incarnation . . .

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

In other words, Holy Scripture tells us that in the beginning (before Time and before the Big Bang); . . . in the beginning there was God.  And at some point in Eternity the Lord God Almighty spoke His Creative Word, . . . Whom we call the Son; Who is the Second Person of the Trinity; . . . Who became Incarnate of the Virgin Mary and was given the human name of Jesus.  . . . But before we knew the Word as Jesus, . . . He was begotten by the Godhead to effect Creation.  . . . And the Word gathered up a portion of Eternity to Himself . . . and He compressed it.  The Word compressed a portion of Eternity and its nothingness until it became a singularity.  And within that singularity . . . mesons and quarks and all the pre-nuclear particles that make up Eternity began to coalesce and become infinitely dense and infinitely hot within the infinitely small compression of the Word’s powerful grip.  . . . And then the Word opened His Hand and BANG(!) . . . in stages the singularity began to expand:  . . . the pre-nuclear particles coalesced to become electrons and neutrons and so forth . . . and nuclear particles condensed to become elements . . . and the elements combined to emit light and energy and become matter . . . and the matter became the sun and the stars and the moon and the dry land and the water . . . and this matter further condensed to become plants and living creatures . . . and finally, from the dust of the earth . . . matter became man; . . . male and female it became.  … This last creature (man) was so complex a being that it had powers which were very much the image of God’s own powers.  Man was a creature of imagination, reason, memory, and skill.  . . . And so, the Lord God Almighty revealed Himself to man, . . . and they became as Father and son and daughter.

    Now, . . . it turns out that the relationship between God and man got off to a somewhat rocky start, and those first days of Creation were shaky.  In the Sixth Chapter of the Book of Genesis we read that

The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the ground, man and beast and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.”  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.

And so, the Lord God Almighty modified His remodeling of the earth in order to accommodate Noah, . . . about which you have heard tonight.

    This relationship of favor between the Lord God Almighty and Noah and his descendants continues generation after generation.  And gradually, the relationship becomes more and more intimate so that Abraham, the tenth generation grandson of Noah; . . . Abraham and his children came to regard the Lord God Almighty as the only God, . . . holding the gods of the nations among whom they lived as no gods at all.  And so, when the children of Abraham’s grandson, Israel, become ensnared and enslaved by the Egyptians, . . . the Lord God Almighty helps them make their escape, even to the point of dividing the waters of the Red Sea so that what had been a barrier to them and the thing that sealed their certain death . . . becomes, at God’s Word, a barrier only to the Egyptians.

    . . . It is now many, many years after Israel’s escape from the Egyptians, . . . and the Word has become Incarnate in order that all people might know God (as the angel tells the shepherds on Christmas Eve).  But not all the people were pleased to know God nor pleased to hear what Jesus had to say about His own authority to communicate a knowledge of God.  . . . And so, it was done to Jesus as perhaps many of you heard on Palm Sunday . . . and some of you heard last night.  . . . Jesus was scourged with whips, had thorns pressed hard into the flesh of His head, was mocked, slapped, shamefully treated . . . and, finally, nailed to a cross where He died.  This was done to Jesus, the Incarnate Word, Who before He was Incarnate compressed Eternity with an unimaginable power so great as to create a singularity out of which evolved the very men who killed Him!  . . . Talk about the Roman and Jewish authorities playing with matches.  . . . But the patient Incarnate Word, Jesus, did not rise up to overwhelm His tormentors and obliterate them.  He was obedient to the will of the Godhead, . . . and He died upon the Cross . . . and was laid in a tomb by Joseph of Arimathea.

    And BANG(!) . . . tonight the tomb is empty!  “Do not be afraid,” an angel says, to the two astonished Marys “Jesus is not here; for he has risen!”  . . . “Do not be afraid,” the angel says to us, the Church, “For Christ is risen!”  . . . The invincible Word of God Who crushed Eternity in His hand to create a universe; . . . the invincible Word of God has compressed Death . . . and created life.  . . . The invincible Word of God is the ark that bears us over the waters that would otherwise drown us; . . . the invincible Word of God is the wind that parts the waters that would otherwise seal our death; . . . the invincible Word of God shall speak to our bones and cause us to live.  For, we have been drowned in the waters of Baptism; . . . we have died with Jesus.  . . . But because Jesus is the incarnate, invincible Word of God Who made us out of nothing, . . . He has emerged from Death with us in tow.  . . . Or, as Saint Paul puts it,

we know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  The death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Alleluia!