vigil service, just before the Easter eucharist was celebrated, and not at the beginning as a kind of
SERMON 223E 227
The furnace tests the potter's jars, and the temptation of tribulation just men (Sir 27:5).
But if that's how things really are, then obviously, when the Lord said to the disciples, Watch and pray, lest you should enter into temptation, it was because he perceived how huge the weight was of his impending passion, and so he didn't want them to enter into that temptation, because he perceived that they were not yet of a caliber which would let them come out of it. That's why he had already said to the blessed apostle Peter, You cannot follow me now, but you shall follow afterward. Peter thought he could not merely follow, but even at this stage go ahead, and so he said, I will lay down my life for you (Jn 13:26-38); and yet, while the strong winds of the Lord's passion were getting up, and violently whipping up huge waves in the sea they were sailing over, he was swamped by one question from a serving maid, and would have drowned if he had not been rescued by the Lord's right hand and immediately obtained mercy by his tears.4
So let us watch, brothers and sisters, and pray, lest we enter into any temp¬ tation which we cannot endure; and that whatever temptation we do enter into, we may be able either to endure when given a way out, or to make our way out when given endurance; that we may not enter into any temptation without a way out, and be inserted like feet into fetters, like wild beasts into nets, like birds into snares.
In baptism all our past sins have been destroyed, like Pharaoh's horsemen drowned in the Red Sea
2. That we do not suffer such a fate will be ensured by the Lord to whom we have been singing, For he has been gloriously extolled, who has already granted us in the bath of regeneration what we have been singing about: horse and rider he has cast into the sea (Ex 15: l).5 All our past sins, you see, which have been pressing on us, as it were, from behind, he has drowned and obliterated in baptism. These dark things of ours were being ridden by unclean spirits as their mounts,6 and like horsemen they were riding them wherever they liked; and that's why the apostle calls them rulers of this darkness (Eph 6:12). Since we have been rid of all this through baptism, as through the Red Sea, so called because sanctified by the blood of the crucified Lord, let us not turn back to Egypt in our hearts, but with him as our protector and guide let us wend our way through the other trials and temptations of the desert toward the kingdom.
NOTES
1. The sermon, as is clear from section 2 (see note 5 below), was preached at the climax of the vigil service, just before the Easter eucharist was celebrated, and not at the beginning as a kind of