Sermon for Easter Sunday, Year A (4-5-26)

There is a particular kind of darkness that descends, not at midnight, but just before the morning — when the sun is yet to rise, and the world still sleeps. A fog often drifts in this darkness, making it thick with all that we wish to hide from the view of the daylight.

Mary Magdalene knows this darkness. She comes to the tomb while it's still dark, John tells us — and that detail is no accident. Not just the setting of a scene. It's the condition of her heart. She has lost the one who knew her. Not just admired her, not just tolerated her, or even loved her — but the one who really knew her. And now she stands outside an empty tomb, and the emptiness only multiplies the loss. The body is gone. She has been robbed of even the ritual of grief. She cannot anoint the one she loved. So, she can only weep.

The disciples come and go. Peter and John run to the tomb, peer inside, see the folded burial cloths, and leave. Scripture says they didn't yet understand, none of them. But regardless, Mary stays. This is the first thing worth noting: she does not leave. She stays in the place of grief, even when it makes no sense, even when there is nothing left to see. Because grief, for all its fogginess, is the by-product of great love. And great love doesn't simply dissolve into the fog of loss.

Mary then notices something - or rather someone - in the tomb. Whether she realizes she is speaking to angels, the text does not say. But regardless, they ask the important question:

"Woman, why are you weeping?"

One of the interesting things about grief is its ability to layer itself — to be multifaceted. When we grieve we often lament the loss of something or someone, but we also tend to struggle to recognize our own self, our own life in the wake of such a loss. Or said another way: grief has a way of letting us forget who we are — or minimally, it can fog over a fuller vision of who we are called to be. The best way out of this fog, is to be honest about where exactly our grief is going. What it's touching. And what it's bringing to the surface. So, the angelic question stands as the right question: Woman, why are you weeping?

In the midst of all this Mary scarcely notices a man standing there. She assumes he's the gardener. Not because she is foolish or faithless, but because grief does this to us. It fogs the lens. It makes the familiar strange. It stands the living right in front of us, and still we do not recognize them. And again the question comes, but this time with one more: "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?"

And then he says one word. One syllable, in her own language, and seemingly someway in the voice she knew:

"Mary."

And everything changes.

Not because the world changed. The tomb is still empty, after all. The soldiers are still at their posts. The religious authorities are still in power. The disciples are still in hiding. Nothing in the visible world has shifted. But, she's heard her name from the mouth of the one who knows her — and suddenly... she can see. This is the heart of resurrection, I think. Not a vague theological picture of life after death —at least not entirely. But rather, resurrection is being known and called back into the light by the one who loves you — who really knows you.

We've all had seasons of standing outside empty tombs. Perhaps you are standing outside one now. The marriage that ended, the diagnosis that came back wrong, the career that collapsed, the child who drifted away, the faith that went quiet. The loved one who died. These are all forms of the same grief: the loss of something that held your life together. And like Mary, we sometimes cannot see clearly through the fog of it. We mistake the redeemer of our lives for the gardener. We look right at hope, and see nothing.

But consider how God has spoken your name in the midst of that fog.

It might have come through another person — someone who showed up at exactly the right time, and said something so particular to you that you knew, somehow, that it wasn't a coincidence. A stranger in a hospital waiting room. A letter that arrived too late and somehow arrived just in time.

It might have come in a moment of unexpected beauty — the kind that breaks through when you are least ready for it. A piece of music that perfectly captured the grief in you, and named it. A sunset that seemed, absurdly, personally addressed to you. The laughter of your child in the next room, sudden and unbidden, reminding you that joy still lives in the house.

It might have come in Scripture itself — not as a general word to humanity but as a sentence that seemed to find you on the page, in the particular season you were in, in the particular sorrow you carried. "I have called you by name and you are mine," Isaiah reminds us.

It might have come in the bread and the cup, when nothing felt real and the liturgy felt hollow, and then — just for a moment — the veil thinned and you felt, rather than merely believed, that you were not alone.

These are the moments when Christ speaks our name into the fog. They don't fix everything. Mary still has to tell the disciples what she has seen. The world still has to reckon with what happened. She is given a mission, not a vacation. But she can see now. She can move now. She has heard her name from the one who has undergone death itself to find her. And to remind her of who she is — and of whose she is.

Jesus knew Mary's name. And He knows yours.

Make no mistake, friends. Christ is alive. And he is alive for you. For your healing. For your loving. For your salvation. And to offer to you, continually, the invitation to new life. Where death — and grief — never last forever. This is the ultimate gift given at the ultimate price — the price of God's own life. Poured out for you and for all.

Happy Easter, you beloved children of God. He is Risen. And he is calling your name.

Amen.