Sermon For Easter Sunrise Service

Called By Name At The Break Of Day

It is still dark when Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb.

John tells us that detail with quiet precision. She comes while it is still dark, and that darkness is not merely a note about the hour. It is the whole weight of what she carries. The one she had followed, the one who had spoken life into her own broken story, is gone. She had watched him die. She had seen where they laid him. And now, in the earliest hours of the first day of the week, she comes to the only place she has left to go.

We know something about that kind of darkness. Not every grief announces itself with dramatic ceremony. Some of it arrives in the small hours, in the quiet before the world wakes up, when there is nothing left to do but go and be near the place where hope was buried. Mary is not coming with a theological argument. She is not coming with a plan. She is coming because love, even when it has nowhere left to go, still goes.

What she finds, of course, is not what she expected. The stone has been taken away. And this, at first, does not read to her as good news. It reads as one more violation. She runs to Simon Peter and the beloved disciple and says, simply, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have put him. Notice that word: we. She is not alone in her grief, though grief can make you feel that way. There are others who loved him, others who do not yet understand, others running toward the same impossible question.

Peter and the other disciple run to the tomb. John, with the peculiar honesty of an eyewitness, tells us who outran whom. The beloved disciple arrives first, stoops down, sees the linen cloths lying there, but does not go in. Peter, characteristically, goes straight in. He sees the linen cloths and the face cloth that had been on Jesus's head, not lying with the other cloths but folded up in a separate place. And then the beloved disciple enters, sees, and believes. John adds this haunting line: for they did not yet understand the Scripture that he must rise from the dead. They believed, but they did not yet understand. They returned home.

And Mary stands outside the tomb, weeping.

There is something deeply human about this moment. The disciples have seen the evidence and gone home to process it. But Mary cannot leave. She stands there, weeping, and she stoops to look into the tomb herself. What she sees are two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the feet. They ask her, Woman, why are you weeping? And she gives them the same answer she gave Peter and the beloved disciple. They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have put him.

She does not even seem startled by the angels. That is how deep grief can go. It can make even the extraordinary feel ordinary, because nothing feels real anymore, because the only thing that would feel real is the thing you have lost.

She turns around. And there is someone standing there. She does not know it is Jesus. She supposes him to be the gardener. He asks her the same question the angels asked: Woman, why are you weeping? And then he adds: Whom are you seeking?

That second question is worth pausing over. Whom are you seeking. It is the same question Jesus asked at the beginning of John's Gospel, when the first disciples began to follow him. It is the question at the center of every human life that has ever reached toward something beyond itself. Whom are you seeking. And Mary, still not recognizing him, asks this supposed gardener if he has carried Jesus away, and says that if he has, she will take him.

She will take him. She does not say she will arrange for someone to come. She does not say she will notify the authorities. She says she will take him herself. That is what love does when it has nothing left. It makes promises it has no power to keep, because it cannot bear to do nothing.

And then Jesus says her name.

Mary.

One word. Her name. And everything changes.

She turns, and she says to him in Aramaic, Rabboni. Teacher. The recognition is instantaneous, complete, and overwhelming. This is the moment the whole passage has been building toward, and John does not dress it up with elaborate description. He simply lets the word land. Mary. The risen Lord, the one who had conquered death, the one the angels attended, the one the disciples had run to see and then gone home to think about, speaks one word to one weeping woman in a garden at dawn, and it is her name.

This is the central claim of Easter morning, and it is worth saying plainly. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not first of all an idea to be debated or a doctrine to be defended. It is an encounter. It is the living Lord, present and personal, calling the grieving by name. Mary does not come to the tomb having figured anything out. She comes in the dark, she comes weeping, she comes with a love that has nowhere left to go, and the risen Christ meets her exactly there.

For those of us who have gathered in the early morning to mark this day, that is not a small thing. Some of you are here because Easter is the rhythm of your year and you would not miss it. Some of you are here because someone you love asked you to come, and you are not sure what you believe, but you came anyway. Some of you are here carrying a grief that has not lifted, a loss that has not resolved, a darkness that has not yet broken into light. And the word of this passage to every one of you is the same. The risen Christ does not wait for you to have your theology sorted before he speaks. He speaks your name into the middle of your confusion, your grief, your not-yet-understanding.

But there is more. Because Jesus does not simply meet Mary in her grief and leave her there. He sends her.

He says to her, Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. And Mary Magdalene goes and announces to the disciples, I have seen the Lord.

That phrase, do not cling to me, has puzzled readers for centuries, and we should be honest that we do not have a tidy explanation for it. What we can say is this: the resurrection does not call us into a private, static possession of Jesus. It calls us into movement. Mary's grief had fixed her at the tomb, understandably, beautifully, faithfully. But the risen Lord does not allow even faithful love to become an anchor. He sends her. The first witness to the resurrection is a woman who came to the tomb in the dark, weeping, supposing the gardener had taken the body, and who is sent by the risen Christ himself to carry the news.

Go and tell. That is the shape Easter gives to those it meets.

In the tradition of the Church, we speak of Mary Magdalene as the apostle to the apostles, the one sent to the sent ones, the first herald of the resurrection. She did not earn that commission by having the right credentials or the clearest theology. She earned it, if that is even the right word, by refusing to leave. By staying when others went home. By weeping honestly in the garden when she had nothing left to offer but her grief. And the risen Lord, who is not constrained by our expectations of who matters or who is ready, called her by name and gave her a word to carry.

The Book of Common Prayer, in the collect appointed for Easter, asks that we who celebrate the day of our Lord's resurrection may be raised from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. That is the movement this passage enacts. From darkness to light. From the death of hope to the life of witness. From standing weeping at the tomb to going and announcing, I have seen the Lord.

We are gathered here at the break of day because the Church has always understood that Easter is best met at the edge of darkness, when the light is just beginning. Not because we have staged a dramatic effect, but because the hour is honest. We come, like Mary, in the dark. We come with our questions, our losses, our half-formed faith. And we come to hear whether the stone has been moved, whether the tomb is empty, whether the name we have loved and lost and hoped in might still be spoken by a living voice.

It has. He is risen.

And he is not finished speaking names.

If you are here this morning and you are not sure what you believe, you are in good company. The disciples did not yet understand the Scripture. The beloved disciple believed before he understood. Understanding often comes after. What is asked of you this morning is not a complete theological system. What is asked is the willingness to stay near enough to hear your name.

And if you are here this morning as one who has long known this story, let it find you again. Let it be more than familiar. Let the risen Christ be more than a doctrine you affirm and more than a season you observe. Let him be the one who calls you by name, who sends you from your grief and your comfort alike, who gives you a word to carry into the week ahead.

I have seen the Lord.

That is the sermon Mary preached. It is the only sermon Easter finally requires. Not an argument, not a program, not a performance. A testimony. A name spoken in a garden. A witness sent into the world.

Go and tell.

He is risen indeed.

Sources Consulted

The Holy Bible, Christian Standard Bible. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017. John 20:1-18.

The Book of Common Prayer. New York: Church Publishing, 1979. Collect for Easter Day, p. 222.

Raymond E. Brown. The Gospel According to John XIII-XXI. Anchor Bible Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1970.

N. T. Wright. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Fleming Rutledge. The Undoing of Death: Sermons for Holy Week and Easter. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002.

C. F. D. Moule, ed. The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ. London: SCM Press, 1968.