If you love certainty, this is not the Sunday for you. If you want everything to make sense, this will not be your occasion. If you want to fill your life with neat answers and tidy conclusions, Easter will inevitably disappoint. Because Easter does not arrive wrapped in clarity. It does not resolve every question or smooth out every tension. Instead, Easter meets us in mystery. It meets us in the spaces where things are still unfolding, still unclear, still becoming.
The Christian faith has four different gospels in the Bible; and each gospel offers a different ‘take’ on the meaning of Easter. And as we ponder the meaning of Easter through the lens of John, there is something profoundly honest about John’s telling of the story. It does not begin with the trumpeting of certainty. It begins in the dark. “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark.” Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb carrying her grief, her loss, and the weight of what she believes is the end of the story. She saw Jesus willingly give up his life; she saw him brutally crucified; she saw his body taken down from the cross, wrapped in linen, and laid in the tomb. And if we are honest, that is where many of us begin today as well. We come with hope, but we also come with so questions. We come with faith, but we also come with things that feel unfinished. We come carrying places in our lives that feel like endings. Mary arrives at the tomb and sees the stone rolled away, and her first thought is not resurrection but confusion and fear: “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Resurrection, it turns out, does not begin in clarity; it begins in uncertainty.
Mary stays. That may be the most important detail in this whole story. Peter and the other disciple come and go; they look, they wonder, and they leave. But Mary…she stays. She stands outside the tomb, weeping, and it is there, in her place of grief, in her realization where nothing makes sense, in her time where the story feels over, that resurrection begins. She turns and sees someone standing there, but she does not recognize him. She thinks he is the gardener, which, in a way, is exactly right, because this IS a garden story. The Gospel begins in a garden, human life begins in a garden, and now new life begins in a garden. Still, Mary does not yet see it. She is looking through the lens of loss. Then Jesus speaks one word to her: “Mary.” Jesus calls her by name: “Mary”. In that moment everything changes. She recognizes him, not because the situation suddenly makes sense or all her questions are answered, but because she is known, because she is called, because love speaks her name. This is where resurrection begins; not in certainty or in having everything figured out. Resurrection begins in relationship, in being seen and known, in hearing your name spoken by the living Christ. There is something profoundly beautiful in the sacrament of having your name spoken: Susan, Carly. In Susan’s baptism, and Carly’s baptism, we are reminded that God calls each by name. I think for me that is the most powerful part of the entire sacrament, to think of us being called, received, sought out by God. Jesus calls “Mary” and, in Easter, we hear our own names called out as well!
So, this is not only Mary’s story; it is ours as well. The truth is that we are living in a similar moment. The church today, in many ways, stands at a kind of tomb. Things we once knew are changing, structures are shifting, and certainties feel far less certain. There is a temptation, if we follow the ways of the world, to say that this is the end of the story. But what if it is not? What if we actually believed in the locational message of Easter and actually believed it? What if we believed that resurrection hope begins in death? What if, as the United Church of Canada reminds us in its Toward 2035 vision, this moment is not an ending but, this moment is a beginning? What if we are standing, like Mary, in a place of confusion and transition, and resurrection is already stirring?
Resurrection rarely looks the way we expect it will. It does not arrive fully formed. It begins quietly, subtly, like a voice in the garden, like a name spoken, like a moment of recognition. That is why today matters so much, because we are not just remembering resurrection; we are participating in it. In baptism, we witness new life as water is poured, as a life is named, and a promise is reminded that death does not have the final word. In new membership, we witness new life as we see the body of Christ growing as people step forward and say, “This is my community where I live parts of my faith journey.” That is resurrection. At this table we witness new life, in loaf and cup, as we remember that even in the face of death, Jesus gave himself in love…a love that continues to nourish and sustain us, bringing life where we thought none was possible.
So, the question before us today is this: where might resurrection already be stirring in the life of Northwood? Not where is everything perfect or clear, but right here in the midst of real life…in the ministries happening through the week, in fellowship after worship, in the care offered to one another through the week, in the courage to try something new, in the willingness to stay even when it is hard. Mary stayed. She did not turn away from the confusion. She stayed long enough to hear her name called by Jesus “Mary”.
Perhaps that is our invitation this Easter: to stay in the uncertainty, to stay in the mystery of this time, to stay when the future is bleak, to stay attentive to the ways Christ. The promise, that I am seeing in this text, is that the risen Christ is closer than we think. In fact, the Risen Christ is calling our name, walking beside us, breathing life into what feels finished. And when we hear that voice, and recognize that presence, we become changed: Mary moves from weeping to witnessing, from confusion to calling. She…Mary…becomes the first to proclaim, “I have seen the Lord.”
That is the movement of Easter: not from doubt to certainty, but from mysterious encounter to faithful witness. So today, as we have gathered at the font, as we prepare to come to the table, as we continue to be ‘the church’, may we listen for Jesus’ voice that calls us each by name. May we trust that even here, even now, resurrection is planting seeds of new life…not somewhere else or someday far off, but here…now in this garden, in this community, in this moment. For Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed.
Amen.