“Jesus Calls Our Names”

Easter Sunday April 8, 2007

Scripture Reading:  John 20:11-18

Rev. Dr. Carol  L. Kerr

 Blue Point Congregational Church

Early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw the stone was rolled away.  After Peter and John came and left, she stood weeping outside.    Then she stooped down to look into the tomb.  There she saw two angels.  They addressed her by the generic “woman.”  The angels said, “Woman, why are you weeping?”  And she said, “They have taken my Lord and I do not know where they have laid him.”   

Let me pause here for a moment.  Doesn’t this seem like a strangely ordinary thing for her to say when angels, of all things, appear and are asking her questions?   She does not pause, she is not startled, she does not seem to be in awe, she has no fear.  She registers no feeling at all about having angels in front of her but simply answers their questions.   Can’t she see something different is happening?

Then Jesus comes up behind her.  Jesus addresses her again by the generic “woman.”  He says, “Woman why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”  Mary still doesn’t seem like she knows what is going on.  She seems to be in a fog.  Here is Jesus standing right beside her and she thinks he is the gardener.  She says, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

 Then Jesus says her name, “Mary.”  Finally she gets it.  The fog lifts.  When Mary hears Christ say her name,  then knows she is standing before a new reality.    From that instant forward she gets the picture.   The whole course of human history has been changed.   Christ has risen, he has risen indeed!

Why is it so important that Jesus said Mary’s name?   Earlier in the gospel of John Jesus told a story about a good shepherd.    He said that he was like a shepherd and the people were like his sheep.  He said that the good shepherd calls his own sheep by name and leads them out of the sheep pen.  When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.  Mary heard Jesus call her name.  When she did, she heard the voice of the good shepherd.  She heard the voice of time and eternity – the voice of the one whose word is behind all words, whose hand made every hand.  And she knew in this instant that she was known completely, that every hair on her head was numbered, that every beat of her heart was intended, that every hurt and every hope was recognized.  It was then that she could see that resurrection had happened. 

Why is this important?  It is important because the resurrection isn’t just what happens on the outside of us, the resurrection is what happens on the inside of us too.  It isn’t just about a rock out there that was rolled away from the front of a tomb.  It isn’t just about linens folded on the bench.   It isn’t even just about finding Jesus alive and in his body.    It makes that which was dead inside of us comes to life.

 Calling us by name is part of the resurrection.  It is not an afterthought.  It is not that God said, “Why those scoundrels down there who crucified my only son.  I am going to show them.  I am going to bring him back to life!  And by the way, maybe I’ll have him make a few other people feel good  along the way.”  No,   God considers each and every one of us, “Even if a mother should forget her child, I will never forget you.  I have written your name on the palm of my hands. (Isaiah)”   What is your name?  Susan?  God has Susan written on the palm of his hand just like this.  Likewise, the resurrected Christ calls us by name.  (Have people call out names…)   The resurrected Christ calls us by name.   It is part of the resurrection.  That is why Mary finally got it.   What happens on the outside, happens on the inside too.   Because Christ is resurrected so are we!

The apostle Paul, who also saw the resurrected Christ, makes this point in his letter to the Romans:

If God is for us, who can be against us?...  It is God who justifies.  Who is he that condemns?  Christ Jesus, who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

 Shall trouble or hardship

or persecution or famine

or nakedness

or danger or sword?...

 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors, through him who loved us.

 For I am convinced that

 neither death nor life,

neither angels nor demons,

 neither the present nor the future,

nor any powers,

neither height nor depth,

nor anything else in all creation,

will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:28ff.)

Let’s all say this aloud so we get it.  Repeat after me… Neither death nor life…. Neither angels or demons…etc.

 Let me tell you about a man named John.  It is one of my favorite stories.  He was a man from whom life had taken everything he loved.  However, even though life had made him a nobody the resurrection made him somebody again.  He was a parishioner of a minister I once knew.  The first time the minister met John he had on a three piece, blue, pin striped suit.  John and his wife were marginal members of the church.  That is, they came to Easter services about once every four years.  Their uncle was buried by the previous pastor.  Anyhow, one day someone told my friend that he ought to go see John because his wife had just had a heart attack and was in the hospital.  So, he went to the hospital and there was John in the 3 piece blue pin striped suit.  They had just sold their house and were planning to move to Florida.  I mean they had just sold their house for John was living out of his Impala.  The next time my friend saw John he was at his wife’s funeral.  There he was wearing his 3 piece pin striped blue suit.  John said to him, “She was the best thing that I had in my life!”

Weeks went by and although my friend tried to visit him, he wasn’t very successful.  Then they were having a repair the parsonage party.  Someone said that John had done something in construction and might be of some help.  So they had someone invite John.

Well, they were tearing down plaster.  The billows of dust everywhere.  It was like the house was on fire.  The doorbell rings.  There was John.  He was wearing his 3 piece pin striped blue suit.  My friend thought, “Some help this guy is going to be!”  So he introduced him to some friends and promptly forgot about him.  Then he noticed that John was outside in the bushes.  He had stepped outside and decided that they needed some trimming.  First, the bushes on the parsonage and then the bushes in front of the church.  He came every day.  He made huge flower beds.  He would dig tow feet down.  But in lime.  The works!

You see, John had been living out of his Impala in the Sears parking lot.  Every day he would drive to his wife’s grave and sit there all day, all alone.  Until the parsonage party, the bushes and the flowers.  Someone got him on the trustee committee.  He started going to church every Sunday. 

My point is that through the church, in this quirky way, the resurrected Christ was calling John by name and resurrected him too.  He virtually had no name when he was living in the Impala.  His wife had died.  He was alone in the world.  There was nowhere to go.  But, somehow in those untrimmed bushes John started to hear his name again.  “John, I know who you are.”  “John, you have a place here. “  “John, Christ loves you.” 

No one really knows how it worked, after all the resurrection at heart is a mystery.  But it did work.  John told my friend one day that a passerby stopped and noted how “B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L” the church garden looked.  John couldn’t help but agree himself. 

On the outside  John had his 3 piece pin stripe suit and his Impala.  On the outside he was alive, but on the inside he was dead.  But Jesus is calling John’s name like Jesus called Mary’s name.   Jesus is also calling our name.  You know what this means?  It means that God doesn’t do statistics.  The modern world operates on statistics.   John’s wife was a statistic on some insurance underwriters desk (One 65 year old over weight, Caucasian, woman cause of death, cardiac arrest).  John was a statistic.  We are statistics.  In my counseling practice practically every person who gets divorce says, “I never wanted to be a statistic.”  You know the one, 50% of first time marriages end in divorce.  People when their marriage fails feel that they are thrown into the statistic bin under the title “failed marriage.” (may as well say, failed person)  There are other statistics.  I have a friend with ovarian cancer.  She is told 25% survive.  And if it recurs  less than 25%.  Statistics have a way of making us feel we are in some massive line up for a sorting machine.  Statistics often are used to tell us our destiny, to categorize our life, and to minimize us.  The individual is stuck in a statistical maze.  We are constantly told what our chances are.    The latest one that I heard of was this week when the news reported that rejection rates for colleges are higher than ever.  Harvard rejected 91% of its 23,000 applicants.  Dartmouth is rejecting now 84% of their applicants.  And so forth.  How disheartening for high school kids.  They attribute the increased rejection to baby boomers and also that a greater % of kids are actually trying to get into college than every before.  (However this hopeful statistics seems to be drowned out in the negative spin that people love to use statistics for.)  However, God doesn’t do statistics.  Get this, Arizona State University writes acceptance letters, but instead of putting the name of the student in who is actually accepted, they insert that person’s social security number!  “Dear Parent or Guardian, Congratulations on 987-45-4321’s admission to Arizona State University….We are fully prepared to assist 987-65-4321 in making a successful transition from High School to College.” 

However, God doesn’t have statistical numbers written on the palm of his hand.  He doesn’t even have our social security numbers written on the palm of his hands.  He has our names written on the palm of his hand.  Jesus calls our names.  We are not alone.   Nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Paul, Romans 8)   

Plus, when we  hear Jesus calling our name we will do pretty much what John did.  In one way or another we will start trim the bushes of our life and start make a beautiful garden to live in.  We will be free to become the full promise of God. 

Let me give you one more example of how the resurrection works on the inside along with the outside.  Howard Thurman was Dean of the chapel at Boston University.  He was also the grandson of a slave.  He tells about the effect of the church had on the slaves who attended Sunday afternoons.  The owner of the plantation apparently thought that it would do the slaves no harm if the preacher went down and told the slaves about Jesus on Sunday afternoons.   That is where these slaves heard the resurrected Christ call their name.  Thurman’s grandmother said of this old preacher that “He hardly ever preached a sermon without going by Calvary.”   The slave congregation could always relate well to a story of a man who was treated like dirt, abused, beaten down, and left for dead.  But Thurman’s grandmother said that the old preacher, “When he went by Calvary,” always was moved to shout, “But God raised him again!  And he is seated at the right hand of God in heaven!”  Then the preacher would take off his glasses, and look straight into the eyes of the congregation,  and lean over the pulpit and say to them in words undeniable, “But slaves, you are not any man’s property.  You are children of God Almighty!  Never forget it!”

For the purpose of this sermon let me paraphrase, You are not anyone’s statistic.  You are children of God almighty and never forget it!

God raised Jesus again and God raises whatever is dead in us again too!

Back to the Bible, when Jesus said, Mary and she recognized him, her old friend and teacher, and that he was indeed alive again she exclaimed RABBONI and was about to throw her arms around him for sheer joy.  But then he stopped her.  “Touch me not.  Don’t hold on to me.”    (Frederich  Beuchner).  She at first had her heart stop beating when she realized he was alive.  And now she had her heart break a little because she now realized he couldn’t be touched anymore.  He wasn’t there any more like he use to be anyway.  She couldn’t hold his hand when the going got tough.  She couldn’t have his shoulder to weep on.  Because the life in him was no longer a life she could know by touching it, with her here and him there.  The life in him was no longer the outside life she had with him.  Rather the life she had with him was a life she could know only by living it, with Jesus  alive inside her, calling her name at every beat of her heart.  Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary….  Mary would have known Psalm 139.  It would not have been far from her mind:

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me…

Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.

In the meanwhile Jesus had much to do and a way to travel to Galilee.  And so did she.  She ran back and reported, “I have seen the Lord.”  Her face radiant, and flushed as by the rising sun burning through the fog of night.