Easter Sunrise 2025

Last week in Confirmation class, we were gathered around tables and working with the Confirmands on making their stoles in which we will place over their shoulders in a few weeks on Confirmation Sunday. There were several blocks along the stoles in which the confirmands were given certain prompts to write about or draw a response to. One of those was “what is a place that is sacred to you? What is a place you feel the presence of God?” A few talked about vacation spots. Some talked about their back porch at their house. Another said “what about graveyards?”

A few laughed a little to themselves. It caught me off guard at first, but then I thought- Easter is a story of hope, but it is a story that begins with death, a story that begins in a graveyard.

In fact, some still hold to tradition of Easter sunrise worship in a graveyard. In this way, surrounded by graves, Christians practice celebrating Christ’s victory over the grave.

But at first, Mary didn’t recognize Jesus. She thought he was a gardener. In a sense, the journey of holy week wanders from garden to garden. Jesus’s suffering begins in the Garden of Gethsemane, the day before his crucifixion. On Good Friday, there is another garden. John 19:41 notes this in saying “In the place where he was crucified there was a garden.” When Jesus appeared to Mary, she mistook him for a gardener. In 1511, German artist Albrecht Durer painted this encounter and in his portrayal, Jesus does take on the look of a gardener complete with a shovel and a floppy hat over his long flowy locks. Mary is huddled beneath his feet.

But as Christine says, “Jesus is indeed a gardener. He is the gardener of the new creation...The Genesis story begins in a garden paradise and ends in our present garden world of pain and suffering. The Easter story begins in the garden of pain and suffering and ends in a garden of wholeness and flourishing.”

The other day in our Growing in Wonder group, several of us were walking in a large circle around the church, pointing out along the way elements of creation that we were thankful for and drawn to. Pieces that call us back to the wonder of creation and life made new.

And so the gardener is before Mary, but she doesn’t recognize him. In fact, she doesn’t recognize him until he says her name. Why is that so important?

What is it about saying her name that makes her recognize Jesus? Jesus saying Mary’s name had been an important part of her own story and transformation, but maybe it is ours as well. In John’s account, Easter happened not just with the tomb and the linen cloths and the gardener or the question “why are you weeping” but with her name being called.

“I have seen the Lord” comes as a response to her name being called.

Christoph Friedrick Blumhardt says “what a tremendous thing it is to meet the resurrection.”

Mary met the resurrection when the risen Lord called her by name. Here at the start of the day, I wonder if you can imagine Easter calling you by name.

For Mary, she couldn’t have imagined any of this. It all seemed impossible. But when Jesus called her name, it’s like it all flooded back. In the security of knowing who and whose she was, resurrection seemed possible. Pastor Rob McCoy says “when we know who and whose we are, then the tomb can still be empty because anything is possible.

Suddenly Mary was faced with the gardener who knows how to bring life out of the soil, who knows how to walk out of tombs and carve light into the darkness.

All because she was called by name.

Jan Richardson shares a stunning blessing entitled

The Magdalene’s Blessing For Easter Day

You hardly imagined standing here, everything you ever loved suddenly returned to you, looking you in the eye and calling your name.

And now you do not know how to abide this hole in the center of your chest, where a door slams shut and swings open at the same time, turning on the hinge of your aching and hopeful heart.

I tell you, this is not a banishment from the garden.

This is an invitation, a choice, a threshold, a gate.

This is your life calling to you from a place you could never have dreamed, but now that you have glimpsed its edge, you cannot imagine choosing any other way.

So let the tears come as anointing, as consecration, and then let them go.

Let this blessing gather itself around you.

Let it give you what you will need for this journey.

You will not remember the words— they do not matter.

All you need to remember is how it sounded when you stood in the place of death and heard the living call your name.

Easter knows your name dear ones.

May you hear it anew this day.