I had rather a sleepless night before this Easter Day… and as I sat at my desk at 8:30am I prepared and wrote a new sermon. The one I wrote yesterday was… ok but I felt it lacked the sense of “This is the Lord’s message for the Lord’s people on the Lord’s Day”. This “new” sermon does not, maybe, have rhetorical flourishes but I have a sense that the message is what is needed for me, for us today… resurrection is calling your name.

The sermon text is below the sermon video.

Video Click Here: https://www.zionepiscopal.com/Sermon%20Videos/easter-sunday-4-9-2023-neale.html

Sermon preached at Zion Episcopal Church, Washington NC
Easter Day – Sunday April 9th 2023
The Reverend Alan Neale
“Resurrection Calls Your Name”

“Alleluia, Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia”.

Some years ago the Bishop of Rhode Island, Nicholas Knisely, introduced me to the practice of “Easter Laughing” – Risus Paschalis in Latin. The Easter homily had to contain a story that made people laugh; we remembered that the devils of death, decay, depression, despair and dejection did not have the last laugh – that uniquely belonged to Jesus! The somber dust of Ash Wednesday has today become the laughing dust of Easter.

And so, I continue my tradition of many, many Easters by beginning the sermon with a true story of some thirty-five years ago which I hope will make you smile, if not laugh!

As a young curate, fresh out of seminary, I was eager to impress my clergy boss (John Watson, an ex-Guards’ Officer who expected his curates to fall in line). For weeks I prepared the youth group for the Easter greeting. “Alleluia, Christ is Risen”… “The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia”. They all had it perfectly memorized and the day of Easter arrives. One after another, they enter the church… John Watson says, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen”… each of my fold responds “The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia”. I was so proud, almost preening myself… until one young lady approachs John… he says, “Alleluia, Christ is Risen”… there is a pause and then she splutters out, “Oh and the same to you!”. Well, unknowingly, she had made a profound and true theological statement – the resurrection of Jesus has happened to make an impact upon our lives – has it made an impact on your daily living as well as your thinking about death and beyond?

“And the same to you!”

In today’s Gospel we encounter, surely, one of the most beautiful, poignant, intimate of all stories. John 20:11-16 “11 Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb 12 and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. 13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” 14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. 15 He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”)”.

Twice dear Mary is asked the same question; once by heavenly beings and once by the Resurrected Lord. “Why are you crying?”. In the very midst of cosmic upheaval, of psychic revolution and of salvation history being exploded… there is care for the one who cries, weeps, sobs. Powerful, yes?

And then comes the great moment of revelation opened not by theological treatise, nor by sacrificial living, opened not by scholarly debate, nor by lives of devotion – no, opened by one word and the word is… “Mary”.
And hearing her name, in the midst of her profound grief and wretched loss, Mary beholds the Resurrected Lord – oh, alleluia, He is Risen.

Friends, today Jesus is calling each of you, each of us by name.

This personal, intimate, individual nomination makes plain that the Risen Lord knows us deeply, fully, completely. He knows the areas of our lives, of our hurts, of our fears, of our relationships into which we crave and yearn for new life, resurrected life.

In the early 19th century, the Duke of Wellington, led the English and German forces against Napoleon in the Battle at Waterloo. The freedom of Europe was at stake and in England people anxiously awaited news of the outcome of the battle. There were no modern means of communication, no news bulletins on the bottom of a TV screen, certainly no first hand images of the horrors of war for all to see. The news was transmitted by signals, semaphores flashed from the tops of high buildings and in Winchester,
the semaphore was on the tower of the great cathedral. As the people waited below, the semaphore began to flash and spell out, letter by letter, …W.E.L.L.I.N.G.T.O.N . D.E.F.E.A.T.E.D….
and at that moment a dense English fog rolled in and obscured the signal. The people had seen enough and the news spread rapidly that the battle had been lost. They were devastated. They had placed all of their hopes on Wellington and those hopes were now dashed. It was finished. What would this mean to their world, to their country, to each of them?
Later in the day, the fog lifted, and once again the semaphore flashed WELLINGTON DEFEATED…THE ENEMY. It was unbelievable. Devastation and despair turned to joy and those who saw, ran to tell others.

Sometimes our aching grief, our physical pain, our psychic hurts blind us to the truth and power of resurrection; a fog descends upon the eyes of faith. We see only Christ Defeated but today we see the whole message Christ Defeated the Enemy, death and dying no longer has the final word in us today nor ever.

At the beginning of the sermon, I made reference to the laughing dust of Easter… I finish with a poem
risus paschalis: when dust laughs by Jill Crainshaw

spring has ambushed winter,
and the dust of the earth is, yet again,
transfigured into wind-dancing laughter.
laughing dust? not here

in this graveyard of abandoned joys
where dead-ended dreams whisper
like violated ghosts among tombs of those too-soon returned to the earth.

you just smile and sink your spade
into the sun-warmed sod, costly
corruptions composted, turned, turned
again until soil recognizes soil.

then you wink, just once, and the
remembered dust, tantalized by the
tickle of a new feast’s first thin blade,
laughs.

Why are you weeping… The Resurrected Lord calls you by name.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia. AMEN