Mary

Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb while it is still dark. She has come to grieve, to finish the work of burial, to do the only thing left to do for the one she loved. And the stone is gone.

She runs. Peter and the other disciple run. They look in, see the folded grave cloths, and go home bewildered. But Mary stays. She stands outside the tomb weeping - and then, through her tears, she looks in and sees two angels. "Why are you weeping?" they ask. She turns around and sees a man she takes for the gardener. He asks her the same question: "Why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?"

And then he says one word. One single word that changes everything.

"Mary."

That's it. That's the whole resurrection in a single syllable. He knows her name. He is alive. And the moment she hears her name in his voice, she knows it too - the gardener is her Lord. She was looking for a body to anoint and found instead a person who called her by name.

This is the good news of Easter morning: the resurrection is not first an argument to be won or a doctrine to be defended. It is a name being called. Your name. The risen Christ who met Mary in the garden is the same one who meets us in our own dark mornings, in our own moments of grief and bewilderment, and speaks our name with the same familiar voice.

He is not in the tomb. He never will be again. Go and tell.

Prayer: Risen Lord, we have walked a long week to get to this morning. We have sat with betrayal and darkness, with the silence of Saturday, with grief that didn't know where to turn. And now - you are alive. Call us each by name today. Open our eyes to recognize you. And send us out, like Mary, as bearers of the most astonishing news the world has ever heard. Alleluia - Christ is risen! Amen.