EASTER C 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

“What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet.” So says Juliet, thinking of Romeo, who, if he were called anything other than a
Montague would be her accepted love. Or, if she were anyone other than those called
Capulet, would find the freedom she seeks.

We could go on about star-crossed lovers, but this is not literature class. Nor is
this an exercise in poetry, no matter how familiar or based in such rich history. Because
the names today mean so much more than two troubled lovers seeking a life-long love.
Yet it is love that calls a name today. It is love that sees life through tears of grief,
finds hope beyond despair. It’s a familiar name. Miriam. Mary. As familiar as it is to
her, we can imagine her surprise to hear it this morning.

When the risen Christ speaks that name, he upends everything. upended by his rising from the grave.
That is why we’re all here today. Oh, sure death is God raised
Jesus from the dead, because it’s the final thing God must do to upend the way the
world has been working up until now.

So it’s time to start showing what that new life is going to be in ways the old
world may not want to accept. God’s new world, this post-resurrection world, is going
to be different in ways we’re still working out some two thousand years later.
Let’s start with the obvious. One of the qualifications to be an apostle is that the
person had to know Jesus before his crucifixion, then be a witness to his life after the
resurrection. In three of the Gospels, those very first witnesses were women. And even
in Mark, it is the women who discover the empty tomb, although they are so afraid they
tell no one what they found.

Yet, for most of those twenty centuries since that day, we continued to repeat the
error of those first disciples who treated the witnesses of women to whom Christ
revealed himself as “an idle tale.” But Christ is not limited to our own ideas about how
things are supposed to work. Oh, and if anyone wants to discuss the final verse of the
non-canonical Gospel of Thomas in the context of today’s so-called culture wars, have at
it.

There’s that name. Mary. Or, in the language of first-century Palestine, Miriam.
Jesus speaks it to a beloved friend, calling her to recognize not just an old friend, but an
amazing new life that is offered to her. Everything she thought she knew about the
world is changed, and she, by answering when her name is called, becomes part of this
new world.

We live in a culture, in a world that judges value by the accumulation of things.
We see houses as something other than homes, but instead as an investment just waiting
1for an upgrade to something bigger and better. The same seems to go for once
venerable institutions. We treat them, and those within them, as objects to be
consumed. Those who paid attention in biology class know how that always ends up.
When the risen Christ calls our name, it is a call to life as we never thought
possible. It’s a call to see everything differently, an upending word that is our very
identity to be a part of that which is eternal. It is a call to transcend the deathly ways of
our consumer-based culture, transforming them into life-giving, life-sharing ways that
live in a culture of redemption, where the life of another—any other, with no difference
in regard to gender, ethnicity, or other ways we divide ourselves—has as much value as
our own, and each is of value to the very Creator of life itself who chooses to give life
back to the dead.
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And if you think that upends life as we know it, just wait until you find that life
that lives beyond the grave, where the risen Christ calls you by name and you find that
name translated as “Beloved.” I’d love to hear what the Bard of Avon says about that,
just for starters. But first, I’d like to hear how you describe it. I imagine there’s a whole
world of potential witnesses to your own new life. So go ahead. Surprise them.