Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House

Our story begins with weeping. Mary is outside the tomb of her beloved Jesus. That is where John places us on Easter morning. Not with a blaze of certainty and triumph, not with everything neatly resolved, but with a strong and grieving woman. She is in this place of loss, trying to make sense of what has happened, looking for her dead friend through her tears.

And I love that the story begins there, because it feels immediately true.

Mary is not calm and composed. She is not spiritually mighty, or holy, or perfect. She is not glowing with some kind of Easter miracle. She is simply heartbroken-and don’t we all know what that feels like? So she has come, as so many of us do in one way or another, simply to be near what she has lost. She has come out of love, and grief, and instinct. And even when life is right there in front of her, she cannot yet recognise it.

That feels true too, doesn’t it? How often do we stand in the middle of our own griefs and losses and confusions, still trying to make sense of it all, unable to imagine that anything new could be present? How often does our world change shape, and it takes us such a long time to catch up with it? How often are we yearning for the dead, when something living is trying to reach us?

And then, in the story, everything turns on something so small and simple that we almost miss it.

Jesus says her name. Mary. That is all. He says her name.

He does not argue her into resurrection. He does not hand her a theory or a theology. He does not explain the mechanics of the miracle. He calls her by name, and in that moment something opens: recognition, relationship, an experience of the divine. Life opens.

That, for me, is Easter. Not the denial of grief, or a command to feel cheerful, or, crucially, an escape route from reality. But love meeting a human being in the midst of her sorrow and calling her back into life.

I have a lovely sister called Eleanor, and she has a gorgeous son called Arthur, whom I love very much. And their dear cat Rooba was put down on Monday. Arthur and Roo much. Eleanor rang yesterday because they are all a bit wobbly with it, and she said how much harder it is to teach used to sleep curled up together in his bed every night, and Arthur is missing her so little children about death when, for the last week or so at school, they have been hearing a story about someone who came back from death.

Arthur asked-as we all have asked, in one way or another-whether his very loved cat would come back. And Eleanor had to say, as a mum, no, she isn’t coming back, and then watch as he tried so hard to get his head and his heart around that.

It is always hard to get our heads and hearts around loss. But there is something so tender about exploring that for the first time in beloved and safe relationship-Arthur and his mum. And that is what happens with Mary in that moment too. I do not know what happened at the tomb that day in any literal or mechanical sense. But I do know that when love calls us by name, when loving relationships call to us in our grief and despair, we can be called up from the depths-from deep in the mud-back out into the light, out of isolation and into life.

And perhaps that is why the story of Mary being called by name is so deeply touching. Because I think most of us know, in one way or another, what it is to need that kind of call.

***

It must be 4 weeks since I did my first service here for Mother’s Day… and in that time I’ve driven from Framlingham to Ipswich quite a few times and each time the fields are a little different. We’re just coming out of the properly muddy time of Spring…

It is the muddy time of spring just now. And I rather love that. Not the polished version of spring — not the postcard version with everything already in bloom and looking beautiful. I mean the real thing. Mud. Wet paths. Cold mornings that still catch you out. Nothing especially glamorous. And yet, if you look carefully, there are green stems of possibility beginning to push through.

That is one of the things spring says to us every year: life is stubborn.

The smallest shoots insist on having their way. Tiny things rise through ground that, only a little while ago, looked dead and finished. There are signs everywhere, if we are willing to look carefully enough. A shift in the light. A softness in the air. A bird you had not heard for months. A kindness that catches you off guard. A little thaw in a heart that has been clenched against the cold. A relationship not fixed, exactly, but softening. A part of ourselves beginning, very gently, to trust life again.

Spring is not just scenery. It is summons.

It calls to us. It reminds us that life has not given up. That beauty goes on unfolding quietly, even in a broken world. That resurrection is often not dramatic at all. It is slow. It is muddy. It begins underground. It begins in hiddenness. It begins before anyone could prove that anything is happening. It begins in the dark.

And perhaps that is why I find Easter so resonant with my own experience of religious life.

Because in the end, for me, it comes down to this. I had to dig into the mud. I had to find the part of myself that was hiding there in shame. The part shaped by vulnerability and fear and brokenness. The part that carried a quiet but persistent sense of not being enough. Not good enough to be seen. Not whole enough. Not safe enough. Not lovely enough.

And slowly — and I do mean slowly — I let the sunshine in.

I do not mean that I suddenly fixed myself. I do not mean that one bright morning everything made sense and all was well. I mean that over time I began to let warmth and kindness and truth reach places in me that had been hidden away. I began to believe that what was buried did not have to stay buried forever.

And I could do that because of community.

Because I found a community of people who told me, over and over again, that I was allowed to show up as I am. That I did not need to arrive polished or sorted out or impressive. That I could bring the whole of myself, not just the bits that looked presentable. That I could be here in my awkwardness, my fear, my questions, my tenderness, my half-healed places. And eventually — by grace, and repetition, and patience — I believed them.

That has been part of my resurrection.

Not resurrection as magic. Resurrection as being called out of hiding. Called out of shame. Called back into relationship, into belonging, into life.

And perhaps that is one reason this Easter story matters so much. Because Mary’s experience is not as far from ours as we might think. She comes in grief. She stands in confusion. She cannot see clearly. She mistakes the living for the ordinary. She is still searching for what has gone. And yet she stays.

I love that she stays.

She stays in the place of sorrow. She stays in love. She stays long enough to be met. And in that staying, she hears herself addressed in love. She hears her name. And that changes everything.

Not because all the sorrow vanishes in an instant. Not because the world suddenly becomes tidy. But because relationship is restored. A path opens where there had only been desolation. She turns. She answers. She begins again.

And I think that happens still.

It happens when love calls us by name in the middle of grief, and we realise we are not alone.

It happens when someone sees us more truly than we can see ourselves.

It happens when we are called out of fear and back into courage.

It happens when what has been buried in us begins to breathe again.

It happens when we begin, however tremblingly, to say yes to the pulse of life.

And it does not only happen in private, somewhere deep inside one solitary soul. It happens among us. It happens in communities that keep making room for life. It happens when we reach for one another again and again, even when we are tired, even when we are uncertain, even when the loss keeps coming. It happens when love refuses to let the final word belong to death, or shame, or despair, or all the voices that tell us to hide.

Life is stubborn. Love is stronger than we know. Beauty goes on unfolding, quietly, even in a broken world. Resurrection is not escape from reality, but a deeper consent to life — to grief, to community, and to the slow holy work of becoming new.

That is what I hear in this story.

And that is why Easter matters to me.

Because it does not ask us to pretend. It does not ask us to skip over sorrow. It does not ask us to call the tomb beautiful. It asks only that we remain open to the possibility that even here, even now, love is still at work. That life is still moving. That something in us may yet be called forth.

Mary stands outside the tomb weeping. Then she hears her name.

And perhaps that is the heart of Easter for us too.

That in the midst of grief and bewilderment, love still knows our name.

Love still calls us back into life.

And hearing it, we turn.

***

I’d love to finish with another poem from Malcolm Guite which says exactly what I have just said but much more beautifully and in many fewer words:

He blesses every love which weeps and grieves

And now he blesses hers who stood and wept

And would not be consoled, or leave her love’s

Last touching place, but watched as low light crept

Up from the east. A sound behind her stirs

A scatter of bright birdsong through the air.

She turns, but cannot focus through her tears,

Or recognise the Gardener standing there.

She hardly hears his gentle question ‘Why,

Why are you weeping?’, or sees the play of light

That brightens as she chokes out her reply

‘They took my love away, my day is night’

And then she hears her name, she hears Love say

The Word that turns her night, and ours, to Day.

Lizzie Kingston-Harrison, April 5th, 2026