God has called you by name
God has called you by name
A Sermon preached by the Precentor, Canon Anna Macham
Sunday 5 April 2026
Exodus 14 (verses from); Romans 6: 3-11; John 20: 1-18
Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ, whom she mistakes for the gardener, has got to be one of my favourite readings in the bible. It’s such a moving story. And who would have thought that the message of the resurrection from the dead, that great cosmic victory over the powers of sin and death that Paul tells us has been won in Christ’s rising again, should be announced first of all to a woman? And not just any woman, but a sinful woman. And in a garden of all places.
Mary Magdalene, the woman who had seven demons cast out of her and was brought to faith, the woman of independent means who supported Jesus in his ministry and remained loyal until the end, was the first to see Christ. Jesus meets her in a quiet, deserted garden in the early hours of the day when it’s just starting to get light and no one else is yet about. In that most touching and personal of encounters, he calls her by name, as God called Moses of old, and gives her an extraordinary commission: “Go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God””.
At the heart of today’s service is God’s calling of each one of us personally, by name. Names are an incredibly important part of our identity. Names give us a sense of who we are, the communities in which we belong, and our place in the world; they carry deep personal, cultural and familial connections. That’s why, when Jesus says Mary Magdalene’s name – such a simple act – it’s so powerful, showing that he knows her through and through.
In this service, God proclaims to each of us – to each of you – that we are his, and that he knows us by name. Inscribed around the sides of the font in front of us is the text from the biblical book of Isaiah, chapter 43: “Do not fear for I will be with you. I have called you by name, you are mine”. These words will also be spoken to each of you being confirmed shortly by Bishop Tim: “God has called you by name and made you his own”. When we make the life-changing decision to become a Christian and follow Jesus, we gain a new calling in life and a new identity.
Later in his letter to the Romans, Paul talks about putting on the Lord Jesus Christ, or being clothed with Christ. I’ve sometimes thought this image could sound a bit superficial – it’s not what you wear, surely, but the person inside or underneath that’s really important – but actually it’s life changing, and beautiful and captivating as an image. Christ clothes us in himself so that, while we still remain ourselves, we know powerfully that we are a new creation, that things can change for the better. Gradually, that new clothing becomes part of who we are: the journey of turning to Christ and becoming a Christian is one of, while remaining the same, growing more and more into the person God wants us to be.
Our service today in particular is full of rich symbolism, all of which speaks of that sense of radical transformation, because of the death and resurrection of Christ. We came into the Cathedral in darkness; we will leave in the light of the new dawn. In the darkness of the Easter Vigil this morning that took place even before this service, the account of God’s creation – also in a garden – was read; in the creation, light is created out of the watery darkness. Our Old Testament reading outside by the fire spoke similarly of transformation, of God’s deliverance of his people out of slavery in Egypt through Moses’ parting of the red sea.
Easter is traditionally called ‘The Queen of Feasts’. And our service today is full of rejoicing and singing. Over these last few days, we’ve been considering the role of female musicians and composers throughout the ages in opening up to us, through their music, the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ. Throughout the bible, it is women who lead the singing in their communities, expressing the joy and lament of their communities. Following the crossing of the Red Sea in the book of Exodus, Moses’ sister Miriam leads the song of triumph. At the start of the New Testament, we have the song of all Scriptural songs in Mary, the mother of Jesus’ Magnificat, a song of revolution, liberation and a new world order. In the history of Christianity, attitudes towards women singing in Church have been ambivalent, but these scriptural foremothers were crucial in giving legitimisation to some of the female composers we’ve considered over the last day or two. Marianna Martines, the eighteenth-century Viennese composer we considered, for example is designated by her male colleagues a modern Miriam, imbibing her modern female music with all the power of the old (see Irving Godt, Marianna Martines: A Woman Composer in the Vienna of Mozart and Haydn, URP, 2010, p.93).
Easter liberates us to rejoice, as we remember the scriptural foremothers and forefathers of the past and ask God to show us the way ahead. We don’t have to know or understand everything perfectly about Christianity in order for God to love us or call us; today is just the beginning of that life-long and exciting journey of discovery of all that He has to give us and all that he wishes us uniquely, and with others, to do in his name. Mary Magdalene was not perfect – as we heard, she was a sinner. She also knew trauma in her life – yet in Christ she finds a new identity and a new family; she becomes someone who loves deeply.
In medieval times, the cross accompanied every step of the journey of life, from the moment an infant was baptised and signed with the cross; even the roads were marked by a succession of wayside crosses. Being signed with the cross marks the beginning of a new journey with God, in which every day we are faced with a choice about whether we turn to him and live in the fullness of life, or whether we choose not to. For those being confirmed today, as for all of us gathered here, there’s a sense in which every day is Easter Day. For there will be no day throughout the rest of our lives up to and including the day of our death in which the reconciling and redeeming and raising-up power of God is not at work.
The words around this font proclaim a powerful truth, that we belong to God, that we are his. May this be our faith – and our song – today and always.