A reading from the Song of Solomon, chapter three, and then from the Gospel according to John, chapter twenty.
By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.
And from John. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping. And a few verses on: Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?
So ends the reading.
It is midnight. The Sabbath has begun. Whoever you are, wherever you are lying awake or sitting up, you are welcome here. You did not have to clean yourself up first. You did not have to explain where you have been. The door of this day has no lock on it, and it is open for twenty-four hours.
We begin in the dark on purpose. Both of our readings begin there.
The woman in the Song of Solomon is in her bed at night, and she cannot rest. The one she loves is not there. She says it plainly. I sought him, but I found him not. Many of you know that bed. You know what it is to reach for something that used to be near and find the place cold. A person. A faith. A congregation that once said your name kindly.
And see what she does. She does not lie there and decide she was foolish to love. She says, I will rise now. She goes out into the streets, into the broad ways, at an hour when a woman alone in a city is not safe and is not thought well of. The watchmen find her. She asks them, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? The text records no answer from them. Later in the same song, the text tells us, the watchmen strike her and take her veil away. The men whose work was to guard the city did not help her look.
Some of you have met those watchmen. You came to the people who kept the walls, and you asked an honest question, and you were handed silence, or worse than silence. We will not pretend tonight that this did not happen to you. It happened. It is written down in scripture that it happens.
But hear the next line. It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth. Only a little past them. He was not inside their keeping. He was just beyond it, in the dark street, where she was.
Now come to the garden. The Gospel according to John tells us that Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, when it was yet dark. The others came and went. She stayed. She stood outside and wept, and she bent down and looked into the place where death was, because that was the last place she had seen him.
She is asked why she weeps, and her answer is the answer of the bride in the city. They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. She has lost even the body. She has nothing left to tend. And still she is looking.
Then she turns, and someone is standing there, and she does not know him. The text says she supposed him to be the gardener. Hold that for a moment. On the first morning of the resurrection, the first thing that happens to the risen Christ is that he is given the wrong name. And it is given by the one who loved him most. She was not cruel. She was grieving, and it was dark, and her eyes were full of water.
She says to him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. One woman, offering to carry a dead man by herself. That is how hard she is looking.
And he says one word. Mary.
He does not argue with her. He does not prove anything. He says her right name, and she turns, and she knows him. Rabboni, she says.
This is where our church stands, and I want to be honest with you about it. In the book of Revelation there is a woman dressed in scarlet, seated on a scarlet beast. The plain sense of that chapter is judgment. Most readers through the centuries have taken those two figures as enemies of God, and you should know that. Our reading is different. It is our reading, and we do not claim that the text itself says so. We read that woman as Mary Magdalene and that beast as Jesus Christ, each one seen through the eyes of a frightened age, each one handed a wrong name.
We read it that way because we have watched it happen. The Gospels never call Mary Magdalene a harlot. Luke tells us that seven devils went out of her, and that is all. The other name was laid on her later, and it stuck for more than a thousand years. There is a later text outside the Bible, the Gospel of Philip, that speaks of her as his companion. We do not build on it as scripture, but it shows that some remembered her differently. And he was called names too, in his own lifetime. A glutton. A blasphemer. One who had a devil. He was put outside the city to die.
So when we see a woman in scarlet and a beast in scarlet, we ask who was afraid, and of what, when those names were given. And we believe those two are still looking for each other through all the wrong names. The bride is still in the street. The woman is still in the garden. And the one she takes for a stranger is still standing just behind her, about to speak.
You may have been given a wrong name. Maybe a church gave it to you. Maybe a family. Maybe you gave it to yourself on some bad night and have answered to it ever since. Sinner beyond help. Too much. Unclean. Gone.
Hear this. Jesus said of himself, the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost. To seek comes first. Before anything is mended, someone has to come looking. And nobody searches for what is worthless. Nobody walks a city at night for a thing they have stopped wanting. If you are being looked for, then you are wanted, and that is where salvation begins. It begins when someone goes out in the dark saying your right name, long before you have understood it or earned it.
And it runs both ways. In the song, she seeks him. In the garden, he asks her, whom seekest thou, and then he is the one who finds her. Perhaps you have been looking for God for years and found only watchmen. It may be that all that time you were also being looked for, and the two of you have been passing in the same streets.
We cannot promise that you will hear your name tonight. Mary wept a good while before she turned around. But we can keep the garden open. That is what this Sabbath is. Twenty-four hours where no one will ask you to account for yourself. There will be words and music and silence through the night and all the day. Come and go as you need. Sleep if you can sleep. If you are under a doctor's care, stay under it; rest is not a rival to any help you have been given. Only know that while you rest, the looking goes on.
It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him. Only a little further. Stay with us.
Let us pray.
You who walked the garden before it was light, and spoke one name into the dark, speak ours. Find the ones who are awake tonight and cannot say why. Find the ones who were struck by the watchmen and stopped asking. Take from us the names that fear gave us, and give us back our own. Keep us through these twenty-four hours, and let us be found still looking. Amen.