Hannah Ratliff

Columbia Theological Seminary

March 19, 2018

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Will you pray with me?

Gracious God, we pray that You might join us in this space as we try to decipher Your holy word. Help us to hear this story with new ears and bright imaginations. Burst forth in this space, Lord, and help us to understand You more fully. Amen.

A reading from the book of John, chapter 20, verses 11 to 18. Listen now for the word of the Lord.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord;” and she told them that he had said these things to her.

The word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

I recently finished a novel by author Jean Rhys called Wide Sargasso Sea. If you aren’t familiar, the book is a prequel of sorts to the classic Jane Eyre, told largely from the perspective of the character known as Bertha Antoinetta Mason, Mr. Rochester’s secret first wife. As we know from Jane Eyre, Rochester keeps Bertha hidden in the attic to protect her — he seems to think — from her own insanity. I apologize if this is a spoiler to you, though I will say Jane Eyre was published in 1847, so I think you’ve had more than enough time to read it. Anyhow, toward the conclusion of Wide Sargasso Sea, we find the main character (Rochester’s first wife) grieving the fact of her captivity and reflecting on how she arrived in her present condition. And as she reflects, she begins to contemplate the importance of names. She remarks that her “caretaker,” who is more accurately a prison guard, should not be named Grace. “Names matter,” she says. “Like when he wouldn’t call me Antoinette, and I saw Antoinette drifting out of the window with her scents, her pretty clothes, and her looking-glass.”

Antoinette’s reflections, though it becomes clear she is indeed descending into madness, hint at something true. Names matter, and the way we use them – or in Antoinette and Rochester’s case, fail to use them – matters, too. Names are possibly the most succinct and direct indicators of our identity and humanity that we have to offer. They reflect our personal, individual identities, as well as our connections to others. They say something about where we’re from, who our parents are, when we were born, and our religious backgrounds. Research suggests that your name can affect what sort of jobs you’re offered, the grades you receive, even who you marry. In a culture as individualistic as ours, the ownership associated with a name that is uniquely your own is paramount. Tied up in our names is a sense of self, in many ways, an essence of who we are, where we are from, and what we will be.

I think most people have a story about their name, whether it is the one they were given at birth, or the one that they chose for themselves. If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you a bit about mine. My first name, Hannah, is from a play that my mother was in as a high schooler, which she recalled years later when she found out she was having her first and only daughter. My first middle name is an homage to my Grandma’s middle name, Esther (which my Grandma requested I not be named, because she always disliked the way it sounded). My second middle name is my mother’s maiden name, the solidly German family name of the grandfather who I never got to meet. My last name, of course, is Ratliff, my father’s name, probably changed from “Redcliff” at Ellis Island years ago. My name is a collection of stories that led up to my coming into the world. It’s a quilt of the hopes and dreams that were pinned to my birth, and the journeys that eventually made possible my arrival.

You’ll understand, then, why things change for Mary once she hears her name called out loud. It isn’t until she hears the sound of her name – the very marker of her identity being seen, acknowledged, and spoken – that she realizes, I imagine with some shock, exactly who it is that’s standing before her. She hears her name and everything that it holds – the beautiful and the horrifying, the joy and the pain, her past and her future – and only then is she able to recognize that the living God, the Lord of Lords, the Prince of Peace is back, and he’s standing right there in front of her. Something happens when Mary hears her name. When Mary hears her name spoken aloud, she knows that she is seen by God, that all her past, all her failures, all her aspirations, all her longings, all her heartbreak, her rage, her secrets, her love, her wonder – all of it, all of her, is seen. It’s only then that she is able to believe in the resurrection. Once Mary knows that she has been seen and recognized by God, then her eyes readjust, and she knows who it is she’s talking to.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen something like this, either. Saul regains his sight only after Ananias calls him “Brother Saul” in Acts 9:17. The scales fall from his eyes and then, it seems, he is able to comprehend the magnitude of who Jesus is, and begins to understand what it is that’s being asked of him. It takes hearing his name to know that he is seen by God, in all his brokenness and bigotry, and is still being called to change, to grow, and to love God’s people. Saul adopts a new name, Paul, not long after his eyes are re-opened. He honors this change in his life with a change of his name, not eliminating his past, but instead building the possibility of a new future. When we honor one another’s names the way that Ananias does here, we are doing, in a small way, the work of Jesus. When we speak each other’s names, we tell one another that we see each other, we see the history, the complexity, the culture, the beauty, and the heartache that are tied up in our names. Speaking one another’s names is an act of recognition, compassion, hospitality, and love, and sometimes it can be the thing that opens our eyes to the promise of resurrection. It is a beautiful gift that I urge you to offer one another.

I try to be pretty open about my own personal challenges with mental illness, though that’s a phrase that still frightens a lot of people. As an undergraduate student, after what I realize now were many years of dealing quietly with thoughts and anxieties that I assumed were also happening to others, I was diagnosed with dysthymia, which is defined as “persistent mild depression.” It’s sort of an umbrella term, a catch-all for when people are feeling depressed or anxious but are able to cope with it okay for a long time. I’ve also self-diagnosed with anxiety, particularly social anxiety. Particularly as a high schooler and often during my time in undergrad, I felt very much invisible to the people around me. I tried my best not to be noticed, not to make too much of an impression, disturb the norm or make a fuss. The only things I were involved in as a high school student were choir and the school newspaper. In both, I could achieve a degree of anonymity: the choir I was in was not the prestigious 16-member Chamber choir, but the one open to all, which had over 150 members. Of course, as a writer for the school newspaper, my name was out there, but I was able to keep my thoughts on a page, which I often hid behind. I never felt seen. Aside from the handful of close friends who I clung to, no one at school called my name. I thought I was protecting myself by remaining invisible, but it eventually felt crushing. After a monumental experience of feeling seen, accepted, valued, and known during a summer working with a group of people who started off as strangers, I realized I needed that connection, that recognition, that acknowledgement in my life every day. I needed someone to be calling my name. I think that if we’re honest, we’re all hoping for someone else to see us, know us, and say “Hi Emily,” “Hi Josh,” “Hi Szabina.” I know you. I know your name.

In a book on the intersection of family and religion in the Ancient Near East, scholars Rainer Albertz and Rüdinger Schmitt suggest that new mothers in Ancient Israel spent the seven-day period of ritual impurity after childbirth in isolation with only themselves and their newborns. They go on to say that it was often during this sacred time between mother and child that mothers would select the name of the person they just brought into the world, and then end their time apart from the rest of family with a celebratory feast, at which the child’s name was announced. Names in this time and place, Albertz and Rüdinger say, many times had something to do with how the birth went. In Hebrew, Mary means something like bitter or rebellious. I wonder if maybe her mother gave it to her after a particularly harrowing childbirth. Maybe even it had to be given to her by an aunt or an older sister after her mother bled out during the agonizing struggle of labor. We can’t know exactly what it was, but chances are there was a story behind Mary’s name. Jesus knew that story, knew the pain and the promise that were attached to her name. And he knew that when he spoke it, that when Mary heard that she was truly and fully seen by the Lord her God, that then and only then she would be able to see the miracles in her midst.

May it be so for all of you. Amen.