“Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who is victorious, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7)
“Now in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden.” (John 10:41)
Prop: seeds
This is the first Sunday after Easter. It is sometimes called “Low Sunday,” partly because of the low number of people historically attending church this day. It is sometimes celebrated as it was in the past as “Holy Humor Sunday” or “Bright Sunday,” a time to celebrate the great joke God played on sin and death by raising Jesus from the dead. Our ancestors would join in praise, laughter, and good humor in celebrating God's love for us, with the choir singing silly songs, the members dressing outlandishly, and the preacher serving as a stand-up comic. “Holy Humor Sunday” hilarity is not for every congregation, but it did sometimes turn “low Sunday” into a Sunday with a new glow.
For the first witnesses to the resurrection, there was a glow that infused everything that they did too. But that glow came not from humor, not merely from some message that they were carrying from Jesus, or some new doctrine about Jesus, but it was a glow that came from Jesus himself. This was the glow of the good news: Jesus himself was alive! It was a glow that shone even in the face of death, a glow that lit up a barren tomb on a dark morning. That’s why, in the early church, to be a “witness” of the resurrection was often to be a “martyr,” which is why the two words were one and the same.
After Jesus’ resurrection, Porcius Festus, the provincial governor of Rome, was furious. He leered at Paul of Tarsus. Why did he as governor have to spend his time like this? Why did he had to convene a Roman court to dole out justice not about revolutionary politics or criminal activity but to arbitrate a religious dispute “about a dead man named Jesus who Paul claimed was alive” (Acts 25:19). This was his crime: “Jesus is alive. He rose from the dead.” Incredulous that this belief in Jesus’ resurrection had caused such turmoil, Festus shouted at Paul, “You are out of your mind, Paul. Your great learning is driving you insane” (Acts 26:24).
Yes, resurrection faith has driven “insane” a great number of people. Christians were insanely happy, insanely hilarious, some of the most insane ones with “great learning,” some not. Some people with names like Mary, Lydia, Justin, Pepetua, Clement, Felicity, Origen, Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo, Catherine of Sienna, Erasmus, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Sojourner Truth, Phoebe Palmer, Catherine Booth, Florence Nightingale, E. Stanley Jones . . . you, me?
One of the insanities caused by resurrection faith was the belief that Jesus somehow rose from his tomb without his grave clothes being in the least way disturbed. Another was that a woman named Mary of Magdala claimed to have seen two angels at the head and foot of the slab where the missing Jesus had lain. Yet another was even more strange –that Mary saw Jesus in the dark of the morning in the garden near the tomb, heard his voice, spoke with him. And he called her by name. She had thought he was the gardener.
Why a gardener? This question is more significant than you may think.
How many of you have ever gardened? Let’s see how many of you admit to being members of the world’s oldest profession this morning?
[Ask for a show of hands for how many gardeners are present].
If you yourselves don’t garden, I’ll wager that most of your grandparents or great-grandparents were farmers or gardeners. One or more of our grandmothers spent hours a day tending her large vegetable and flower garden. I know mine did. In the large garden in the back of the yard she would pull weeds each morning. Lovingly, she planted seeds --lettuces, and peas, and beans, carrots, and parsnips, and turnips. And in the fields, my grandfather grew corn, lots and lots of corn. To the front of the garden were always the vegetables; the back of the garden boasted flowers of all kinds and colors. And fruit trees lined the path.
How many of us this morning have memories of our parents or grandparents puttering in the garden with hat and gloves, plucking out weeds, feeding the soil, inserting bits of scraps from potato peels and carrot tops near the roots, and raking away debris?
Each fall, children and grandchildren would come with ladders and wooden bushel buckets and pick the apples from the trees, bringing them to the various members of the family for making apple dumplings, apple pies, apple tarts, and apple Schnitz.
It used to be that when you bought or built a house, the first thing you did was to plant a garden in the backyard from which you could eat off of the land as much as possible. You didn’t get out of childhood without knowing how to pull beans, shell peas, husk corn, make mint tea and applesauce, and pick berries and fruit. You also knew exactly when to pull the dandelion from the yard, just before it bloomed, for making salads with hot bacon dressing.
Those who gardened and grew food, those who ate from the land or yard, knew the land and the soil like no one else. Gardeners knew how to keep the rabbits and groundhogs out, and how to keep the rain in. Gardeners knew how to recognize a ripened carrot top and how to tell the turnips from the beets. Gardeners knew a pear tree from a pine. Gardeners knew the sky when it threatened to rain, and when a storm was brewing. Gardeners knew when a frost would nip the flowers if they didn’t get covered.
During the depression, many a garden got a family through a hard time. It was a sign of abundance and hope each spring when small inexpensive seeds would yield enough food to get a family through a winter. Now, in an age when organic foods have become all the rave (once foods were always organic!) and natural farmers have regained their status as the most desirable food producers, we again appreciate the beauty and the sustenance of garden and farm.
Gardens we’ve re-discovered, in addition to their food-growing abilities also add beauty and relieve stress. Even city roofs are establishing garden places, “sky gardens” they’re called, where people can get away and feel in touch with the land. Some of the most up and coming jobs in fact today are for “landscape architects” and “professional organic farmers.”
Gardeners today are some of those revered people who seem to instinctively communicate with the plants and vegetables of our world when we are at a loss. They create beautiful flower arrangements, grow miracle plants --and charge accordingly.
In Jesus’ day however, gardeners were servants or tenant farmers. In fact, Jesus in his last weeks of life told several parables about such “gardeners,” or tenant farmers, who worked on God’s vineyard. Some ungrateful gardeners in fact, according to Jesus’ story, killed the son of the owner. To be a farmer or gardener was to care for an owner’s land, fruit trees, vegetables, and flowers. The gardener would be paid or allowed to live on the land in order to care for it. If one saw a person lurking about a garden, watering, weed-pulling, smelling the roses, one could assume, it was one of these servants, a gardener or tenant of a wealthy owner.
The practice among the wealthy of having a “gardener” specifically to care for one’s gardens became so popular that it became in fact a sign of abundance and trend in 18th century Europe. Gardeners called “hermits” were hired especially to tend and hang about one’s gardens. The hermit would be given a kind of hut within the garden in which to live, called a hermitage or grotto. The hermit then would do nothing but tend and care for the garden, read, and ornament himself within the garden. Later, live hermits became mere ornaments, with no gardening assignments other than their presence. In the 19th century, rather than living hermits, creatures made of stone, pottery, or granite adorned the gardens of the wealthy…and not so wealthy. Hence gnomes.
The hermit in the Catholic tradition became a statue of a meditative saint, or another symbol of prayer. In fact, many a lawn still today bear statues of saints meditating among the trees and flowers. They are figures of resurrection hope that remind us of God’s presence in “God’s own vineyard.” In the midst of life that is tough, industrial, busy, mangy, those figures of prayer in our gardens remind us that another life exists amidst this one, and that God’s presence remains among us even in our darkest times.
It was a dark morning indeed when Mary came to the tomb of her Master Rabbi. Although it was still dark outside, Mary of Magdala could see that the large stone sealing the tomb had been rolled away. Immediately, she went to get Simon Peter and (we assume John), whose pen wrote this particular telling. They go in and see grave clothes, still in one place, but with Jesus missing from them. They leave Mary crying outside of the tomb. She peers in, but instead of mere grave clothes, she sees angels at the head and foot, where Jesus had lain. First the angels say, “Why are you crying?” Then she turns and sees someone, whom she takes to be the gardener. He also asks, “Why are you crying?” To the angels, she weeps, and says, they’ve taken her Lord away. To the supposed gardener, she snaps, “if you’ve done something with him, give him back to me, and I’ll put him back where he belongs.” Only when he says, “Mary,” does she realize who the gardener is. “Rabboni!”
What has happened here in this garden?
What must have Mary thought that morning when she found Jesus’ body missing and turned to see a figure among the plants and flowers in the faint light of morning?
The images in this scene are quite telling. The one having the experience in the story is Mary. Peter and John see Jesus’ empty grave clothes, and although they are amazed, they still don’t quite get it. They leave to ponder and debate what’s going on.
Mary however stays. As Eve before her, she is the curious one, the daring one. She peers into the tomb and sees two angels, one at the head and one at the foot of where Jesus lay –the entrance to Eden. When God sealed Eden, God placed two angels on either side with a flashing sword to guard the tree of life. In the Jewish tradition, YHWH dwells in the midst of those angels. This symbolism is on the Ark of the Covenant, and in the Holy of Holies, representing the curtain of God’s presence. At Jesus’ death, that curtain was rent in two. Now at his resurrection, the seal of the garden has been broken. He has risen. The two angels remain at the head and foot. But Jesus, the second Adam, is no longer there. He now stands in the garden.
The voices of the angels ask the same question of Mary as Jesus. Is it the same voice? Does she see the shining angels but hear Jesus? She first sees the shining messengers, then notices the “gardener” behind her. He appears at the same time they do. He is part of her entire experience.
And she recognizes him when he speaks her name. She at first is sharp with him, treating him as a servant. She then realizes, He is indeed her Master. And this is no ordinary garden. But Jesus’ presence within it creates for her a “garden of God.”
While the first Adam along with Eve hid from God in the first garden, Jesus appears to Mary and is revealed in this garden. The word garden in fact in Hebrew and Greek is an interesting one. A Persian borrowed word, Jesus uses the word garden (paradisio) when speaking with the thief next to him on the cross. “Today you will be with me in the “paradisio” –in the garden.” Why a garden?
In the Hebrew/Jewish tradition, the garden metaphor is the oldest in scripture. It is the place God creates in which to place Adam (the first gardener). The garden is not merely a physical place, but the place in Adam’s (and humanity’s) heart where God can dwell. It is that place of relationship between God and humankind: “I will write my law into their hearts.”
The garden is the place in which one must “tend and till” God’s will for our lives, our relationship with God. When we “walk the garden” with God is when we spend time with God, in prayer, in meditation, in awe, in love. It is our “wedding place,” as the Song of Songs describes to us.
And God spends the entirety of scripture trying to get us to come back into God’s garden, so that we may be our most human selves.
Jesus, the owner’s Son is sent to bring us back into that garden place with God. And in fact, Revelation tells us (also written by John) that God is restoring us to our garden reality (7, 22).
It is no mistake that Mary mistakes Jesus for the gardener. For He is the Second Adam, the original human, the true gardener of God’s world, and the restorer of humanity. As Mary says, “Rabboni!” Jesus IS the Master Gardener. And we are back in the garden with Him.
The figure in the garden is the hope of all salvation, the figure who represents our garden of prayer, our hope in the midst of a tense and dense world.
Today, I invite you to come forward to the altar and take some seeds. May these seeds be for you the budding of Jesus’ presence within your heart. Take them, plant them, water them, care for them, just as you spend time with Jesus these weeks in scripture, and in prayer, and at your table, and in your home. And watch your relationship with Jesus grow within you.
May your life bear the fruit of the gospel, that you may bear the seeds of God’s love in other’s hearts as well. And may you enjoy the conversation with the Master Gardener, who asks each of us, “How Does Your Garden Grow?”
Amen.as Ha
Based on the Story Lectionary
Major Text
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Encounter With Mary in the Garden (20)
Minor Text
God Creates a Garden (Genesis 2-3)
The Story of Balak and Balaam’s Blessings on Israel (Numbers 22-24)
Psalm 36: The Lord is the Fountain of Life
Psalm 46: God’s Dwelling Place
Psalm 92: The Righteous of the Lord Will Flourish
Psalm 103: The Lord Has Established His Throne
Song of Songs (4): Garden of Love
Isaiah’s Song of Zion’s Salvation (51)
Ezekiel’s Vision of the Temple and Rivers of Water, Fruit Trees, and Abundance (47)
Jeremiah’s Prophecy of the Redemption of Israel (31)
Jesus’ Parable of the Mustard Seed (Matthew 13:31-32; Luke 13:18-19)
John’s Witness to Jesus (The Living Water) With the Woman at the Well (4)
Paul’s Witness to Paradise (2 Corinthians 12)
God’s Restoration of Humanity to the Garden (Revelation 22)
John’s Witness to Jesus’ Encounter With Mary in the Garden
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!” So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?
”Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
Image Exegesis: The Gardener
“At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden,
and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.” (John 19:41)
The images in John are vivid and very important to the understanding of Jesus as the Second Adam, sent by God to redeem humanity and bring them back into God’s garden life.
The “garden” image is one of the oldest in scripture. From Genesis 2, God creates a garden into which God puts his creation of Adam and Eve. In fact, everything created is meant to be all integrated with each other and with God. From the light and the night to the ground and water to the trees and plants to the animals and humans, all are part of God’s created “garden.” There is “creation” and there is God. And they exist symbiotically.
When adam (created from the ground) gets too big for his britches, he then is told he must “work” the land. He must also “work” at his relationship with God! It doesn’t come naturally after eating of the tree of knowledge. Now, there are choices. And God spends all of scripture trying to get humans to make the right choices and be in relationship with God, follow God’s ordinances, lead a “garden” style life.
The garden image is everywhere in scripture, in the Temple, in the songs, in arkwork, in the design of the Shabbat candles, which represent the tree of life.
The garden image is put in fact onto the “arc of the covenant” in order to remind us that our relationship with God, God’s presence, God’s law, is in the “garden” of our hearts. What do we do? We try to think of God as in the “box” of the ark, rather than in the “garden” of our hearts. Instead of understanding God’s metaphor, we take it literally. It’s one of our most deadly mistakes throughout history.
Even at Jesus’ transfiguration, his disciples try to literally put him into a “box.” But Jesus can’t be contained. Instead, Jesus gives us images of non-containment –mustard seeds, yeast, abundant feasting. And everyone is included!
Gardens are for everyone. In fact, when Jesus describes the kingdom of God, he describes a mustard seed that starts small but takes over the garden with branches for everyone. The “tree” is Jesus Himself….and each heart a branch that bears fruit for others to eat.
When Jesus comes, he tells parable after parable showing us that God is sending His Son to bring us back into proper relationship with God. He emphasizes the importance of our hearts, not our physical lineage. He emphasizes our role in God’s vineyard, our dependence on God for our well-being, our humility. Yet we still don’t get it.
Jesus spends numerous times in gardens. He loves the Mount of Olives, the garden of Gethsemane, the trees and mountains, and even in death, is “planted” within a garden. And he rises within a garden. He invites a thief beside him to join him in the “garden” of God –the restoration place, also known as the “bosom of Abraham.” The paradisio means in fact, “the garden.”
Our goal is to be back in the “garden” with God. In Revelation, we learn that Jesus has restored us to our garden existence. Jesus, the “living water” as he calls himself to the Samaritan woman and to the Pharisees, is also the Tree of Life, the eternal redemption, the ultimate “gardener.” He is the roots and we are the branches. He is the true vine. He is the rock.
In the scriptural story today, the image of the two angels at the tomb, one at the head and the other at the foot (as discussed in last week’s exegesis) mark the way into God’s Eden garden, sealed after Adam is removed. Now, Jesus’ body missing from amidst the two angels signals that something significant has happened. Along with the tearing of the Temple curtain, it is revealed that the entrance to what has been barred has now been removed, and the “way” is open. I am the “way,” “truth,” “life,” says Jesus. He is the “way through” to the garden. He is the “truth” of God’s promise. He is the eternal life –the tree of life that we are now allowed to taste –at the Holy Feast.
Jesus tells us, we will all eat at God’s heavenly feast –eat freely, drink freely. He is the body and the blood. He is the living water and the table.
It is very important that Mary believes Jesus to be the gardener. Just as with his disciples at the last supper, Jesus is revealed in a humble servant position –a gardener, keeping the estate of God in every heart. He is the one who can restore God’s garden with all lives. And he calls us all by name.
Jesus is the Master of the House, the second Adam, the Son who cannot be killed, but who will dwell in the eternal garden. And we will dwell with Him.
Jesus leaves behind the rags, and is restored in a new body. He is a part again of God’s holy garden. And his breath will soon restore and birth a church.
It is important that Mary sees Jesus in the garden among the living. The “shell” of the linens is all that remains inside of the tomb. No sign of Jesus is left behind there. He is alive and walking the garden as God’s presence. And all who believe in Him will walk the garden as part of God’s whole creation once again as well.
On Holy Saturday, Jesus goes into the ground and revives all to life. And those who seemed dead are then brought back to resurrection life. In all that is living and breathing, Jesus’ can be seen and heard.
In the spring, we see signs of life and the renewal of things in all of creation. Our reminder in our gardens is to see the presence of God, the presence of Jesus, the original gardener, who can tend our torn roots, and restore our beauty in the eyes of God.
When Mary hears Jesus’ voice, she recognizes Him. She then tells the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” To see and feel Jesus’ presence in the midst of your life, you need to spend time in the “garden” of your heart, the place where you and God commune together. The more time you spend in the “garden,” the more you will see and hear the Lord.
Listen –He is calling YOUR name.