Life in the Garden

 There is a story about a pastor who was building a wooden trellis to support a climbing vine. As he pounded away, he saw that a little boy was watching him. The youngster didn't say a word, so the pastor kept on working, thinking the lad would just leave. But he didn't. Finally, the pastor asked, "Well, son, are you trying to pick up some pointers on carpentry or gardening?" "No," he replied, "I'm just waiting to hear what a preacher says when he hits his thumb with a hammer." It is almost Spring. Actually, the date of the first day of Spring has come and gone, and last weekend it seemed as if Spring has truly sprung. However, a member of this congregation told me that Spring doesn't truly arrive on Harkers Island until April 16th. The temps these past few days makes me think they are right. I haven't been building trellises, though I did build a backstop for our archery range. I fastened it with screws so that Edna and Bob wouldn't have to hear what their pastor says when he hits his thumb with a hammer. I do have some of my peppers growing inside and Anita and I worked outsides last weekend to begin preparing things for our spring and summer flower gardens. It is fitting that we talk about gardens on Easter Sunday. It began in a garden. It was destroyed in a garden. It was laid to rest in a garden. It was restored in a garden. There are scholars who tie the Gospel of John and the Book of Genesis together, finding what they consider intentional parallels put in place by the author of John. It may even seem obvious as we simply look to the first verse of each book: "In the beginning...". However, there are scholars who offer to us that the parallels go far beyond those three simple words, including the Resurrection story. We read this morning that Jesus had been laid in a garden tomb when he was taken down from the cross. Mary Magdalene had gone to that garden tomb to anoint His body with the burial spices, only to find that the stone had been rolled away, and that there was no body in the tomb. She rushed to tell the disciples, and a couple of them ran back with her, verified that there was no body, and left Mary standing there. Can you imagine the heartache that Mary was going through? Just days earlier, she had watched as her closest friend, mentor, and Messiah had been hung upon a cross and put to death. She had watched as Joseph and Nicodemus had taken Jesus' body down from the cross and laid it in a tomb in a nearby garden. Imagine how alone she feels. Imagine how much more alone she still feels after she rushes to tell those that had walked with Jesus daily, they come and check it out, and then leave. There she is, left once again alone outside the empty tomb. We've all felt that kind of loneliness, that kind of desertion at some point in our lives. A broken relationship. The loss of a loved one. We would expect nothing less than that Mary would stand there crying, in fact we may be surprised that she didn't collapsed to the ground in a heap. Mary, as she was crying, bent over to look into the tomb again. You know that feeling when you've lost something. You know you've checked, but you look again, hoping that maybe you were mistaken when you realized it was missing. She looks in the tomb again, but this time it is not empty. There are two angels there where Jesus' body used to be. They ask 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." John's Gospel does not report the angels responding to her, but instead we watch as Mary turns back out of the tomb and she sees a man standing there. The man asks her the same question the angels asked, "Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?" Mary, not expecting anyone else to be in the garden, figures this is the gardener, coming to tend to his early morning duties. She says, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." The man speaks her name, "Mary." Suddenly Mary stops crying, she turns to look more clearly at the one standing in the garden with her, and with great joy realize it is Jesus. I had never really given much thought to the fact that Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener. I had always just assumed it was a detail that the author of John simply wanted to put in, simply to show how distraught Mary was. And I'm sure the author was trying to depict Mary's distress, but now I am not too sure that it was all that random. Having thought Jesus was the gardener, we are reminded that this whole scene takes place in the middle of a garden. Is there significance to this? I believe so. Some Biblical scholars discuss the "principle of first mention." The understanding of this principle is that if you want to know the particular significance of a word in the Scriptures, you go back to where that word is first used. If we trace "garden" (our English word, not the Greek or Hebrew) back to its first use, we encounter the first gardener: "And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed...The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it."i Life with God began in a garden, the Garden of Eden. As God first formed man, and woman, he placed them in Eden to be gardeners, to till and keep the garden. In this newly created relationship, God would come and spend time with Adam and Eve. Chapter 3 of Genesis suggests that God would stroll through Eden in the evenings and the first humans of all creation would spend undisturbed and unmarred time with God. It all began in a garden. However, it also all fell apart in the garden. It came to an end in the garden. It was destroyed in the garden. Adam and Eve, tilling and keeping the garden had been given free reign to eat from whatever they wished, with one exception, one rule God gave them, one simple opportunity for them to exercise their free will to obey God, and that was that they were not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So what did they do? Like almost any child, still growing or fully grown, when their parent tells them not to do something, they do it. Giving in to the temptation of the serpent, convinced that they would become like God, Adam and Eve ate the fruit, and when God came that evening, they hid themselves because they were ashamed. Worse than that, they refused to take the blame for their own sin. They blamed the serpent, they blamed one another, they even had the audacity to blame God. That intimate relationship of spending time unhindered with God was destroyed, there in the garden. However, after centuries of trying to continue to call people back into a relationship with Himself, God decided that He would show us Himself. God became flesh and dwelt among us in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus showed us what it was like to live in an intimate and obedient relationship with God. In Jesus, God was once again calling people into relationship and was once again walking and talking with His creation. However, echoing the actions of Adam, humanity refused to accept the gift of God's presence, and, like Adam, they sought to be gods themselves and put Jesus to death on a cross. Jesus was then laid in a garden tomb. The relationship that had begun in a garden, been destroyed in a garden, was seemingly laid to rest forever in a garden. However, it was not the end, and this morning we celebrate that God finally and perfectly restores His presence with humanity as we witness, in the garden, the resurrected Jesus standing with Mary. On the cross Jesus had taken our sins upon Himself and bought and brought us freedom from sin. Here, in the garden, Jesus reveals that the sentence of death brought upon humanity as punishment for sin in the Garden of Eden, had been defeated in this garden tomb and that through His death and resurrection, Jesus, restores the opportunity for us to have an intimate relationship with our Creator, our God. On the cross and in the garden, through Jesus, God has undone all that was brought about by what Adam did. Paul echoes this connection, "For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ."ii The Gospel of John presents the Resurrection account to us in such a way that we have to realize that in the resurrection of Jesus God has reclaimed His Creation and has begun the process of restoring it to the His original design. Through Jesus, those of us who were dead in sin, are now offered the gift of forgiveness and the promise of eternal life. Though we had been separated from God and not had fellowship with God and could not even approach the presence of God because of our sin, through Christ we are able to once again stand in the very presence of God, with the promise of life and not death. Just as God began creation by saying, "Let there be light" on the first day of the week, so now, on the first day of the week, God, through the True Light which has come into the world, has begun redeeming and restoring His Creation. What does this mean for us today? It means that no matter how far you may feel from God; no matter what sins you may have committed or may have been committed against you; no matter how dark and dead life seems; by the grace of God, through Christ, sin can and will be erased. The power of sin has no power of any of us. It also means that we can repent and find new life. It means estrangement from God is not something we have to experience, that God's desire is the restoration of our relationship with Him. Through the resurrection of Christ in that garden, through His nail-scarred hands, God has begun reforming us, once more, into His perfect image. Thanks be to God for the Garden. This morning, as we receive Holy Communion, just as Jesus broke bread with the disciples not only on the night of his arrest, but also on the day of His resurrection, we receive the bread and the body not only to recall the sacrifice of Jesus, but also in anticipation of new life from The Gardener. For in this meal God pours his grace into us, restoring our relationship with Him and with all with whom we share this meal. Through this meal we proclaim not only Christ's death, but also His resurrection...and may the garden of our lives produce such beauty and such fruit of the Spirit that all the world may come to know that God always brings life to His garden. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...Amen. i Genesis 2:8, 15 iiThe Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (1 Co 15:21-22). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ Page 2 of 3 Life in the Garden John 20:1-18 Page 1 of 3