The Gardener
Indianapolis First Friends
Pastor Bob Henry
March 31, 2024
John 20:11-18 (NRSV)
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 touch 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 your Father, to my God and 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.
I was reading an article by theologian and author Brian Zahnd about our Easter text of Mary meeting Jesus in the garden. He points out that there are many metaphors for Jesus that we enjoy using and sometimes even abusing. Brian clarifies that,
Jesus is NOT a conductor punching tickets for a train ride to heaven. Christian hope is not so much about getting from earth to heaven, as it is about getting heaven to earth.
Jesus is NOT a lawyer to get us out of a legal jam with his angry dad. God is not mad at sinners. Jesus told Mary to tell his disciples that his Father was their Father too!
Jesus is NOT a banker making loans of his surplus righteousness. Modern people love economic metaphors…but they are terrible! Economic metaphors invariably produce bad theology.
[Rather] Jesus IS a gardener! … A gardener’s work is earthy and intimate. Gardeners have their hands in the humus. (We are humans from the humus.) Conductors and lawyers and bankers are concerned with abstract and impersonal things like tickets, laws, and money. But gardeners handle living things with living hands. Jesus is not afraid to get his hands dirty in the humus of humanity.
To delve deeper into the metaphor of the Gardener, we must go back to that first Easter morning. You heard it read in the scriptures for this morning. The place was the Garden at Golgotha. Mary Magdalene had come to the tomb. She leans down into the opening of the dark tomb and sees it empty and begins to weep. One of the texts says that what looked like two angels tried to console her. As she explains her reasoning for weeping she turns and sees a figure through her tear-filled eyes.
Now, there are many theories about why Mary did not recognize Jesus, but I am going to go with two simple physical ones. First, Mary is crying her eyes out (weeping heavily) for her beloved friend who was gone – executed, hung naked before her very eyes on a cross. I don’t think we take into consideration the horror and emotional anxiety seeing this would cause.
We in our day have been numbed by mass shootings and open violence weekly in our news, movies, and video games. Yet at some point, most of us can relate. At some time, we too have cried so hard over the tragic loss of someone very close.
I am sure we can assess that Mary Magdalene was full of anxiety and overwhelmed by the circumstances and outright fear of the Roman authorities. She also probably had very little sleep and was deeply concerned for her safety.
Science shows that this type of anxiety and stress can make one quicker to cry and often uncontrollably. Yet also it shows the personal effects of losing a close dear friend or family member. Jesus and Mary were very close, and this loss hit her very hard.
As anyone who has cried uncontrollably knows, through heavy tears it is hard to see anything. It distorts our view of the world around us.
Also, it was sunrise on that first Easter morning, tombs were set facing the East in Jerusalem – as it was a symbol of hope of a resurrection with the sun’s rising – a new day dawning. As Mary would emerge from that dark tomb she would have been blinded by the light of dawn breaking forth.
So as Mary turns to address the figure outside the tomb in the garden all she probably saw was a black outline or a shadowed figure.
And let’s be honest, who else would be in the garden that early in the morning addressing her? It had to have been the gardener, she thought.
Scriptures say Mary “supposed he was the gardener”. Weeping, she explains that she is seeking the body of Jesus. Then “Jesus says to her, “Mary”. From just the sound of his voice saying her name, Mary immediately recognizes that it is Jesus and in that moment everything changes.
Like Brian Zhand, I believe it is very fitting that Jesus would be mistaken by Mary as the Gardener outside the tomb. Some may disagree and just say, oh it is coincidence. But I believe to picture and see Jesus as the Gardener very much agrees with one of the metaphors and themes of the entire Bible – that being the importance of gardens.
Let me give you a quick overview: In the book of Genesis, we are introduced to the Creator placing Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, where one of the first tasks was to be stewards/caretakers of the garden. It says in Genesis 2:15,
“The Lord God took Adam and put him in the garden of Eden to till and to keep it.”
That garden was not just for Adam and Eve, the story tells us it was also where God was found. God actually was known to walk in that Garden with Adam and Eve and had a relationship with them there.
I always remember those signs that I thought were rather cliché or cheesy that read, “One is closer to God in a Garden, than anywhere on Earth.”
Hmmm…maybe there was something deeper in those signs.
As one who has grown to appreciate gardening, I have found spending time in my garden an important way to connect to my Inner Light and bask in the beauty of creation. It also is like therapy for me – pulling weeds, pruning, planting, and watering all give new life to the spaces that surround me – and for that matter, to me as well. It is as Brian Zhand said, “This is because a gardener’s work is earthy and intimate. Gardeners have their hands in the humus…[and] gardeners handle living things with living hands.
Even though Adam and Eve in the creation story chose a different path than what God intended which led them out of that beautiful original garden, God promised he would never abandoned his creation.
Instead, God sent people to be light-bearers, people like the patriarchs and matriarchs of our faith, the prophets we talked about this past year, faithful kings and judges of justice to teach, admonish, correct and gather the people of Israel, encourage them, and ultimately send them out into the world to be hope and beauty and bring peace to everyone. This is played out over and over throughout the First or Old Testament – there is so much more there than just a wrathful God if we are willing to look.
And then as the New Testament opens, we are introduced to Jesus, the next in this long line of individuals who God has sent to try to point to a better way. Jesus is raised in Nazareth and begins his ministry of doing good, healing and teaching, gathering a new community of disciples that he too would send into the world to be hope and beauty and bring peace.
But before we get to that sending…We must not miss the end of his public ministry, what this week leading to Easter has been all about. Here Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem the place where he was rejected, suffered, and died at the hands of the Roman Empire who did not want his way of peace but rather wanted power and control.
Since Jesus walked this earth 2000 some years ago, people have joined Jesus on remembering his journey to Jerusalem. Some faith traditions have journeyed to the cross by taking the actual Via Dolorosa in the old part of Jerusalem - following what is believed to be the actual way Jesus journeyed to the cross.
Others have marked specific events leading up to Jesus’ death to pause and remember: The triumphal entry into Jerusalem (which we celebrated last week and ironically also started in a garden - the Mount of Olives), the clearing of the temple, the Seder Meal or Last Supper with his disciples, and then the biggest turn of events – which goes down in another garden at the base of the Mount of Olives – the Garden of Gethsemane.
As the gospel of John explains, “After the discourse, Jesus went out with the disciples across the Kidron Valley. There was a garden there, and he and his disciples entered it. John adds that it was familiar, “because Jesus had often met there with his disciples”. In this garden, not only had Jesus been preparing and teaching his disciples, but now Jesus would show us his human vulnerability and fear. He would pray in great agony, and courageously commit himself to do his Father’s will of laying down his life for others.
Later that evening again in this garden, the soldiers would come, Judas would betray Jesus, and they would arrest Jesus to be ushered off to imprisonment and put on trial.
As I said at the beginning of this message, on the day of Jesus’ crucifixion there is another garden. After Jesus is condemned to death he proceeds in agony to carry his cross on the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha. John again notes, “In the place where he had been crucified, there was a garden.” Golgotha, the actually place of Jesus’ death is a garden place. Very interesting.
And the story doesn’t end there. Jesus is taken down from the cross and buried in a borrowed tomb, actually in that garden.
Three days later, Jesus begins to appear to his friends. He meets Mary and she confuses him for the gardener – which catching us up to our text for this morning.
As is evident by the gardens we have looked at, the garden throughout scripture is the place where God has been revealed and new life has begun!
We can understand this – gardens are to be places of new and recurrent life, where plants, flowers, shrubs, vegetables come to life - Spring Time after Spring Time. Just as I said in AS Way Opens last week.
It’s like when you were a kid and you planted seeds for the first time, it was an exciting day when you started to see life bursting forth out of the paper cups in the window soon to be planted in the garden box or back yard to fully flourish in the soil!
And the gardener is one who oversees and does their part to ensure the cycle of life reoccurs. The gardener has their hands in the humus. The gardener plants and prunes, digs, fertilizes and waters so that trees and plants can bear fruit and beauty in abundance. This is what Jesus did and continues to do in our lives.
So just as the creation story states, God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, so now Jesus walks with Mary in the gardens of Golgotha as the gardener.
I remember learning in 8th grade in my Christians school another name for Jesus and that is “The New Adam.” Here Jesus is the new Adam seen as the gardener in a new garden of hope. Pretty cool metaphors, if you ask me.
Jesus shares this hope with Mary. He instructs her, “Do not cling to me…rather go to my brothers and tell them I am going to my father and your father, to my God and your God”. Mary, a woman, would be the first person in which Jesus would send to share his message of hope. She is sent to bear fruit and beauty to her world beginning with those closest to Jesus who were hiding in fear of the Roman authorities. I can’t even imagine Mary’s enthusiasm as she went to share this good news.
And folks, it didn’t stop on that first Easter morning with Mary, no, the work of Jesus the gardener continues today through us. Walking with our God in this world, we too, like Mary are sent to bear good fruit and bring hope and peace. We are called to blossom, and color, and bring fragrance to our world of darkness and death. We are being sent with a message of hope and peace to our American Empire that is clearly at war with itself.
This is what it means to be resurrection people.
There is one last garden described in scripture.
In the 21st chapter of John’s vision or revelation at the end of the Bible, John describes heaven in wildly symbolic and metaphorical ways.
He calls heaven the New Jerusalem – a city with mighty walls and ornate gates. And in that city is a LIGHT or lamp which represents the work of Christ. And then lastly he speaks of a Garden, with a river of life-giving water…which flowed down the middle of the streets.” On either side of the river grew the trees of life”. This was to show that God, from the beginning to the end, was about bringing life and light, and beauty into our world.
We are part of that beauty, folks. We are part of that NEW LIFE. Resurrection means to give something that once had life – NEW LIFE.
This is what happens in gardens, especially here in Indiana. We plant seeds or small plants, and then they grow, some give beauty through buds and flowers and brightly colored leaves, some give off seeds and give the opportunity for new life, some die and go into the ground, and in several months give new life again. The garden is the perfect example of resurrection.
No wonder gardens are throughout scripture. No wonder the story says it all began in a garden and will end in a garden.
Mary was called by the Gardener that first Easter morning to be life to those around her in that Garden of death. And that is what we are called to this Easter morning. You and I are called to blossom, to flower, to bear fruit, to bring beauty and joy and peace to a world who is often dead or almost there.
That is living out a work that is earthy and intimate, and that is getting our hands dirty in the humus of humanity. That…is living the resurrection.
Now as we enter a time of waiting worship, let us take a moment to ponder the following queries,
· How am I living the resurrection with those around me?
· In what ways am I blossoming, bearing fruit, and giving beauty and peace to my world this Easter?