What is it about a Garden?

Easter Sunrise at Faith UMC

John 20: 1 - 18  (The Message)

There’s something about a garden…

 

Take it in.  Take a moment to listen to this place around us this morning…listen to the wind in the trees, listen to the birds.  Look around.  In the gathering light, see how life surrounds us right here. Take a deep breath.  Smell the damp earth, the greening life around you.

 

There’s something about a garden…

 

Why is it so appropriate to find ourselves in a place like a garden this morning?

 

I need for us to step backward in this story of Jesus just a little bit, back to laying Jesus in a borrowed tomb to capture an important detail in John’s gospel for today:  

 

From John 19 - 

“Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. 

 

Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”

 

They laid him in a tomb in a garden…

 

There’s something about a garden…

 

Somehow then it makes sense that Mary would mistake the risen Christ for the gardener because they are in a garden…right? The tomb itself was in a garden.

 

She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, “Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him.”

 

But the writer of John’s gospel is brilliant at painting a full picture of what is happening in this moment. John’s gospel places the tomb in a garden.  John’s gospel also places Jesus at creation – some of which is in a garden, right?

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

In the garden where God’s beloved human creation lived in newly created beauty.

And where that same creation fell into sin. 

Where Adam and Eve were overcome by the temptation of something forbidden. 

Where they hid themselves from God.

 

There’s something about a garden.

 

How fitting then that Mary would see in Jesus a gardener.  In a garden, Jesus, who was dead and in the tomb, is now alive.

 

There’s something about a garden.

Easter happens at a magical time in the world.  At a time when we look around at all of the things that were dead and lifeless in the cold, dark months of the winter and we begin to see new life.

 

We begin to see buds on the branches, and flowers emerging from the dark ground, and grass that is greening with each day of sunshine, each drop of rain.

 

We are reminded by the season that indeed, there is HOPE in new life.

 

There’s something about a garden.

 

But spring is just a shadow of what resurrection means…because resurrection is about life that never goes away…about eternal life.  

You see…in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus had prayed alone after sharing a last Passover with the disciples…and in that garden, he prayed this:

 

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.

 

Eternal life.  Life in which we know God through Jesus the Christ – that is Jesus who was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

 

There’s something about a garden.

 

Take it in.  Can you feel Jesus offering you a lifetime of Spring blooming?

 

There’s something about a garden.

 

But in the text that neither Jesus nor Mary stay in the garden…they don’t linger among the flowers. There is work to do. 

Jesus said, “Don’t cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I ascend to my Father and your Father, my God and your God.’”

 

Mary Magdalene went, telling the news to the disciples: “I saw the Master!” And she told them everything he said to her.

 

“I saw the Master!”

 

Today, our work is to leave the garden – to go out and tell what we’ve seen – all that we’ve seen today and in our big full lives – all the places Jesus is at work calling our name, including us in the promise of eternal life.

 

Today our work is to leave the garden – because the eternal life we’re promised is not seasonal….it’s ETERNAL.

 

And so, let’s sing of how morning has broken, let’s break bread and recognize the risen Christ in the breaking of that bread.

 

And then let’s go out from this place, from this garden, and say “I saw the Master!”