The Gardener

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful garden, filled with abundance and possibility.

The garden teemed with life, and the life flowed from the creative heart of God.

One day, human beings decided that living in harmony with the garden, with God, and with the other creatures was not enough.

The humans made a choice to chase after a desire that proved unsatisfying, and the gates to that garden were barred shut.

Many years passed, and generations came and went.

The progeny of those humans had to live with the choices of their ancestors and they also began to realize that the unbridled pursuit of more, at the expense of others, was neither satisfying nor sustainable.

But how would they undo the damage that had been done?

How would the humans find a way to exchange the death that had come to dominate them for the infinite life they had known before?

Some claimed that the only way to satisfy the angry God with whom they had once shared the garden was a blood sacrifice.

Others claimed that the only remedy was for a Messiah to come and install a divine rule upon the earth, vanquishing all foes and raising up a downtrodden people in one fell swoop.

But the great mystery of Easter is that we humans didn’t even have the lens to consider what God’s solution to our problems might be.

We were so focused on returning to the Eden of what was, that we failed to consider that the God who created us, journeyed with us as a parent, liberated us time and again from hardship, and who still loved us—even after countless reasons to give up and quit on us—that God could still do something new and unexpected.

As a church, we have just relived the highs and lows of Holy Week—the part of the story where all the promise of Jesus’ new way and popular movement ran smack into the grinder of the Empire—the offspring of our human desire for more.

We witnessed the full power of the religious political complex we know as the Imperial way, and its ability to crush dissent and difference through manipulation of the law, torture, and death.

But on the first day of the week after Jesus was crucified, while it was still dark—the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters of death and brought about a new creation.

The old human story died with Jesus on the cross—and the story of resurrection broke out of the tomb with Christ on that first Easter morning.

The resurrection didn’t erase the previous story from existence, and it certainly didn’t magically do away with all the ways humans can still choose to hurt one another and this blessed creation God has given us.

What it did do was establish that our life in God doesn’t end when our earthly bodies grow old and weak, it doesn’t end when we betray and abandon God—it doesn’t even end when we are the ones driving the nails or sealing the tomb.

The resurrection is God’s final answer to the great dilemma of humanity’s fall and redemption—and instead of a flood of destruction or vengeful retribution—God resurrects existence itself upon the matrix of love.

Love that brought an incarnate Christ into being, love expressed through feeding the hungry, raising up the fallen, and calling all who wish to know true life to search for it by serving others instead of exploiting others.

Love as an active, binding principle for a new creation and way of living that no empire nor even death itself can extinguish.

But part of the mystery of this new creation built on the everlasting foundations of God’s love is that it isn’t always loud or boastful or ostentatious, but often hidden in plain sight.

When Mary sees the stone removed from the tomb and is asked by the angels and the figure she assumes to be the gardener, “Woman, why are you weeping,” she believes someone has stolen away with Jesus’ body.

Of course, she has no context for understanding that the gardener of the new world beyond the tomb is the Christ for whom she seeks.

But when Jesus calls her name in love, just like he calls each and every one of us by name, she suddenly realizes that a new creation is dawning, and her response is to tell the joyful news far and wide.

We who come to this Easter morning may have a hard time recognizing the resurrected Lord in the midst of our daily lives.

We gather regularly as a church to worship and to remember the story of our salvation, and to be so immersed in the reality of the resurrection that we begin to see signs of it everywhere.

Our world needs the good news that Jesus offers us—not only because so many are still slaves to the sway of the Empire’s old story, but because the only way to the freedom our hearts, bodies, and souls seek is the path of wisdom and servanthood that Jesus revealed and opened to us.

There is freedom in the new creation that has been firmly planted in this one—there is joy in gathering together in this garden of the Lord and learning together how to tend it and care for each other—there is life beyond the regrets, the hurts, the disappointments, and even the grave.

This Easter, let us draw near to the Eternal Gardener again and hear him call us by name to become fellow gardeners alongside him.

Let us leave the old story and our old selves pinned to the cross, and emerge together from the tomb into an evolved way of living together.

Christ is the Alpha and Christ is also the Omega.

Let us move joyfully into the new existence the Gardener’s resurrection has created.

Alleluia!