“In the Garden”: Easter Sunday Sermon, 2020 (We read John 20: 1-18)
My Dear Friends, Jesus said: I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it! (Matthew 16:18)
The fact is we don’t have to gather in a cathedral or a church building to meet with the Risen Christ. And, isn’t that just as well because for the first time in two millennia the people of Jesus Christ – in their many local expressions all over the earth - will not be able to meet physically this Easter. For the time being at least we will be deprived of that joy. We will be without the kinds of rituals and relationships we have become used to or even (dare I say) taken so much for granted…
We will have to continue to discover new and creative ways of meeting with the living God as fellowships and individuals. We will discover that, contrary to what the GP Receptionist said to me this past Thursday (Maundy Thursday incidentally!), Easter has not been cancelled!
When I wrote these words early on Friday morning it was still “Good Friday”! Like me you still, I am sure, took some time to reflect on the mystery and reality of that day which commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus. We didn’t meet at the Methodist Church or congregate on The Green.
But perhaps in 2020 it meant to you more than it has ever done. Perhaps you are more thankful than ever that He died so that you might live. Perhaps, for all the fearful happenings in the world, you will discover that you cannot cancel Easter any more than they could kill the Lord Himself!
And today is Sunday. The first day of the week. This is the day that starts, of all places, in a garden. These days if you have access to a garden you are truly blessed! Socially isolating or facing lockdown in a cramped flat or worse - a tin hut in a refugee camp – is a difficult prospect to say the least. Our friend, Morteza, rightly described the experience as being ‘in prison without a guard’. So I really do thank the good Lord that he made a good green earth and that I can enjoy a part of it with Him this day in a green pasture…
I think I may have taken it for granted!
Have you ever noticed how so many deeply significant moments in the story of our relationship with God take place in a garden? God plants a garden in Eden—God is a gardener!
He then places the newly created man and woman in the garden, walking with them in the cool of the day. And all that disastrous business with the serpent and the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil…the sinful disobedience, the painful encounter, confession and expulsion from Eden – they take place in a garden. A beautiful place becomes an ugly place… A garden features prominently in the stories we have been hearing throughout this Holy Week. After Jesus’ final meal with his friends, the motley crew heads out across a valley to a garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Gospel writers tell of Jesus’ prayer in the garden of tears called Gethsemane, a troubled prayer offered while his friends sleep blissfully unaware beneath the leaves and among the flowers – a trysting place becomes a place of terror.
Jesus will be arrested and betrayed in a garden. His friends will desert Him – in a garden. 40 Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs. 41 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. 42 Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Jesus was crucified in a place with a garden. And there he was buried.
This is the day that begins in the garden.
“The kiss of the sun for pardon; the song of the birds for mirth; One is nearer to God’s heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth…”
Many have found the words of the poet to be true.
For all Christians the world over, every Sunday is always the first day of the week. Every Sunday is always a reminder or a re-interpretation, a reliving of that first morning when a grief-stricken Mary went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance and the body of Jesus gone…
And then we find Mary Magdalene weeping in the garden as the morning breaks. Perhaps the birds are awakening and beginning to greet one another. The dew is still on the roses. As she weeps, she bends over into
the tomb. She sees two angels who ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” Her answer: “They have taken my Lord away - and I don’t know where they have put him.”
She clearly believes that the horror and cruelty of these three days has been made worse by another cruel act: she believes Jesus’ body has been stolen. Resurrection is not something Mary is prepared to entertain.
Mary’s are tears of love, and loss and unbelief…
14 At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus.15 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.”
Thinking he was the gardener! Maybe Jesus was doing some gardening. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility! Maybe it felt right to him; after all he had taught about green and growing things, about - kernels of wheat falling to the ground and dying…and producing many seeds (John 12:24)
To put his hands into the good earth and work to bring something out of that darkness, as he himself had emerged from the darkness of the tomb. That’s what God does!
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”
And also a few verses later we find these words, “So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.”
That first morning which began in the grief, confusion and darkness of an empty tomb and the futile search for a lost corpse ended with the sun coming up and Jesus being alive forever – and Mary shedding tears of joy.
The stench of death in a graveyard was replaced by the fragrance of eternal life in a garden when Jesus called Mary Magdalene by name. “Mary.”
It is when God speaks to the heart of a person and names them and calls them that the resurrection becomes real; that we recognise that life (our life) is more than which can be seen now.
Mary saw, and heard her name called, and believed. She encountered the risen Lord – in a garden, of all places. She wanted to stay in that garden and hold onto Jesus and never let him go! Who could blame her?! But she will have to go and tell others what she has heard and seen, “I have seen the Lord!”
Corona virus would appear to be the first, the only and the last word on everyone’s lips.
Death does not have the final word: God does! When Jesus rose and walked from that tomb on that first Easter morning in that garden, hope for something more invaded reality. “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Here is the ultimate antibody to all our fear and despair!
God in Christ began a whole new creation in the midst of this world’s brokenness. One day the Great Gardener will put it all back together again; the Garden of Eden restored, part of a new heaven and a new earth - the way it was always supposed to be from the start. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
It began in a garden; it can continue in my garden; it will end there and begin there again!
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
MFR – Easter Sunday 12/04/20