Preached on Easter for Wollaston Congregational Church, April 17th, 2022
Scripture: John 20:1-18
We began Lent, this year, in the chilly weather of early March, with still a few more snowstorms to come. The days were short and dark. The ground was hard. There was no sign of life in our gardens.
Gradually, with a few starts and sputters, spring began to arrive. And, over the last week or so we’ve noticed that the days are longer, warmer, and brighter. The blossoms have burst, the forsythia is resplendent. The crocuses and daffodils have bloomed in abundance. And when the birds begin to sing each morning, I’m reminded of how much I have missed them while they were gone.
And, I wonder, was Easter planned simply to coincide with the spectacular arrival of spring in the Northern Hemisphere. Is this all a ruse to take advantage of our feelings of hope when we notice the return of life to our corner of the world?
The answer is, yes, Easter was planned to coincide with spring. The church’s seasons – the high days and the low days – are not rarified holy-days, divorced from the real world. Our sacred stories and our seasons are rooted together in creation. They are supposed to speak to what is going on in our lives and the lives of all living beings.
These past few weeks of Lent, here at Wollaston Congregational Church, we have been hearing stories grounded in nature and gardening. And over the past week – Holy Week – much of the narrative has taken place in gardens. Jesus and the disciples were praying in the garden of Gethsemane as he was arrested and taken away to be crucified.
And now today, our story returns to a garden, for the resurrection dawn.
According to the gospel of John, Jesus was crucified in a spot near a garden. This is a kind of memorial garden, a place where the dead are buried, and their grieving loved ones can experience the peace and tranquility of nature.
This garden contained tombs, including a tomb that had never been used. Secret disciples of Jesus had taken his body to this tomb, along with a great quantity of myrrh and aloe for embalming. And then they had left him there because the Sabbath was beginning, they would return afterwards to complete the job.
Very early on the day after the Sabbath, while it is still dark, Mary Magdalene comes to the garden and to the tomb. Mary is a most devoted disciple, along with other women who share her name and stayed at the foot of the cross as Jesus died. Mary is devastated by the loss of her beloved teacher. Perhaps she is unable to sleep and so she comes to the place where she might feel closest to Jesus. Perhaps she plans to administer the myrrh and aloe to Jesus’ body.
In the silent pre-dawn, while the scent of flowers fills the still air, Mary makes out that the stone that sealed the tomb has been moved. She is stunned, horrified by the thought that grave robbers have been there first.
And so she runs away, to alert two of the other disciples, Peter and John. There is a little back and forth, as the men come and look into the tomb and then leave the scene. Mary is left alone again and stands weeping. She looks back into the tomb and this time she sees two angels, who ask her why she is weeping. She asks the angels where Jesus’s body has been laid, but they do not respond.
Then, she turns around to find a man standing behind her. Like the angels, he asks her “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”
She supposes that this is the gardener, and she begs him “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him and I will take him away.”
The man says “Mary!” He calls her by name, and she finally recognizes him! It is Jesus! She turns toward him again and exclaims “Rabbouni! Teacher!”
Supposing him to be the gardener … surely Mary would recognize Jesus.
Why did she suppose he was the gardener?
Was he wearing gardening clothes and muddy sandals? Was he holding a pruning hook? Had he been digging over the garden in the hours since he returned to life? The authors of our Lenten book, “Good Enough” say “maybe Jesus looks like his dad, the first gardener who tended Eden barefoot.” [1]
Mary still thinks of Jesus as her teacher and friend. It doesn’t matter that he seems to be a gardener in this moment. She is just overjoyed to see him alive!
Mary may not remember or may not understand, but just a few days before he was crucified Jesus had said that “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)
Jesus compares himself to the grain of wheat that must be buried and die in order to bring life, but that does not rule out his appearing as a gardener. Jesus can be both the seed and the planter; the gospel of John does not mind mixing metaphors.
Gardeners are patient and they know what is best for their seeds and plants. They trust and they hope that given the right conditions, their plantings will grow and thrive. Like the gardener in the parable of the fig tree, that we heard during Lent, they are willing to invest years of work just to give one plant a chance.
I am not much of a gardener. Some years ago, a close friend of mine gave me the birthday gift of a pot planted with cuttings from her beloved Easter cactus. She told me that the cuttings would only need a little spray of water on top of the potting soil each day. If I did that and I was patient, they would grow. After I sprayed and watched the cuttings for quite a while, I finally decided that I had failed. They were not going to grow. And so I pulled them up, to discover that they did have little baby roots. I tried putting them back in the soil, but it was too late. They never grew.
Kate Bowler is a professor at Duke Divinity School and co-author of the book that we have been reading over the Lenten season. At the age of 35 when her personal and professional life was going so well, Bowler was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. Her little son was just over one year old. Since that time she has been living with the cancer, enduring painful treatments and wondering how much time she has left with her son. Bowler rejects the “Prosperity Gospel” “a creed that sees fortune as a blessing from God and misfortune as a mark of God’s disapproval.” [2] She is developing a spiritual way of being that embraces every part of life – the good, the bad and the ugly.
In a recent podcast entitled “Make Me a Gardener” Bowler interviews Wajahat Ali, an Op-Ed writer and a Muslim father of two young children. Ali tells the story of his two-year-old daughter, Nusayba’s stage IV liver cancer and his family’s quest for a liver donor for her. Against all the odds, a generous donor was found and Nusayba is now cancer free.
During their conversation Bowler talks about the way that the Christian tradition holds onto hope, even in the most difficult circumstances. She quotes the hymn “even so, even so it is well with my soul, even so” and Bowler asks Ali about the Islamic approach to hope.
He answers by sharing a saying of the Prophet Mohammed, “if you see the day of judgment coming, plant a seed.”
Hope, for Ali, means being a gardener. He says “maybe I can plant [a] seed for my kids in that generation and maybe, if we’re lucky if I’m really lucky before my time’s up, either we can enjoy the fruits together or we can enjoy the shade.” [3]
The Good Enough series we have followed here at Wollaston Congregational Church has been perfect for this Lent. We have spent time bringing our hardest things to God, without any pretense that “it’s all good” and that we are “living our best lives.”
We have been reminded that God is with us in the midst of life, in the midst of grief, and in the midst of fear.
The series has accompanied us as we have watched the events in Ukraine with horror and feared daily for what will come next. And it has accompanied us as we have prayed for loved ones and family members who are struggling, or who have passed from this life, or who are still in awful circumstances. The experience has been very personal for me, following the loss of my dad on the first Friday in Lent.
But now it is Easter, and Jesus is risen! We return to the garden, with Mary Magdalene to we ask “What now?” What is our hope, in the face or this resurrection story?
Mary’s wildest hopes and dreams have come true, Jesus is risen. But Jesus will not remain with the disciples for much longer. They have just 50 more days – the glorious season of Easter. Then he will ascend back to the one whom he calls Abba, Father.
Even in this moment of mistaken identity with Mary, Jesus brings a hint of what the disciples have to do. Over this period of occasional appearances of the Risen Christ, this will be reinforced. They will become the gardeners, planting and tending the seeds that are the hope of a new generation.
The coming of spring, and the bursting of blossoms and flowers drops that same hint for us each and every Easter season.
And we may well ask ourselves “What does it look like to plant a seed of hope, ‘even so’?” [4]
May all God’s people say,
Amen
A Blessing for You Who Are Being Planted
[from Good Enough by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie]
Blessed are you who are buried. You who feel stuck in the depths of grief and despair or who sit in the pit of unknowing. You who are learning to trust the timing of a tender Gardener.
Blessed are you who are growing, you who burst with new life, fresh creativity. Who understand the pain that sometimes comes with stretching and changing, pruning and being cut back.
And blessed are you in your season of fruitfulness. You who are learning to abide in the vine, and who taste the sweetness of God’s loving-kindness. The God who was there all along—planting, waiting, watering, pruning, delighting. The God who pays careful attention to God’s garden. [5]
[1] Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40-ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (New York: Convergent, 2022), 228
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Happens-Reason-Other-Loved/dp/0399592067
[3] https://katebowler.com/podcasts/wajahat-ali-make-me-a-gardener/
[4] https://katebowler.com/resources/discussion-questions-for-wajahat-ali-make-me-a-gardener/
[5] Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40-ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (New York: Convergent, 2022), 230
[1] Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40-ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (New York: Convergent, 2022), 228
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Happens-Reason-Other-Loved/dp/0399592067
[3] https://katebowler.com/resources/discussion-questions-for-wajahat-ali-make-me-a-gardener/
[4] Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40-ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection (New York: Convergent, 2022), 230