The New Garden

Brad Sullivan

Easter Sunday, Year C

March 27, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

John 20:1-18

The New Garden

Mary thought Jesus was the gardener.  As she was weeping outside Jesus empty tomb, wondering who had stolen Jesus’ body, she turned, and Jesus was there, having been raised from the dead, and she thought he was the gardener, and so he was.  Jesus was the one who made the very first garden in Eden, and so standing in this new garden of Jesus’ resurrection, Mary is the first one to see and experience the resurrection life.  Jesus calls Mary by name, and then she knows him, and she clings to him, her heart full of love and joy at seeing Jesus before her, standing with her in the rebirth of creation.

Then, Jesus tells her to go to his disciples and tell them that he has been raised, “do not cling to me,” Jesus says, and as much as Mary wants to stay, to hold on to Jesus forever, she trusts him.  She lets go, and she goes to the disciples to tell them the good news that Jesus has been raised.  This new Eve in the new garden trust in Jesus, and we see the effects of resurrection immediately taking place.  The serpents’ whispers to stay or she will never see him again fall on deaf ears, and she trusts in Jesus. 

Of course we still mess up, don’t we?  There is still sin in the world.  There are still countless ways that we harm each other, countless ways that we separate ourselves from each other and separate ourselves from God, which is why Jesus joined himself to us and took all of our sins upon himself on the cross.  We sin and we die, so Jesus took all of our sin and death and joined it to himself.

In the incarnation, becoming human, God joined himself fully to humanity in Jesus.  That was the point, to restore us to unity with God.  If we’re going to be fully restored to God, then we must be restored to God even in death, and if we’re going to be fully restored to God, then we have to be restored to God even in sin.  I supposed Jesus could have suddenly started sinning, God sinning against humanity in order to join with us even in ways that we harm each other, fracture our relationships, and separate ourselves from God and each other, but he didn’t.  God loves us too much suddenly to decide to sin against us, and we’ve got more than enough sin and harm to go around, so Jesus took our sins upon himself on the cross so that even our disconnection from God has been united to God. 

On the cross, Jesus took all of the ways that we harm each other and disconnect ourselves from each other and from God, Jesus took all of that, and united himself to it, so that even at our worst, we can still be united to God.  Those who have murdered people and raped people, those who have abused their bodies with drugs and harmed other people with drugs, those whose hearts are hardened by unforgiveness and those whose hearts are broken by shame, even those who kill themselves and others in acts of terrorism:  all of their sins were united to Jesus on the cross.  All of our sins were united to Jesus on the cross.

Having taken our worst upon himself, Jesus died to unite us to God even in death, and then he was raised so that we get to be united to God in new life. 

That new life began on this day almost 2000 years ago as Mary stood with Jesus in the new garden.  Jesus, the new Adam trusted in God with his life and death, and Mary, a second Eve, standing there in the garden, trusted in Jesus.  In the resurrection, the world is changed, and we are changed. 

In the resurrection, in the new garden, we are given grace upon grace.  Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor who as a young woman had been addicted to drugs and alcohol.  She cared deeply about people and had grown up in a church (rules) – ended up breaking free from those constraints and into drugs and alcohol.  She was trapped. 

She then went on a date with a guy named Matthew (whom she later married), and Matthew happened to be a Lutheran seminary student who had the same passion for community and caring for those in need as she did. Reluctantly she went with him to a Lutheran church, and she loved the liturgy.  She called it “choreographed sacredness,” she called it. “It felt like a gift that had been caretaken by generations of the faithful and handed to us to live out and caretake and hand off.”  That sounds like the Episcopal Church, doesn’t it? 

Grace, however, was the key for her conversion.  She hadn’t learned about grace in the church where she grew up.  There she had mostly learned a bunch of rules she had to follow lest Jesus be angry with her.  “But I did learn about grace,” she said, “from sober drunks who managed to stop drinking by giving their will over to the care of God and who then tried like hell to live a life according to spiritual principles.” In the Lutheran church (like the Episcopal Church), she found the centrality of grace. 

Nadia found resurrection – new life, restoration, and reconciliation.  The resurrection of Jesus in the new garden, lived out in a community of grace.  She’s one of countless people whose lives have been transformed by Jesus’ resurrection.  She didn’t turn her life around and then come to Jesus.  She came to Jesus as she was, and he loved her as she was, and then gave her grace and offered her a new life trusting him, doing her darnedest to follow in his ways, and accepting his grace when she messed up.  That’s life in the new garden.  

In the new garden, we don’t hide behind fig leaves.  In the new garden of Jesus’ resurrection, we walk with Jesus as we are and we allow his grace to heal us.  In the new garden of Jesus resurrection, we follow Jesus, we trust in him, we follow where he leads, and we receive grace when we don’t follow all that well.  Out of the depths of despair, sitting beside whatever tomb we have made, we see Jesus who calls us to him by name, who holds us, gives us grace and new life in his new garden.  Amen.