(a sermon for Easter Sunday, 20 April 2014! see John 20:1-18)
You!
You are a beautiful sight to behold! Seeing you this morning
is like seeing the resurrection of Jesus!
Actually, the first person to see and behold the resurrected
Jesus was Mary, Mary Magdalene. And what a sight that must have been! Imagine
seeing Jesus standing right before you! Imagine what you would feel like, when
you –and everybody else—knew that Jesus had died, that he had been enclosed in
the grave; and then, suddenly, he was standing right before you. Imagine the
heavenly light you would see, and the divine joy pumping your heart!
But No. The Gospel of John is very clear that this was not
the scenario in which Jesus appeared to Mary. Mary, who was the first witness
to the resurrection of Jesus, did not actually recognize Jesus.
What?
Yes, Mary looked up on that first Easter morning and saw
Jesus there, but she mistakenly thought he was the gardener. She has a
conversation with him, “supposing him to be the gardener” (John 20:15).
How in the world did that happen? How could she have not
recognized Jesus? She had been with him for several years, very close to him. (Some
have speculated too close to him!) She might have been the one to have washed
his feet with her hair. Mary was as close to Jesus as anyone. How in the world
did she make that mistake?
One of my favorite paintings of the resurrection is a painting
by Rembrandt, which shows this very scene. There is Mary, weeping in the early
dawn. And there is someone with her, but it doesn’t look like the Jesus we
usually see in religious paintings. When I have shown the slide of that
painting to my classes, out of the blue, it is very rare that someone
identifies that other person in the painting as Jesus.
They don’t recognize Jesus because Rembrandt painted him wearing
a large broad-brimmed hat, a sun hat! And he is clearly carrying some sort of shovel,
a gardening spade. He looks like a common ordinary gardener in the painting,
just as Mary Magdalene is said to have spotted him.
Yes, Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener on that first
Easter, and how could she have made that mistake? She had travelled and
ministered with him, maybe for three years. She had witnessed Jesus’ behavior in
both hard times and easy times.
She had admired Jesus tenderly picking up children just like
… well, just as tenderly as he might be coaxing a young seedling from the
ground. She had listened to Jesus carefully explain some stories just like ….well,
just like he might be tilling and preparing good soil. In fact, many of Jesus’
stories were about the soil, and seeds, and vines and weeds and rocks.
Yes, that has to be the reason Mary saw a gardener before
her! She had witnessed Jesus being a gardener throughout his ministry! Mary had
seen Jesus tear into people, especially the Pharisees, just like a gardener
might tear into some overgrown thicket, cutting away the old growth. Mary had
seen Jesus cut into new growth, too, training and trimming the branches that
were his disciples.
Mary thought Jesus was the gardener, because Jesus is a gardener!
I have a friend who is a delightful gardener. In one of my
classes last week, I asked people to share a moment recently when something
good had happened to them. My gardener friend shared her simple and wondrous
surprise as she went outside to check on her garden after the winter cold, to see
what was coming out of the ground. She naturally did not know which plants
would make it, and which would not. But then, she began to recognize her old
plants, one by one emerging in the Spring ground. She exclaimed, personally, to
each one, “Oh, you made it!” “Oh, you
made it!” She was delighted at each new sprout.
Her remarks reminded me of the line that Tom Key uses in his
musical, Cotton Patch Gospel, the
musical drama shaped by the New Testament translations of the Georgian, Clarence
Jordan. In that musical, after the pain and suffering of crucixion and death,
suddenly there is Jesus on stage, resurrected and back to life. And he is smiling!
His smile is as broad and delightful as a Spring flower. In fact, his smile is
one of sheer astonishment itself. Jesus himself is surprised at his own
resurrection, and the first words out of his resurrection mouth are, “Hey! It
worked!” (It sounds wonderful when Tom Key says it!)
Gardeners get delighted when life blossoms forth from the
ground. In the garden of life, there is no one more delighted than Jesus when
life springs forth. Jesus wants to delight in us today. The gardener Jesus
wants to see us grow.
Yes, Jesus is a gardener. It is Jesus who is the one tilling
and turning soil in our lives. Sometimes that tilling is painful. He digs into
us. He breaks up dirt clods. He turns over the earth below and exposes it to
the sun. Those activities are not always comfortable for us.
But if you are having some earth turned over in your life,
and if you thought it was just a hindrance, a burden, an obstacle, maybe you
are mistaken. Maybe you are mistaken like Mary was mistaken. Maybe the plowing
in your life is being done my Jesus. Maybe it’s the gardener Jesus plowing up
new soil.
Jesus is the one who plants new seeds in our lives. And sometimes
we don’t recognize those seeds. The plants that emerge are unknown and strange
to us, and often frightening. Again, don’t be mistaken. Those new seeds might
come from Jesus.
And Jesus weeds, too. He casts out weeds and pests just like
he casts out demons and illnesses. That’s why Mary thought he was the gardener;
he had cast seven demons, seven pests, from her own life!
Jesus is the also the one who cuts back dead limbs; he prunes.
Hey, sometimes what is being pruned looked perfectly good to us. What is that,
some kind of mistake? No, it isn’t a mistake. It is Jesus. It is Jesus,
pruning, grooming you for new life.
Yes, for new life. That new life confuses us just like it
confused Mary on that first Easter morning. She mistakenly identified Jesus as
the gardener, just like we mistakenly identify the sources of weeding and
pruning and tilling and turning in our own lives. We think those travails come
from somebody else, or something else.
No. The source of that tilling and pruning is Jesus. It is
Jesus cultivating, and preparing you and me, for new life. Jesus is not content
merely to be resurrected by himself. Jesus
is preparing us for resurrection,
too.
Mary, the first witness of resurrection, did not recognize
Jesus at first. She remained confused until something else happened, when a holy
moment occurred. That moment was when Jesus spoke her name to her. He called
her by name. He said one word, “Mary.”
That is when the glory occurred! When Jesus called her by
name, she knew that he was the one who had cast out demons and pulled out weeds
in her own life. He was the one who had loved and coaxed new seeds out of the
ground of her life. He was the one who had pruned her life into shape. Jesus
was the gardener, out watching the soil in the Spring, ready to call each new
plant by name as soon as it poked its sprout out of the ground. Jesus knew her
personally!
Jesus calls each of his new plants by name, and he delights
– he delights! – when we emerge from the
darkness of the earth! Jesus says, “Sam!” and “Mary” and “Billy” and “Bubba”
and “Juan” and “Maria” and “Mohammed” and “Fatima” and “Chang” and “Ying.” And
he calls every single one of us by name.
Jesus knows us like a gardener knows us, like a holy
gardener who tends to resurrection in the Spring, like a gardener who knows
that seeds don’t die when they slip into the ground and into the darkness of
the grave.
Whoever you are, and whatever you have been going through
lately, Jesus speaks your name this morning. We may look like the same old
people this morning. We may look like we did last year or last season.
But we have been transformed. We have been turned and
tilled. We have been weeded and pruned. We have been transformed in these past
few days, when we were blinded by crucifixion pain at noon, when we slept in
the darkness, and when we wept in the early dawn. When we fall into the ground,
we live!
Yes, I am delighted this morning by Easter, delighted by the
resurrection of Jesus. Jesus lives! But my delight pales in comparison with the
Master Gardener, Jesus the Gardener, who is even more delighted with the
resurrection that occurs in each of the plants in his garden.
God wants to share Easter with us today. God wants to
delight in us, we who pop our heads up out of sleep and darkness and winter
this early morning. “Welcome happy morning,” age to age shall say, and God says
it, too.
“Hey, you made it!” “ Hey, it worked!”
Welcome! Christ is risen! We are risen! Alleluia!
The Very Reverend Samuel G. Candler
Dean of the Cathedral of St. Philip
