In the Garden

Rev. Karla Miller
The Eliot Church of Newton
April 4 2010
John 20: 1-18

You never know what is going to happen in the garden do you?
You never know what you might find.

I remember as a child, my Grandma Miller had an enormous garden. Every summer, the earth she tilled and tended would yield squash and watermelon, potatoes, peas and carrots, and yes, rutabagas and celery and onions. My favorites were her raspberry bushes that were stingy with their produce. They were the objects of treasure hunts, and whenever we discovered a crimson ripe raspberry, it was like finding a diamond.

My first try at gardening was about 9 years ago, when I lived in a duplex in Western North Carolina, and I grew tomatoes in big giant pots on my deck.
I was so excited. I consulted Martha Stewart on how to prune the suckers back, and quizzed my stepfather Cal, tomato grower extraordinaire, on his best practices.
The first ripened tiny yellow pear tomatoes, were gorgeous, and tasted like glory when I popped them in my mouth, straight off the vine. Miraculous!


In New England, however, my gardening attempts haven’t been all that…exquisite.
Like I said, you never know what you are going to find in the garden.
The first summer we were here, I planted perennials—a hollyhock to remind me of my grandmother, and mint, because I had heard it grows like crazy.
Aren’t perennials supposed to come back the next summer?

I did manage to grow a yellow pepper, but when I went to harvest it, I found that a critter had beat me to it.
Don’t even GET ME STARTED on last years tomatoes.

It’s not all bad. I have some lovely Shasta daisies and Japanese Iris’ from Elizabeth Baker’s yard—and I think they are healthy because they got a good start somewhere else. The tulip bulbs I planted last fall are coming up.
Maybe, this will be my year.

You never know what you will find in the garden.

I often wonder what Mary was expecting to happen in the garden,
that first Easter so long ago.
Mary cloaked in the shadows of the night, seeks the tomb of her beloved teacher and friend. Why was she going there? This particular gospel doesn’t tell us why. Perhaps she was going to make sure the crucifixion hadn’t just been a hellish nightmare, that perhaps there would be no tomb. Denial is a stage of grief, after all….

Maybe she was so completely bereft, that she just needed to collapse in despair near Jesus’ lifeless body, the closest she could even dream to ever be with him, ever again.

I am pretty sure she wasn’t expecting an empty tomb.
When she found one, she was so surprised, she ran for back-up!
Like I said, you never know what you will find in the garden.

Simon Peter and the other disciple run a foot race to the tomb,
and what they saw when they looked inside the grave was—
A whole bunch of nothing, except the remnants of death,
Discarded grave clothes.
They go home, without a word.
It’s all very confusing, except one of the disciples “believed” but we don’t know what he believed because the text also notes that they did not yet “understand the scripture that he might rise from the dead.”
Perhaps he finally believed that Jesus was really gone. Really dead.
In any case, there was nothing left for them in the garden.

Mary, however, lingers in the garden,
Near the empty tomb,
Weeping. Thinking that someone has stolen her Jesus.
She is not ready to accept his absence.
When she peers into the tomb, instead of seeing grave clothes.
She meets angels…
Angels that somehow turn her away from the empty tomb and death,
And practically into the arms of the living Christ,
who in speaking her name,
brings her back to life with the Good News.
“He is alive. I have SEEN him.”
Wouldn’t you have liked to be a fly on the wall when she burst in upon the disciples and made THAT announcement?

It’s a great story, right?
Empty tombs and angels, gardens and running disciples and a back from the dead Jesus.
I confess, for a long time I didn’t take the resurrection seriously—I didn’t need it—because I loved Jesus—the Jesus who walked on earth, who fed poor people and touched lepers and spoke to women.
I loved Jesus who told me to treat others as myself and told stories about lost coins being found and comparing the kingdom of God to a woman baking bread.
The only reason, I thought, we had these resurrection stories was that the ancient writers of the gospels had to make Jesus out to be a super hero in the context of Greco-Roman culture in which there was a lot of competition with those other gods, like Zeus and his consorts. Resurrection? Empty tomb? A Literary trope, that was it.


However, as Barbara Brown Taylor notes, maybe the empty tomb is not the point of Easter. She writes:

Resurrection does not square with anything else we know about physical human life on earth…The resurrection is the one and only event in Jesus’ life that was entirely between him and God. There were no witnesses whatsoever. No one on earth can say what happened inside that tomb, because no one was there. They all arrived after the fact. Two of them saw clothes. One of them saw angels. Most of them saw nothing at all because they were still in bed that morning, but as it turned out that did not matter because the empty tomb was not the point...
...The point is the encounter with the Living Christ. He had outgrown his tomb, which was too small a focus for the resurrection. The risen one had people to see and things to do. The living one’s business was among the living, to whom he appeared not once but four more times in the Gospel of John. Every time he came to his friends they became stronger, wiser, kinder, more daring. Every time he came to them, they became more like him.

Isn’t this what we want as people of faith?
To become more like Jesus, to be wiser, kinder, more courageous?
My sisters and brothers, the only way only way to do that is to meet the risen Christ in the world in which we live everyday.

Frankly, I need the resurrection.
Every day I crucify others...when I curse the bad drivers in Boston, and still cut them off, when I fail to be present to an outstretched hand in the square, or don’t listen well to my spouse, when I get irritated with someone who isn't playing nice, when my heart breaks as I listen to the news, see the stray dog running loose in traffic.

Everyday I die a thousand little deaths, when I doubt myself and my ability, when I am envious at someone’s success, when I can’t let go of a bad decision, and hold on to anger and resentment.

I need the resurrection, because if there were only crucifying and dying,
there would be no point.
Indeed, the resurrection makes no sense, and it makes all the sense in the world:
Look~~~
The tulips in garden are shooting up and the daffodils are blooming in the parking lot.
Babies are born.
The sun finally came out.
The stranger at the store opened the door for me, and actually smiled.
The birds sang you awake this morning.
I am not alone.
You are not alone,
The check didn’t bounce,
And the dog still loves you,
And maybe even your family….
These are appearances of the living Lord,
And they are love,
And mercy,
Our resurrection stories in the garden of life.

Like I said, you never know what you will find in the garden…
You might even meet the Gardener.
Happy Easter.
Christ has risen,
Alleluia!
Amen.