sermon excerpts: "The Gardener Did It" (John 20: 1-18)

... Mary, at the tomb, gets Peter and John to check things out and they confirm the body of Christ is missing. Overcome by loss, confusion and she does not recognize Jesus as he stands there before her in his risen, resurrected glory. Why would she? It would make no sense for her to expect to see him, as best she could figure, who else would be out there at that time of day … the groundskeeper, the gardener?

And we find again a suggestion that Christ lives on in each of us. In the same way that we can for a minute see a glimpse of a friend or family member in a complete stranger. Or the way memories come flooding back of a person or a place through some random trigger. The risen Christ seen as a gardener reminds me of this.

We are comforted that life is bigger than our own experience – there is a universe beyond our understanding and we have connections by our spirit to this great mystery. Jesus warns Mary to not touch him and this tells of the fact that our spirits are never limited to our bodies. I don’t know if I will ever have a satisfactory answer for what exactly happened that morning in the garden – why Mary didn’t know who Jesus was, being the least of the questions.

Is it a case of soul-rending grief leading to a case of mistaken identity? We’ve come a long way from that first Easter. We know the full story, of Jesus’ resurrection, of the formation of a new religion, and the world changed by 2000 years of Christianity. But are we so different as people from that time, is the world a better place?

While we may as individuals be changed by the conviction of our faith, comforted by the power of life over death, assured by the promise of deliverance, does the world believe this? So much of our medical technology and philosophy is focused on fighting death, preserving life at all costs. Democracy, socialism, communism, dictatorships all pale in the light of Christ’s commands to love and serve one another.

And despite the lesson from the guy in the garden, we tend to discount the divinity in others. And in ourselves. We know how fallible and imperfect we are, especially the driver who cuts us off in traffic, the telemarketer who interrupts our dinner, the customer or proprietor who insists on being a jerk … can the glory of God’s goodness and love for all creation be found in mere mortals?

For this reason, we join together as fellow travelers on the journey of faith. Together, despite our flaws, we are stronger than alone. Together we learn, and grow, and teach lessons of life, love and faith. As we meet people in our lives, as we remember them when they leave our lives, we celebrate the spark of life and rebirth that our Creator has placed within each of us. Gardener and God, Christ goes before us.

Together, we dine together at the table, recalling again the events of the last supper, the Passover of betrayal, the prayers of anguish in a garden. But foremost, we remember the new command – to remember Christ in the ordinary acts of eating and drinking, tasting of earthly flavours, that we might know that our faith in action is ordinary and extraordinary, mundane and divine both.