Walking in a Garden

John 20: 1-18
March 30, 1997
Easter Sunday, Year B

© John Ewing Roberts, 3/30/97
TODAY'S BAD NEWS

When the horrible news came of yet another senseless mass suicide in the name of sick religion, I wondered yet again, "How can people learn to tell the difference between sick religion and healthy religion?"

There on the screen was videotape of that poor, marginal, charismatic, dead man who led a group of computer literate, biblically illiterate people to their deaths. As I listened to him speak of Jesus, I longed for some cogent analysis by the television reports. (We need a weekly series that deals with religious issues beyond sound bites!) Those miserable cult members had made an ancient theological blunder in thinking that the body was evil, a container to be escaped from! The Gnostics were just as wrong when they had a play on the Greek word, soma, meaning "body," and sema, meaning "tomb." The body was a tomb from which we must seek escape, they wrongly believed. On Easter Sunday surely we can get it right - the resurrection of the body. Jesus was no disembodied spirit, but someone who ate fish, broke bread, and offered his body to human touch. Theological blunders do indeed have serious consequences.

But my major issue was the question about distinguishing sick religion from healthy resurfaced. I would like to take it as the first of four Easter Sunday questions in an effort to get us beyond sick religion and beyond sound bite commentary into the full reality of the resurrection of Jesus and what it means for our lives.

QUESTION ONE - HOW DO YOU RECOGNIZE JESUS?

"How do you recognize Jesus - not the Jesus of those who distorted Jesus into their own twisted image, but the Jesus who makes people whole?" Mary Magdalene would answer that it is not all that easy to recognize Jesus. She was as close to him as anyone, but didn't recognize him until he called her name. And that's the first answer to the question, "How do you recognize Jesus, the Jesus of healthy religion?"

He calls your name - something transformational happens that calls you forward out of a lonely, victim mentality into a healthy, active, engaged life. "Do not cling to me, feeling sorry for yourself and possessive about me," Jesus said. "Go and tell the others what you have seen. Don't stay in the garden with me, pretending that you and I share joys none other has ever known. There is joy to be shared abroad. Good news to tell. Get out of the garden with its dew and roses, and get on with your life for my sake and yours!"

(Did you notice that Mary did not do what Jesus told her to do - that is, to tell the disciples about the ascension? She did not understand the ascension. It is hard to do theology with tears in your eyes! But she did tell what she experienced - "I have seen the Lord!" - and that is all Jesus really expects any of us to do.

"How do you recognize the Jesus who makes us whole?"

You accept the transformational commission; you get out of your self pity and victim mentality; you go and tell others; and the more the you on his behalf, the better you get to know him. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren," he said over and over in Matthew 25, "you have done it unto me." In other words, you can recognize the face of Jesus in the faces of those unto whom you minister.

QUESTION TWO - WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO RESURRECTION?

I don't know Martin McKibbin, a history teacher at McDonogh School, but I am fascinated by a teaching device he presented his students. He gave them an assignment - to rewrite the past by writing essays on questions like these:
- What if Hitler had succeeded in his childhood quest to become a famous artist or architect?
- What if England and France had called Hitler's bluff at Munich?
- What if Rosa Parks had not refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, buss in 1955?
- What if Richard Nixon had demanded a recount and defeated John F. Kennedy in 1960?
- What if Edward Kennedy had not driven off the bridge at Chappaquiddick?
- What if Ronald Reagan had been a more popular actor and had not entered politics?
- What if the Japanese navel code had been broken before Pearl Harbor?
- What if Robert E. Lee had accepted command of the Union Army when it was offered?
The student answered that if Lee had taken command of the Union Army, with its greater resources, he would have defeated the Confederacy in a few months.
- What if the bomb that landed in Fort McHenry's powder magazine during the British bombardment in 1814 had detonated?
The student answered that if the bomb had exploded at Fort McHenry, the British attack on Baltimore might have succeeded, giving them a foothold to re-establish control over the former colonies. My own answer is that at Oriole games we would not sing The Star Spangled Banner but God Save the Queen!
("What Might Have Been," by Robert A. Erlandson, Baltimore Sun, March 8, 1995, Section B, pp. 1 and 3)

PAUL'S WHAT IF THERE HAD BEEN NO RESURRECTION?

- What if God had not raised Jesus from the dead?

Paul raised this important "What if?" question in I Corinthians 15. His answer was, "If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain," and "we are found to be misrepresenting God." "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins." "Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. "If in this life we who are in Christ have only hope, we are of all people most to be pitied." (I Corinthians 15: 14-19)

"But in fact," Paul continues, "Christ has been raised from the dead....For as by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (I Corinthians 15: 20-22)

NO RESURRECTION OF JESUS, THE CHRIST

Notice that I asked, "What if God had not raised Jesus from the dead?" but Paul spoke of Christ. Christians speak of Jesus Christ as if Jesus were his first name and Christ his last.

Actually Christ is not so much a name as a title. It is Greek for a Hebrew word which means "the anointed one." And throughout the scriptures there were many who were anointed. The anointed one was the agent of God for bringing the Kingdom of God. The messiah held a functional office, and that function was to bring in the Kingdom of God. The Messiah was not an end in himself.

It be better to say "Jesus the Christ" (meaning "Jesus the Anointed One par excellence) and to understand clearly that when Christians speak of Christ, we are speaking of Jesus, God's supreme agent in bringing the Kingdom of God to us and us to the Kingdom of God.

As an observant Jew, Paul knew what "messiah" meant. He had an encounter on the Damascus Road (Acts 9) which convinced him that Jesus was anointed of God to bring in the Kingdom. In Romans 9-11 he grapples with what this means for Jews and ends up saying a variety of things about the Jews:
"My heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved....the word is very near you, on your lips and in your heart....because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved...' (Romans 10: 1, 8-9)

That sure sounds like the Jews will not be saved unless they become Christians. But that was chapter 10. In chapter 11 Paul begins by saying, "I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means!...God has not rejected his people."

He continues by speaking of Israel as an olive tree, and of Gentile Christians as a wild olive shoot grafted on to the tree. He suggested that the natural branches will be grated back into their own olive tree, and that "all Israel will be saved" because "the gifts and call of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11: 17, 23, 26, 29).

So what's the deal? Are Jews lost? Has God rejected his people? Will all Israel be saved? When? How? All scripture is inspired, but it is not all lucid to the likes to us. Paul doesn't finally resolve the issue. He ends this "on the one hand" and "on the other hand" discussion by throwing up his hands and leaving the matter up to God - the right thing to do!

"O the depths of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

"`For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?'"

"For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." (Romans 11: 33-34, 36)

QUESTIONS THREE - ARE THERE ANY OTHER BIBLE PASSAGES WHICH CAN HELP ON THE RESURRECTION?

I realize this is not easy to follow, but I promised you something more challenging than sound bites. The resurrection is important enough for us to grapple with it seriously. There is help by looking at some links between Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden in Genesis, and Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the garden outside in empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday.

To trace these connections let us go back to Paul in I Corinthians 15. Remember his answer to the "what if" question, "What if Jesus the Christ had not been raised from the dead? "In fact," Paul asserted, "Christ has been raised from the dead....For as by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (I Corinthians 15: 20-22)

Paul's comment about Adam and Christ suggests Genesis and the temptation story. We pray every Sunday at the beginning of our service, "Lead us not into temptation," but not every one takes temptation seriously.

Rita Mae Brown said, "Lead me not into temptation. I can find it myself." Oscar Wilde wrote, "I can resist everything but temptation." (cited in the Public Affairs Television resource guide, Talking About Genesis [New York: Doubleday] 1996, p. 48)

Paul believed that what Adam and Eve did in yielding to temptation has a profound effect on you and me. And he believed that what Jesus did in not yielding to temptation also has a profound effect on you and me. "For as by a man came death, by a man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." (I Corinthians 15: 21-22) Adam got it wrong, but in Jesus God makes a fresh start, and Jesus, the "second Adam," gets it right.

I think that just as Paul links the resurrection to the temptation story in Genesis 3, John 20 makes similar connections. After yielding to temptation, Adam and Eve "heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called and said, `Where are you?...'" (Genesis 3: 8-9)

Fast forward to another garden, the garden outside the tomb in John 20. The time is the first day of the week, eight days from the beginning, a day of new beginnings, a day for a new creation. The sinful woman is not Eve, but Mary Magdalene. It is not the cool of the evening but early, "while it was still dark." When she found that the tomb was empty, she ran and got Peter and another disciple, probably John. They ran back. Peter looked around and drew no conclusion which is recorded. John looked around and believed. But then they went home.

Mary stayed. No time for running. I can see her walking in the garden, trying to make sense of it all, trying to sort out her feelings, trying to process whatever had happened. When Jesus speaks to her, she supposed him to be the gardener. Her conclusion may strike you as obvious, and it is. But is also highly evocative.

Julian of Norwich describes a gardener in Showings:

He was to be a gardener, digging and ditching and sweating and turning the soil over and over and to dig deep down, and to water the plants at the proper time. And he was to persevere in his work, and make sweet streams to run, and find plenteous fruit to grow, which he was to bring before the Lord and serve him with to his liking. (cited by Jean A. Niedert, Lectionary Homiletics, March 1997, Vol. VIII, No. 4, p. 38)

A modern poet has put together the Garden of Eden and the Garden Tomb, Adam and the Christ, Eve and Mary Magdalene.

"Waking in a garden at the close of day,
Adam tried to hide him when he heard God say:
`Why are you so frightened, why are you afraid?
You have brought the winter in, made the flowers fade.'

"Walking in a garden at the break of day,
Mary asked the gardener where the body lay;
but he turned toward her, smiled at her and said:
`Mary, spring is here to stay, only death is dead.'"

(Hilary Greenwood, "Walking in a Garden," A New Hymnal for Colleges and Schools, edited by Jeffry Rowthorn and Russell Schulz-Widmar [New Haven": Yale University Press] 1992, No. 282)

QUESTION FOUR - WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES THE RESURRECTION MAKE IN YOUR LIFE?

Well, I've been hopping all over the scriptures this morning: John 20, I Corinthians 15, and Genesis 3, but we need all the help we can find to deal with something as awesome as the resurrection.

What matters is not so much what you believe about resurrection but that you believe God in Jesus the Christ can raise you up with new life and new hope.

What matters is that an empty tomb in Jerusalem on an Easter morning almost 2,000 years ago means that from this moment on you do not have to have an empty life.

Did you ever notice that no one ever claimed to have seen Jesus rise or be raised? The tomb was empty - to some that proved he was alive; to others that the body was not there, perhaps stolen or hidden, but not necessarily alive.

What convinced people that Jesus had been raised by God from the dead was not something they saw, "not the absence of his corpse but his living presence. And it has been so ever since." (Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus [New York: Harper and Row] 1989, pp. 219-220)

Easter means dealing with that presence and living through its absence.

The three people who ran and then walked in the garden on that first Easter Sunday provide three models for dealing with the absence and presence of the risen Christ.

     1. John
Easter means that like John, we will sometimes believe . He came as the beloved disciple, ready to love, ready to hope, and that is why he was able to believe (although the content of his belief is not stated, and the content of our belief is often unclear, ambiguous, "a work in progress.")

     2. Peter
Easter means that like Peter, we will sometimes be puzzled. We are only told that Peter looked around, puzzled and curious. I can see him walking in the garden, pacing, with brow furrowed. Like him, we need to stick with it. We will need some time - perhaps the rest of our lives, perhaps all eternity - to take in the enormous reality that God lives in Jesus, that Jesus lives in God, and we can in Jesus the Christ, begin to understand what Jesus meant when he said, "Because I live, you shall live also." (John 14: 19)

     3. Mary Magdalene
Easter means that like Mary Magdalene, we will in spite of our pain and disappointment need to go to the place where there is something of Jesus, if only his body. We need to stay there in our grief and pain long enough to hear him call our name, long enough to experience some continuity with what had been, and to hear him bid us go out of the garden and to get on with our lives, to announce in word and deed, "I have seen the Lord." (John 20: 18)

© John Ewing Roberts
Woodbrook Baptist Church
(Formerly Eutaw Place Baptist Church)
Baltimore, Maryland

[This sermon is for circulation within the Woodbrook congregation and may not be reproduced without permission.]