Into the Garden

A Sermon by: Rev. Gusti Linnea Newquist
Easter Sunday—March 31, 2013 

John 20:1-18 

 

Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed!

And so we shout another Alleluia. As loud as we can. And another Alleluia! As long as we can. And another Alleluia! In as many languages as we can. With our choir and our orchestra leading the way. As they have so beautifully—and so powerfully—through our introit, and our anthem, and our hymns.

Christ is Risen!

Christ is Risen indeed!

Alleluia!

Alleluia!

Alleluia!

But there is another strain weaving its way through our singing and our shouting and our clapping.

Even in this lush garden of grace that is our Resurrection Sunday, even surrounded by the bountiful beauty of God’s abundant life that is the Christian faith, Mary is still weeping. As so many of us are. Because the trauma of a cross is still with her, even as she tries to put her life back together in peace.

This is why, after all, Mary has come to the garden this morning. To put her life back together. To seek the “peace of Christ,” as we say in the church. To find a way out of no way. Which is God’s way. Someway.

And according to the Gospel of John, she comes empty-handed. There are no spices and ointments in John’s story, as there are in the other gospel versions. There is simply a woman, whose life has been torn apart by violence, coming into a garden, seeking some solace after everything she thought she could depend on has literally vanished into the air. And she weeps. As any of us would.

In hindsight we can say that she doesn’t get it. Or chide her for doubting. Or point to Peter or the so-called Beloved Disciple as the ones with true faith.

But as far as I am concerned this right here is the miracle of Easter! Before the empty tomb. Before the encounter with “the gardener.” Before the recognition of the risen Christ and the call to tell the world, a wounded and weeping—yet tenacious and courageous—Mary simply shows up. In the garden of grace. Seeking the peace that passes understanding.

And she does not leave until she finds it!

And for those of us who might have trouble shouting alleluia this morning, the good news of the gospel is that this is how a resurrection really begins! Not through blind faith in something we can’t ever really understand, but in the simple act of showing up when all seems lost. And hoping for a healing. And not ever giving up until it comes.

The thing about what Mary does, according to the Gospel of John, that is such a powerful act of resurrection faith, is that she refuses to run away from the thing that brings her down. Because the thing about the garden, with the tomb, into which Jesus is placed, and to which Mary shows up on this Resurrection Sunday, with tenacity and with courage, is that it just so happens to grow in the very same place where Jesus is crucified.

Let me say that again.

The garden of grace to which Mary goes on Easter Sunday morning grows in the very same place where Jesus is crucified!.

Which means that Mary goes to tend the tomb, and seek the peace of Christ, and meet the gardener, who turns into the risen “Rabbouni” in the very same place where she witnessed the cross.

Which means that in order to meet the peace that passes understanding—which is the root of the reason Mary comes into the garden in the first place—she must summon the strength to return to the scene of the crime. To face once again the very same ground of the worst that humanity can do. Where the tree of the knowledge of evil has branched out for all time in the cross that took the life of Christ. 

And in order to meet the peace that passes understanding—which is the root of the reason Mary comes into the garden in the first place—she must dare instead to tend in that ground of the seeming victory of evil, a garden of grace, cultivated to care for a broken body and a weeping woman and a pair of rushing disciples. With a tree of the fruit of life growing in its place.

This is how resurrection flourishes, my friends!

For Jesus. For Mary. For us.

When we show up in the garden of our goodness gone awry, with the courage to look evil right in the face, and instead of giving in to despair holding fast even still to the core goodness of God and of one another. And then planting a lily. And watching it bloom, by the grace of our resurrecting God, into the garden we were created to tend all along.

The early church called it the re-opening of Paradise, this flourishing of life in the face of evil. And they said that it is Jesus who leads us there. Into the garden of a new creation. Through our baptism. Where we can finally and forever become the beloved community we were always created to be. Cultivating the fruits of peace and reconciliation and wisdom and love. With a table to sustain us. And a word of memory and hope to guide us.

This is what we at Madison Square have been trying to do in our Lenten Season of Discerning Christ’s Peace. We may not have said it consciously in these past forty days, but what we really have been doing is following Jesus—and Mary—back into that garden of grace, in the hope of an Easter alleluia.

We may not really “get” what the resurrection is really about. We may still doubt what is happening to us. We may still come with our wounds and our weeping. But the simple fact we have shown up is the root of our resurrection miracle!

Because as we have been seeking the peace that passes understanding—in this garden of grace we now dare to call “the church”—eight new members have heard the voice of “Rabbouni” calling their name to join with this community of faith. They have shown up with courage and grace and tenacity in this season of discerning the peace that passes understanding and they will not leave until they have known healing and hope. They have joined all the rest of us in confronting the crosses that have brought us to their knees, and lamenting the fear that binds us to our bombs and our bullets and our bullying, and praying for the grace to “bury the hatchet” with the ones we need to forgive and the ones who need to as to forgive us.

And they have, in simply showing up, and tending the garden in the face of the cross, met in the risen Christ the peace that passes understanding.

And so we now join them in re-affirming the covenant of their baptism, as the “portal to Paradise” the early church believed it to be. As a sign and a seal of the grace of God made known in Christ. As an invitation to a life of resurrection: of showing up, and cultivating courage, and feasting on the fruit of the tree of life in this resurrection garden Christ now calls us to tend. No matter what despair would lead us to weep.

So come into the garden on this Easter Sunday morning: Anne B, Thomas F, Grecia L, David M, Marisela M, Robert R, Ty R, and Kimberly S. Come into the garden all the rest of us! Whether you are weeping or whooping or wailing or wondering. Simply show up to meet the peace that passes understanding. And hear the voice of the risen Christ saying to you always: Bienvenidos, people of God! Bienvenidos, people of God! Bienvenidos, people of God! Welcome home!!!!