One of my first contemplative moments at Christ Church was praying with a parishioner in our Sanctuary Garden. I remember standing next to him in prayer looking out at the beautifully landscaped grounds thinking of it as a vision of new life. I imagined life, deep in the soil, among the bricks and ivy, uncoiling and spiraling upwards, upward towards God. In the garden, among the great souls buried there, there pervades the strong belief that life is changed not ended at death.
I do not think it was by accident that the first resurrection appearance was in a garden. The Bible begins in a garden; and it is in the garden of the empty tomb all salvation history bends forward from Adam and Eve’s prideful disobedience to the humble obedience of Jesus and comes to fruition and conclusion. All four gospels agree there was an empty tomb. The biblical texts only vary on who was present in the garden on that first Easter morning.
John writes in his Gospel that there were just three eyewitnesses: Peter, John, and Mary. The two men were Jesus’ closest disciples. Mary was a close disciple of Jesus, too. There is nothing in the Gospels to say she was a woman of infamy. Jesus saved her from a nervous disorder and he gave her a new life. Naturally, she would be grief stricken. But, it was not Mary but Peter and John who were the first to look into the tomb and find it empty. Peter saw and left for home. But, John saw and believed.
Faith first, miracles second. This is the key to John’s entire gospel – it is about faith in Jesus. According to John, Jesus spoke often about the Son of Man being raised from the dead. Seeing the empty tomb in the garden, John knew in faith that Jesus had risen from the dead. Writing his Gospel many years later, John gives seven accounts of Jesus giving signs or miracles that pointed to the truth that he was the Son of God.
I am reminded of the story of faith called “The Tightrope Walker” told by Bishop Michael Curry:
There was a tightrope walker who did amazing things. All over Paris he would do tightrope acts at dazzling heights. Then he had succeeding acts when he would do it blindfolded and then he would walk the tightrope blindfolded again pushing a wheelbarrow. An American promoter read about this man’s feats and invited him to do his act over the Niagara Falls.
After much negotiating and much fanfare, scores of people came to Niagara Falls to see the tightrope walker do his act. The first time he crossed easily.
The second time he crossed the fall blindfolded without a hitch to wild and ecstatic applause. The crowd goes wild and the tightrope walker comes to the promoter and asks him if he believes he can walk the tightrope blindfolded and push a wheelbarrow.
The promoter gushes that of course he can do it. The walker asks the promoter again does he really believe he can do it? Yes, the promoter replies confidently that he can do it. “Good,” says the tightrope walker, “then get in the wheelbarrow!”
Faith first, miracles second; and yet, how often do we say we have faith in God and believe in Jesus Christ but refuse to get into the wheelbarrow? Faith is not absolute certainty, but a readiness to explore the mystery. It is not a method of finding all the answers, but living with the questions. Like hope, faith is an attitude of the mind, and orientation of the spirit.
Daily you and I may grapple with uncertainty and anxiety. We can become skeptical when bad things happen to good people. Our hearts can break when we see injustice in the world. Stresses in life can make us mad and they can make us weep. Faith is tested as such times; and it is in such moments, such unexpected moments, when we seem so isolated, so disconsolate, and so vulnerable, that Jesus, unbidden and unrecognizable, comes to us. Those shuttered personal moments recall the broken heart of Mary at the Empty tomb.
Mary could not leave the garden with Peter and John. She was weighed down with grief. Sadness was her only companion. At first she did not recognize Jesus. She only noticed a gardener standing nearby. It takes his voice and it takes a name, her name, “Mary.” No greater recognition scene in all of history is there than the one between Jesus and Mary in the Garden. And all she wants to do is hold him.
All through Jesus’ ministry people wanted to hold him, touch him or feel him. The woman with the hemorrhage needed only to touch his garment. The unnamed woman with the jar of perfume wanted to anoint his feet. Peter and John wanted to be the ones to sit closest to Jesus. The blind man at the well asks Jesus to heal him with his saliva and a bit of earth.
I remember years ago being in Washington, D.C., and there was a parade for Bobby Kennedy. The crowd was about six people deep and so I couldn’t see Kennedy but I could hear people cheering. Several people ahead of me shouted out, “I see him!” And a little later, further up in the crowd, I heard a young woman shout to no one in particular, “I touched his hand!”
When Jesus tells Mary not to hold him and that he is ascending, he says to Mary and anyone who would be his disciples that we cannot hold on to him in the old ways. We cannot keep things as they once were.
Mary’s faith in him and acceptance of this fact moves her to a new understanding of her relationship with Jesus. The teacher she once knew, the teacher she loved is still the same and more. The world could not hold him. Death could not hold him. Through his resurrection, Jesus brings Mary and all of creation into a new relationship with God.
Mary’s friend, her dearest friend, Jesus, would never leave her again and now be as near to her as breathing. A personal relationship with Jesus becomes more personal. It is no wonder that many people love the old chestnut hymn, In the Garden, and its refrain:
And he walks with me and talks to meEaster awakes us; and an awakened person in Christ, alert to the stirrings of the soil, the beauty of the earth, and the enduring mystery of our lives and of Life comes a deep delight, a growing gladness, a ripe readiness and an active affirmation. The joy of life brings the promise and possibility of a renewed hope that all creation is infused with grace and glory.
And tells me I am his own,
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
Our Sanctuary Garden points to our Easter faith. It is as if we planted a sign that said, “Christ is alive!” And, if we have faith, we will see other signs all around us that proclaim the resurrection. “Resurrection is not written in just books alone but in every bud of springtime,” writes Martin Luther. April is resurrection month. And the whole direction of Christian faith is upwards.
“We believe verily to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” it reads in the 1928 prayer book. Today and during the season of Easter, we are invited “upwards” to do just that… have faith and see God’s goodness in the risen Christ.
Let us pray:
Lift us, O God, to those higher regions where our spirits can grow to their full stature. Give us new life in Christ and help us to share it with others so that they too may know and believe the joy that comes through your great love. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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