Easter. In The Garden.

What if resurrection wasn't "Plan B," but God's plan all along? What if the answer isn't in the tomb but in the garden whose roots go all the way back to the first garden in Eden?

Easter will always be a special day a for me. Nine years ago, on Easter Sunday, this church began right here in our backyard. The garden was our sanctuary. The grass, our pews.

While we’ve graduated to actual chairs since then, we still hold tight to that first spark that ignited it all. A simple question of curiosity: “What if?”

What if Jesus meant what he said? What if living this way could transform the world, or at least help us discover our purpose within it?

​What if we could be a community that actually loved God, loved others, and served both? Those two words - what if - have led us here today.

Outside of my own family, nearly everyone from that first Sunday is gone. According to the books on church growth, that might look like failure. But what if this church was meant to grow exactly like the garden it was planted in? Always evolving, always shifting from one season to the next.

​In our garden, some plants bloom for a season then die off, leaving behind nutrients for whatever comes next. Others scatter seeds in the wind, that take root in fields we may never see.

​There’s a sacred truth found in the soil beneath our feet. A holy reminder of our Easter hope: In the darkness of the earth, God is constantly bringing new life from seeds buried long ago.

Our Easter reading comes from the gospel of John. This is the second part of the story. The stone has already been rolled away. Peter and John have already raced to the tomb and discovered their friend’s body is gone.

When everyone else returns home, one brave soul stays behind in the garden searching for answers to a mystery that has echoed throughout time.

 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”  When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not touch me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and she told them that he had said these things to her. 
​                                                                                                             John 20:11-18

Each of the four gospel offers its own unique perspective on this story. But the empty tomb is always the main focus. It's what Easter is always about. Somewhere along the way, though, the narrative shifted from a “divine mystery” into something more like a "holy rescue mission."

The assumption was that there was a cosmic design flaw in humanity, that forced God to go into emergency mode to "save" us.
 
This atonement theory, as it’s called, argues human beings are sinful by nature because of what happened in the Garden of Eden. And the only way to fix this “mistake” is to appease God with a sacrifice that only God could make. Enter Jesus and the cross.

This is what I was taught as a kid. But as an adult, it always troubled me.  Why would God need something that only God could give God’s self?

But what if that wasn’t the purpose for the incarnation or crucifixion? And what if they killed Jesus simply because they didn’t like what he had to say.
 
I mean, how well do we care for the widows and orphans, muchless the strangers who live among us? Never mind being gracious and merciful and forgiving to our enemies. I think if Jesus were here today, the results would be the same.
 
So what if Easter isn’t about giving God a sacrifice, but about God giving us unconditional love? What if resurrection wasn't "Plan B," but the plan all along? We always look for the answer in the tomb, but what if it’s in the garden whose roots go all the way back to the first garden in Eden?
 
There’s a reason Richard Rohr calls Eden "Original Goodness." Here, God looked at the physical world—the dirt, the trees, the skunks and stars—and called it all good. And where God declared human beings “Very good.” This pronouncement was God’s “Yes” to life, stamped into creation from the get-go. From that Divine “Yes,” all things evolved.
 
Fast-forward to another garden. The garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus was arrested. This is where the "No" of the world collided with the "Yes" of God. In this place of anguish and surrender, Jesus shows us how the "old self" must be released so the "new self" can emerge.
 
Which takes us to this unnamed garden, where Mary Magdalene mistakes her beloved teacher for the gardener. It’s an honest mistake. Dead people are supposed to stay dead. That’s the law of nature.
 
But what if Mary wasn’t mistaken? What if she is revealing the same truth the soil has been whispering since Eden? That resurrection doesn’t defy the laws of nature, it fulfills it. Creation has been teaching us this for eons.
 
A sunflower knows it must die so her seeds can rise and multiply. A mighty tree knows that it will one day fall, decompose, and return to the soil so it can be reborn into something new. From the earth mountains arise and erode.
 
As science has proven, every carbon atom in our bodies comes from something that died before us. And when we die, those atoms continue on, transforming into something new. Death and resurrection. That is the pattern of creation. It’s the template baked into the earth.
 
What if Easter is no more a mystery than the Big Bang? I mean, if everything that exists was once compressed into a single point, then something had to die for this garden to be born.

In the context of our faith, if God can turn the death of stars into galaxies filled with life, then surely God can make Easter out of Good Friday.
 
As Rowen Williams writes, “There is no situation in the universe in the face of which God is at a loss.”
 
God’s not demanding a sacrifice or scrambling to fix a broken plan. Resurrection is God’s “Yes” knitted into life itself, so death never has the final word. God does. I think this aligns with what Jesus said, "I have come so that you might have life, and life abundant."
 
Maybe that’s what incarnation is about. God in flesh and blood, walking among us, showing us how to live fully and faithfully, without the fear of death getting in the way.
 
When Jesus greets Mary, he doesn’t say, "Behold, I have paid your debt!"  No. He simply says, "Mary." He calls her back to her original goodness. He doesn’t see her as a "fallen creature" in need of fixing. He sees a beloved child who God already declared “Very good.”
 
These are the same words God pronounced over you and me. The very words our world has trouble believing. Which might explain why after calling Mary by name, Jesus doesn’t demand to be worshiped. Instead, he sends her to “tell the others.”
 
That is still the Easter call. Our purpose for this life. To go and scatter the gospel like seeds in the wind so it can produce the fruits of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
 
That’s exactly what Jesus did with his life. Because that’s what divine gardeners are called to do. They cultivate and tend to the always-evolving, always-blossoming garden of life.

So what if Mary was right to see Jesus as the gardener? The one sent to till the soil of our lives so something beautiful can grow.
 
Just as Jesus cultivated a life of compassion and mercy,  we are sent to do the same: tilling this soil with kindness, nourishing this life with grace, and bearing the fruits of love in all the ways we care for one another.
 
This feels much closer to what Jesus taught. And what the gospel is all about. Easter isn’t a repayment. It’s a reminder that God’s love is life. Love always produces a bountiful harvest, even out of death.
 
So, when something in your life dies—a dream, a relationship, a version of yourself you thought you needed—ask yourself: “What if God is using this moment as compost for a new spring?”
 
While that first church we planted in this garden no longer exits, something new and wonderful has risen in its place. A new community, knitted tightly together in love, where our little lives and our little deaths quietly reveal the mystery of Easter.
 
Because every act of compassion we offer, whether it’s intentional or not, is a tiny resurrection, where something new comes to life.

Every time a heart opens, forgiveness is offered, mercy extended, Christ rises again and again.

Every time you show love to someone who may or may not deserve it you show Jesus, the face of God’s love incarnate. That’s our purpose, the call of the church. Make love grow.
 
So what if we take Jesus at his word? What if we leave this garden today not as people saved from something, but as people born for something. To love God, love others, and serve both. Like Jesus said, “it’s in the way you love one another that the world will know you belong to me.”
 
This wild, generative love God set into motion at the very beginning is the very thread that knits all things together: to God, to Christ, and to one another.

God’s Love cannot be contained in us any more than a body can be contained in a tomb. This Love is still expanding, still creating, still calling us to give it meaning.
 
This might prove to be challenging in a world that is broken, divided, and in deep dark pain. So instead of asking “what if” maybe a new question is in order. Maybe it’s time to start asking “how to.”
 
How to be a gardener like Jesus. How to sow mercy, compassion and grace into this wild and the beautiful tapestry called life. How to shine a light into the darkness, how to be salt that enhances the flavor of the world.
 
In other words, how to practice resurrection with everything we have, so God’s love can bloom again and again.
 
Amen.