Easter 2021: It begins in the garden
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
April 4, 2021—Easter Sunday
Reading from John Chrysostom; “The Miracle had come” by David Whyte; John 20:1-18
EASTER MORNING IN WALES by David Whyte
A garden inside me, unknown, secret,
neglected for years,
the layers of its soil deep and thick,
trees in the corners with branching arms
and the tangled briars like broken nets.
Sunrise through the misted orchard,
morning sun turns silver on the pointed twigs,
I have woken from the sleep of ages and I am not sure
if I am really seeing, or dreaming,
or simply astonished
walking towards sunrise
to have stumbled into the garden
where the stone was rolled from the tomb of longing.
It begins in a garden. It always begins in a garden. Two days ago on Good Friday, I talked about the Tree of Life that God planted in paradise, and then our human nature led us away from it. In Eden, we had walked with God in the cool of the evening, and it was beautiful, and it was perfect, and it was, somehow, not everything that we needed. Something within us drove us elsewhere. Some call it sin; the rabbis speak of free will; I have used the phrase “insatiable curiosity.” Heck, it might just be that even God could not have predicted quite how complex life and humanity would turn out to be once we got going.
All of these things, and more. We left the garden. But evermore, we have yearned to return. Tried and tried to find a way back, to find a way to live with God that can encompass the full picture of what it means to be human: a way to live with God that includes sin and curiosity, that includes the pain of birth and of death, that includes the toil and sweat of human endeavor and achievement, that also includes failure and learning and the possibility of growth.
We want to get back to the garden. But that is not to say that we want to get back to simplicity and naivete and a sinless existence. It’s to say that we want to get back to a closer relationship with God. That’s the thing we really miss, from that life in the Garden.
Which is why the cross was necessary. The cross, which was (as I also noted on Good Friday) planted in the realities of our human nature. Planted in the very center of our pain, our cruelty, and our sin. And yet, it sent down roots. The same roots as the Tree of Life: roots that reach into the very source of Creation.
Which is how we come again to the garden. Come, this time, not as Adam and Eve at the dawn of Creation. But as Mary Magdalene: disciple of Jesus, like us; lover of Jesus, like us; tormented soul who had found healing in Jesus, like us. We come, like her, broken-hearted by the terrible realities of the world; come, sure that death and cruelty and fear have once again won the day, because only a fool would think otherwise.
Only a fool.
She comes to the garden that Easter morning, not daring to hope that she is returning to THE garden: the garden in which humanity walks together with God. She comes with grief. She comes with love. She comes with all the shock and anger and desperate search for meaning that hits us when the fact of death has knocked our sense of self and security completely off its moorings.
Which is to say, I’m guessing, that she comes armed with little but despair.
Perhaps that’s why it takes her so long to recognize him. Despair does that. As reasonable as it is, given that it is rooted in the very difficult realities of this life, despair blinds us. It makes it SO. HARD. to see.
But Jesus is a healer. A healer whose miracle, over and over, is to give sight to the blind. To enable us to see. To see the pain and the cruelty of this world, yes. But also to see the fierce kindness that will ease that pain. To see the dream of God as it takes hold in this world, transforming situations that had seemed irredeemable.
Mary Magdalene had believed in that dream, believed so deep that she had given her life, her money, her ALL to the mission. But his death on the cross had seemed to put an end to it all. Had seemed to say that suffering and death, as she had always secretly suspected, would actually have the last word. That Jesus had been wrong to speak of a hope that lived, in the midst of all that is terrible in this world. Because the Terrible had won. The terrible would always win.
But then, she heard her name. She heard Jesus call her name, and she suddenly knew that she was (unbelievably, miraculously) back in that first Garden, and God was calling her name to come walk with Him. “Mary,” he called. And she knew that it was possible, knew that it would always be possible to walk with God in THIS world. In a world that is far from the innocent perfection of Eden, but is nonetheless a place where we can be in deep and real relationship with God.
That relationship is born again this morning. Born from the cross, that sent down roots into the same soil as the Tree of Life. Born in the tomb that now stands empty. Born in your heart and your soul, as you take hold of the scandalous belief that life and love are stronger than death and despair. And born anew, every time we make the choice to live according to that hope, to that truth of the resurrection, even if we can’t fully explain it.
Things end. Things get broken. Things die. And it is right to rage and mourn and grieve and repent, feeling as though it will always be that way, that there will never be anything but loss, never be anything beyond guilt, never be anything that isn’t anger. Resurrection will take us by surprise, turning us around like Mary in the garden, when she heard Jesus say her name. And laughter will awaken in our soul and God will bring forth new life in us (and in the world), again and again and again. That’s the truth at the heart of the Resurrection: He IS risen, beloveds, and he is calling your name! Alleluia, Amen.