Thurs. July 24th :: Lk.24 :: The Gardener

[Short sidebar: Rather than sticking to Luke 24 exclusively, today I’ve posted some meditations on Jesus resurrection in general. I wrote this some months ago but decided it was applicable to the chapter we read today. That’s all.]

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The other day I was listening to a weathered old recording of a Rich Mullins concert. The sound quality was hardly the best but somewhere in the middle of the concert there is a part where Rich starts to tell a story about how his dad passed away, of all places, in the family garden.

It’s a sad story, and as Rich starts telling it the audience begins to voice their sympathy. But in his strange way Rich corrects the crowd (and me) for their lack of understanding. He says that when you think about it, his father died rather well. He died well, Rich says, because the last thing he saw before meeting Jesus was the face of his lovely wife, pulling weeds beside him, and the cool black dirt of the garden he loved to tend.

I don’t have a garden, but even if I did, I don’t think that’s where I’d like to die. Still I do kind-of like the idea of having Brianna’s face be the last thing I see before God.

Nevertheless, they buried Jesus in a garden. And for the longest time that didn’t seem the least bit interesting to me. The other day though I was reading another writer who made a very good point. He said that it makes sense for Jesus to come back to life in a place like this, because creation starts in a garden, and if God really is putting the universe back together, then a garden would be a splendid touch of creative irony. In fact, it would almost make you think that God is a Story-teller at heart.[i]

So Jesus is resurrected, of all places, in a garden. And as the story goes in John’s version, he appears first to a flustered woman named Mary. She’s flustered because she has come to prepare the corpse for permanent burial, only to find that it isn’t there. Someone has heisted it away! Mary is crying. And so it is through salty tears that she sees Jesus, and confuses him for the gardener.

Or does she?

I find it interesting that the resurrected Jesus doesn’t correct Mary’s words. He doesn’t say, “No actually Mary I’m not the gardener; my name is Jesus. Remember?” He doesn’t say that at all. Instead, Jesus says only her name:

“Mary.”
And she knows it’s him.

It’s when Jesus says her name that Mary realizes the great truth behind the gospels: the Gardener is Jesus, and he’s alive.

My prayer today is that you would sense Jesus saying your name, and in that you would sense also the power and truth of his resurrection.
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[i] For more on the garden as the setting for Jesus’ resurrection, and much more, read all 738 pages of N.T. Wright’s, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).