Light
Lenten Reflections
Week
7B
Back
to the Garden: Reprise
Mary
Magdalene has something in common with Joni Mitchell.
I
started out these Lenten reflections* looking at Mitchell's iconic
song Woodstock. She writes:
We
are stardust
We
are golden
And
we've got to get ourselves
Back
to the garden
I
said Joni got it right, her song reflecting the longing in each of us
to get back to the Garden and the Garden Life we were originally
created for, that intimate walk with God. I pointed out Joni also
got it wrong. We
can never get ourselves back to the Garden - way above our paygrade,
way outside our purview.
Easter
celebrates the day, the event, that ultimately got us back to the
Garden. It is fitting that what started in the great Garden back in
the beginning is completed in another, smaller, sparser garden.
Though the setting may be less than an Eden, the event rivals, if not
surpasses, that other Garden experience.
After
Jesus' death on the cross, a disciple of Jesus claimed his body and
put it in a new tomb in a nearby garden.
Two
days later, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb before sunrise and finds
the stone covering the entrance to the tomb has been rolled away.
She leaves and returns with two of the disciples. They see an empty
tomb, Jesus burial cloths, but no Jesus. Puzzled, they return home,
leaving Mary Magdalene weeping in the garden outside the tomb. She
then sees two angels who ask her why she is weeping. She is telling
them of her missing Lord when another figure also asks her why she is
weeping. She mistakes the newcomer for the the gardener, who is, of
course, Jesus. He then speaks her name and she joyfully recognizes
the risen Lord she only moments before assumed was dead and stolen.**
Mary
Magdalene had just had her Joni Mitchell moment. She had gotten it
wrong. She thought the newcomer to the sad, mystifying scene was the
gardener, the tender of plants, perhaps someone who could solve the
mystery of the missing dead man. But Mary Magdalene had also gotten
it wonderfully, gloriously right. The person wasn't the gardener,
but The
Gardener, the Son of the triune God, the same God who walked with
Adam and Eve in the Garden, whose death, and now, resurrection
restored to Mary, and to all of us, the walk lost when our first
parents' disobedience exiled them from the Garden. It is why the
tragic day of Jesus' death is Good Friday with a capital G. It's why
we rejoice on Easter Sunday and call to one another "He is
risen!" "He is risen indeed!", knowing our walk with
God has risen, indeed, as well. True, we still have the fallen world
to contend with, but The Gardener relationship is back in as much
glory as this fallen world allows. He invites us to walk with Him in
this present garden and all we have to do is say yes and move our
spiritual feet.
Something
to ponder: Grab a bible or biblegateway.com and read John 20:1-18.
Ponder!
Something
to pray: If the weather allows, find some time to take a walk with
God. Celebrate the restored relationship this day represents. Ask
God to give you a time of worship with Him, unique to your
relationship with Him.
**
Read the full account in John 20:1-18.
Jesus's
resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch
people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life
of heaven... ―
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection,
and the Mission of the Church
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