REMEMBER THE GARDENER

The Triduum - The Great Vigil of Easter

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.”

☩ May I speak to you in the Name of Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At the beginning of Lent in 2018, my friend, Charlie Edholm, visited from Tenessee and gave a lovely concert of Classical Guitar here at St. Davids. As part of that concert, he showcased a song he had just composed for the new album. It was inspired by a painting he had seen while visiting the Museum of Art in Atlanta. The words are beautiful, poetic, and fit well with the Feast of Easter, especially this year. You see, the story begins just as our story begins . . . In the beginning . . . The Creator brought order to the chaos. And filled this new creation with light. We re-created this drama tonight with the lighting of the new fire.

Then the Creator separated the waters of the chaos and held them in their place. The dry earth brought forth became known as land, and the separated waters became the sea. We show this in the waters of baptism, still dangerous to us but ordered by God.

And not by coincidence, these are the first to things you had to pass in order to enter this place tonight. Into this new creation, the Creator planted a Garden which was called Eden, and into this garden the creator placed humanity, the ‘adam which He had formed from the dust of the earth, so that this ‘adam might tend to creation, cultivating its fruits, and guarding its fragility.

So we find the first stanza of Charlie’s song:

Two lovers in the garden holding close,
The breeze in her hair and his winter coat,
With nothing but a care for love in the air
Each had the other to keep them warm.

But then something goes wrong. Humanity falls short on our job and we are banished from the beauty of the garden.

Two lovers left the garden close to dawn
Never to return once they had gone
Eternity had passed, each shot a glance back
And left the garden they called their own.

But here there is a promised hope as God never leaves humanity and reminds us time and again through the prophets that He will come and help.

Restless hearts, find peace from your wandering,
One day we will return to the garden.

At Christmas and in the Passion, we look to that promised hope. God comes to us to be with us. God puts on human flesh, human frailty, human pain, human grief, human suffering, human shame, All to show us how to love God by truly caring for each other and for creation. Jesus points us back to our original relationship. Back to the garden.

Charlie puts it this way:
A man came to the garden on his own,
He took off his jacket far from home,
With no one to notice where he had gone
He wonders if he should carry on.

We remembered this on Thursday night. Jesus gives his final lessons of love to the Apostles and charges us all to remember what this looks like. He gives us towels and water, bread and wine, ordinary things found in ordinary homes so that every day we might be drawn back to God and to each other.

After supper and the final lessons, Jesus goes to one of his favorite places. John says: “as was his custom” He and His followers go out to THE GARDEN. In this Garden of Gethsemane, he wrestles with what is to come. He must dig deep to where the roots of love are buried in order to have the strength to continue.

God must follow humanity’s course all the way to the grave. It is a pattern the Gardner knows well. The grain must first be planted, taken into the darkness of the earth and broken before the green blade can rise again.

The agony is real, but still, the refrain returns to remind us,
Restless hearts, find peace from your wandering,
One day we will return to the garden.

Then because we could not accept the love of God, because we are unwilling to do the work necessary to live in The Garden, we called for the death of Jesus. He is taken to a stony hill, opposite Gethsemane and is raised up on a dying tree. Naked as Adam he looks down from the cross at the mockery and into the garbage pit of Jerusalem, another sign of our reluctance to cultivate and guard creation. From this vantage, he still offers hope and shows us, LOVE. In the fullness of grace, he looks down from the cross and says a small prayer advocating for the humanity he loves and still has hope for. “Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing”

It is said that the bones of the old ‘adam are buried in this rocky hill, giving it the nickname “the place of the skull” In a moment of deepest pain and deepest sorrow, Eden is slowly returning. The gospel writers tell us  that near the place he was crucified there was another Garden. In this Garden is a brand new tomb. The broken flesh, the dried up grain of our Lord’s body  is taken down from the cross prepared with oils and spices, and just like at his birth, wrapped in bands of cloth. It is then placed in this tomb, buried in the darkness of the earth. Tonight we find ourselves in the story. We entered a darkened tomb in which we heard the story’s of God’s great deeds for humanity beginning with the story of creation.

We continue to dramatize the great and ancient story. Into this early morning scene comes Mary, finding the earth has been opened, the stone has been moved, and the tomb is empty. Forgetting for a moment what Jesus had taught her, she runs to tell the others of this news. They come to see for themselves, but not understanding fully what resurrection means they return home, back to the safety of their current situation. But Mary remains . . . and weeps. She sees the garden all around but does not understand what all this means. The buds are beginning to bloom as new life breaks from the ground.
The trees stood in the garden watching all,
Many came and went as their leaves did fall,
Though branches are bare, the sweet springtime air
Restores the garden to life of old.

Soon she hears a mans voice “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.” When he calls her by name “MARY” she suddenly recognizes him as her Teacher, who just three days ago was very dead, buried in the earth, but now is alive and standing before her.

Now we find ourselves in the early hours of resurrection. Jesus has taken on the roles of the ‘adam.
Christ is the new Adam, now placed in a garden to cultivate and guard it. He is easily mistaken as the Gardner because that is who he truly is. The Head Gardner, raised from death to new life to continue the lessons and draw us back to the garden. But this is not the end of the story.

The services of the Christian story are elemental by nature. (pun intended) Earth is placed on our heads at the beginning of Lent Remember that you are Dust, and to Dust, you shall Return Water and Fire permeate the Triduum And Pentecost, at the end of Eastertide, will bring wind to the forefront of our minds. The Air brought forth by The Word, The Spirit and the Breath of God. All of these point us to . . . our Creation, our Birth, our Life, our Death, and our Resurrection Used in this way, the elements point us toward a vision of a God revealed in creation and to our own origins in the dust of the Earth, a dust (an ‘adamah) which is being cultivated and guarded by the New Adam. This very Jesus Christ our Lord, who established the garden in the beginning, who worked in the garden at his resurrection, and who will one day bring us all back to The Garden.

Restless hearts, find peace from your wandering,
Lift your weary eyes towards the sunset skies,
When morning dawns that day, darkness fades away,
One day we will return to the garden.

So sing your Alleluia! Get your hands dirty as you learn from the garden. And always remember the Gardner. AMEN.