Day 44: The Gardener

The four gospels all tell slightly different versions of the Easter morning story, but they all seem to agree that women are privileged to be the very first to discover and pass on the good news upon which the Christian faith depends: "Jesus is risen!" Mary Magdalene is present at dawn in every account, and John's delay of recognition resurrection story has her visiting the tomb by herself in the pre-dawn dark. She runs back to get Peter and John with fears of grave-robbers. The men inspect the potential crime scene then go home. Mary does not. She stays to weep over this further injury done to her friend, and then she sees Jesus, but does not recognize him immediately. She assumes he is a gardener and asks if he knows where her friend's body was moved to. The recognition comes when he says one word, her name. They have a moment of reunion, and then she is authorized by him to be an eye-witness evangelist and deliver the first Easter morning gospel message to the disciples: "Jesus is not dead, he is risen, and I have seen him alive!"

I love that her eyes mistake him for a gardener, because that is not that far off. In the second, more intimate creation story which starts in Genesis 2:4, we see the Creator kneeling in the dirt, forming the clay into a human, blowing life-breath into it, then planting a garden home for the human. Gardener God sculpting the animals out of the mud and breathing each to life. Gardener God digging and forming every living creature out of Mother Earth. Gardener God teaching his apprentice Earthling how to call each creature by a name, then finally making a bone-carving to create Earthling's perfect companion, the only creature not formed from dirt. When he is introduced to this new creature, Earthling names himself "Man", perfectly matched up to the creature he names "Woman".

And here, on Resurrection morning, the Gardener introduces himself to his friend Mary Magdalene as the second Earthson, and when she hears her name spoken, she recognizes her Teacher. He is God born of a woman, but killed by the curse of death upon the human race. Yet the Earth gets to be a mother again, for there is a new fertility given her by the Father, such that the dead body of Jesus which was put into a cave in the ground like a dead seed, emerges as a living thing again.

In another of my favorite Chronicles of Narnia scenes, we visit Narnia when it is a brand new world, in the book The Magician's Nephew. Narnia is so new and so fertile that it responds to the song of the Lion by sprouting life right out of its empty land. Humps of dirt start "bubbling like water in a pot" and out pop fully formed animals of every kind. Even a fragment of a iron lamppost that someone stuck in the ground starts growing into a full fledged streetlamp. This is C.S. Lewis' own creation story for his fairy-tale land, and the eagerness of the land to sprout life and respond to the Lion's song is very exciting to read about.

I now picture eager young Narnia and those bubbling humps of dirt, when I read so many verses in the Bible which mourn the barren and abandoned desert of wilderness land, then other verses which promise a new vitality which will be given to that land so that it again flows with milk and honey. The literal and figurative meanings seem to merge as one vision. I've pasted some verses below which seem to announce that the Gardener who tends his beautiful Earth is able to use a potent fertilizer which causes even dead bones of a human body, when planted, to eventually pop out as a resurrected human:

In Romans 8:
19The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. 20For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
22We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In Isaiah 45:
"You heavens above, rain down righteousness;
let the clouds shower it down.
Let the earth open wide,
let salvation spring up,
let righteousness grow with it;
I, the LORD, have created it.

9 "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker,
to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground.
Does the clay say to the potter,
'What are you making?'
Does your work say,
'He has no hands'?

10 Woe to him who says to his father,
'What have you begotten?'
or to his mother,
'What have you brought to birth?'

11 "This is what the LORD says—
the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker:
Concerning things to come,
do you question me about my children,
or give me orders about the work of my hands?

12 It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.

In Isaiah 61:
For as the soil makes the sprout come up
and a garden causes seeds to grow,
so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise
spring up before all nations.

Isaiah 62:
For Zion's sake I will not keep silent,
for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet,
till her righteousness shines out like the dawn,
her salvation like a blazing torch.
2 The nations will see your righteousness,
and all kings your glory;
you will be called by a new name
that the mouth of the LORD will bestow.

3 You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand,
a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

4 No longer will they call you Deserted,
or name your land Desolate.
But you will be called Hephzibah, [a]
and your land Beulah [b] ;
for the LORD will take delight in you,
and your land will be married.

5 As a young man marries a maiden,
so will your sons [c] marry you;
as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride,
so will your God rejoice over you

I Corinthians 15
35But someone may ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?" 36How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39All flesh is not the same: Men have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor.
42So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; 43it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; 44it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45So it is written: "The first man Adam became a living being"[e]; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit. 46The spiritual did not come first, but the natural, and after that the spiritual. 47The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. 48As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we[f] bear the likeness of the man from heaven.

50I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."[g]
55"Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?"[h] 56The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.