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The Rev. Frank Logue The Good
Gardener—A Case of Mistaken Identity Mary Magdalene is lost in the grief following her Rabbi, Jesus’, death. Then there is the shock of finding the tomb empty. She is weeping inconsolably when angels ask her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” In her deep loss she finds the words, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Then she turns and sees him, Jesus. He is standing in front of her resurrected from the dead, never to die again. Mary is not flooded with joy. She is still lost in her grief. She doesn’t know that this is Jesus. She supposes that this man is the gardener. Could Mary Magdalene have been more wrong? There are no stories of Jesus ever tending a garden. Jesus was never in one place long enough once his ministry began. He said in both Matthew and Luke, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but I, the Son of Man, have no home of my own, not even a place to lay my head.” When Jesus did tell stories of gardening, they were not exactly examples of wisdom from a master gardener. After all, Jesus told of a man sowing seed who did so by casting the seed broadly, so that he wasted seed on rocky soil, thorn covered ground and even the path through the garden. He was a wasteful gardener and Jesus seems fine with what seems to be misuse of seed. Another time he told of a man who planted good seed only to have someone else come and plant weeds among his plants. When he is asked whether he wants the garden weeded, he says no. He prefers to let the weeds grow along with the good crop, they’ll sort the weeding out at harvest time. Maybe I’ve missed something somewhere, but I think good gardeners weed their gardens all through the growing season. Could Jesus have been a gardener without knowing this? But the confusion is short lived. Once Mary hears Jesus call her name, she recognizes Jesus for who he is and calls him Rabbouni, which means “teacher.” Now this was fitting, for Jesus’ had not given gardening advice, but he had been a gifted teacher who used stories from everyday life to teach the people. It was a simple case of mistaken identity. She thought the man in the garden was a gardener, but it turned out to be Jesus, her teacher. Yet, I think before we move on too quickly, we do well to recognize that this was no small detail. Mary Magdalene thought this momentary lapse was worth retelling and John felt it had to make it into his Gospel. There was something to this mistaken identity. I think that Mary had Jesus’ identity more closely aligned to the Truth when she thought he was the gardener, and missed a deeper way of seeing who Jesus was and is when she called him “teacher.” God had always been a gardener. The Book of Genesis tells us, “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had created” (Genesis 2:8). And John’s Gospel tells us that on the night before he died Jesus told his disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.” So from the beginning God was a gardener and Jesus still refers to him that way. Now let’s look again at what our Gospel reading is telling us. Jesus whole life and ministry were part of a project undertaken by God to help humans find their way back into the Garden of Eden. Jesus’ death and resurrection are the final stages in his defeat of death itself. Now through faith in Jesus, all can regain their original innocence and make their way back into the Kingdom of God, back into the garden. And now at the culmination of this long project, working its way through all human history, Mary Magdalene sees Jesus as the gardener. And in this, she is the most right. Jesus was not simply a teacher. He didn’t come to teach lessons to prepare you for a test. Jesus came to work the soil in his father’s garden, to help spark spiritual growth in the depths of your soul. Jesus used this illustration in Luke’s Gospel, “A man planted a fig tree in his garden and came again and again to see if there was any fruit on it, but he was always disappointed. Finally, he said to his gardener, ‘I’ve waited three years, and there hasn’t been a single fig! Cut it down. It’s taking up space we can use for something else.’ “The gardener answered, ‘Give it one more chance. Leave it another year, and I’ll give it special attention and plenty of fertilizer. If we get figs next year, fine. If not, you can cut it down’” (Luke 13:6-9). Jesus was The Good Gardener who came not to judge the world. He didn’t come to cut it down and throw it into the fire. Jesus came to save the world, to work the soil to help it bear much fruit. Jesus came to give us special attention and the living water and rich nutrients so that we could grow and blossom. This is why the mistaken identity was so memorable. Jesus, the one sent to tend God’s garden, was mistaken for a gardener. He wasn’t a teacher who was mistaken for a gardener, but a gardener who was mistaken for a teacher. For those of us gathered this Easter, we can get the story straight. If you leave today and think Jesus was a great teacher, then you will have missed the point of the day itself. For on this day we gather not to remember something Jesus taught. We are gathered today to remember that God raised Jesus from the dead as the first fruits of a new creation, a new garden. Leave instead challenged to think of
Jesus as more than a teacher with the “Seven Keys to Spiritual Riches” or
the “10 Laws for a Successful Life” or whatever else we might want to learn
from a teacher today.
And if your wondering what that would look like, you are about to get a real lesson from a master gardener. For today Makala and Laina will be baptized (pictured here, click either photo see more). They are each in their own way very sweet girls who are already as beloved by God as any gardener has loved the most rare plant in a garden. And as we prepare Makala and Laina for baptism, she will join their parents and grandparents as we claim as our own once more the words of the Baptismal Covenant.
If we put our faith in The Good Gardener, and we follow this pattern set for us, we will bear much fruit for his kingdom. Amen.
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