The Gardener: Easter Sunday 2026

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

At that time, it was formless, dark and empty. Nothing but the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And so, he made light and separated it from the darkness. And he said it was good.

On the second day, he separated the waters…air and ocean. And he said it was good.

Then he separated land and water.

Day three he began planting a garden, with a beautiful plan of provision and sustainability, and beauty. And he said that it was good. 

On the fourth day he gathered up light into the sun, and planted the moon and the stars, to help track the passing of time, and special days.

Day 5 he filled this place with dolphins and flamingos, giraffes and elephants. And puppies.

But on the sixth day, he made a team of gardeners. Both in his own image…male and female.

Finally, day seven God rested from this work and enjoyed the companionship of the gardeners.

And for awhile they lived together in his perfect garden, caring for his perfect creation. 

But things went wrong. They chose to let sin enter the world. And they needed a savior to fix it.

For the last three months my community of Christ followers have been tracking the story of Jesus as told in the Gospel of John.

We’ve come to understand that he was both fully human and fully God. That he was sent to fulfill the promises made long ago.

That he spent his last years teaching a different way to live in the upside kingdom he’s brought near.

And in the last week we’ve studied how he suffered and died willingly for the sins of the world. 

So, here we are, once again, on what could be called Day 8 of creation, or maybe the first day of a new kind of week, standing, once again, in a garden. 

Let’s look at the first part of the story together:

John 20:1-10

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. 2 So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”

3 So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. 4 Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, 7 as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. 8 Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. 9 (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) 10 Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.

Let’s recap…

Mary Magdalen had gone to the tomb. We know that she had gone there with other women. And when they got there the stone had been rolled away and the body was gone. So while the others hung out there, Mary immediately ran to tell the guys. 

And the guys did what guys sometimes do…they raced each other and recorded the results in the most read document of all time.

Peter and, we assume, John, go in, see the folded cloth, and go back seemingly confident that Jesus must have risen like he said he would. 

But Mary was still processing. Still confused, maybe even by their underreaction. Jesus had been brutally murdered and now someone was messing with them.

She was a sight. She doesn’t hold back as she weeps openly. 

If you can, imagine a time where you’ve seen someone so incredibly heartbroken that it hurts just to watch. That person is Mary right now. And here’s what happens next:

John 20:11-18

11 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying, and as she wept, she stooped and looked in. 12 She saw two white-robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. 13 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” the angels asked her.

“Because they have taken away my Lord,” she replied, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”

14 She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. 15 “Dear woman, why are you crying?” Jesus asked her. “Who are you looking for?”

She thought he was the gardener. “Sir,” she said, “if you have taken him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will go and get him.”

16 “Mary!” Jesus said.

She turned to him and cried out, “Rabboni!” (which is Hebrew for “Teacher”).

17 “Don’t cling to me,” Jesus said, “for I haven’t yet ascended to the Father. But go find my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

18 Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them, “I have seen the Lord!” Then she gave them his message.

There’s plenty to love about this passage. 

I love the emotional rollercoaster of extreme grief and extreme joy it takes us on.

I love that Mary wanted so badly to have the opportunity to honor her Lord one last time after his death.

I love that he reaches out to her so personally and intimately. And if you read on, you’ll see him do that again that evening for his other disciples, and for Thomas in particular.

I love that a woman gets to be first to proclaim the good news.

But, in studying this story for the thousandth time, I had something new pointed out to me just a few weeks ago.

It’s that Mary wasn’t entirely wrong…Jesus was the gardener.

Our story started in a garden. But the old Adam and old Eve, the first gardeners were part of the brokenness that seemed to take over the garden.

Mary is there to bear witness to a new week, a new creation, and a new gardener. We often hear our sin nature referred to as Old Adam, and Jesus as the “New Adam.” We could also think of them as the old gardener, and the new gardener.

This gardener came to break the curse of sin and death.

He came to begin pulling the weeds that are the marks of sin so that we can be sanctified and more like we were created to be. 

This gardener came to grow beautiful things from dust.

He came that our relationship with him, and therefore each other, might be restored.

On some future day, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord, and a new heaven and a new earth replace what was damaged. Until that day, we will unfortunately still feel the ripple effects of the fall. We will get sick, people we love will die, and it might seem like Satan is getting away with a lot.

There is probably something in your life right now that seems dead. Hopeless. 

Maybe it’s the ending of a relationship or the loss of a dream. Or the death of a loved one.

Maybe we’re just so frustrated that our world is in so much disrepair…full of violence and greed. 

Mary and the first disciples knew these feelings. 

But the resurrection proves that the gardener is capable of resurrecting and restoring all things.

If we can recognize Jesus as Lord, we can also start living on earth more like it is in heaven right now. We can live like we believe that Jesus really has defeated the power of sin and death.

We don’t have to live in fallen ways. Afraid of endings, at odds with each other, jealous, unsatisfied, obsessed with rank and power.

We can rest in the assurance that in the end, evil doesn’t win, and death doesn’t get the final word.

So, I’m asking you to consider:

Do you believe that we can start living as though the curse has been broken even now? 

Do you believe that he has fulfilled the promise made to Adam and Eve long ago?

In our service today, we ended with a 6th century tradition, the flowering of the cross. We each selected a flower to represent somewhere that we need the be the reminded of Jesus' power to resurrect things that are dead. And then we pinned that hope to the cross.

Are you ready to pin your hopes to the cross with us?