In this reflection for Easter Sunday, Mike Hart, Transformation Director for the United Reformed Church North Western Synod, explores the variety of new life that can be found in each garden and how it relates to the Easter story:
In the Gospel of John’s account of the first Easter morning, we find these six words about Mary’s thoughts: “Supposing him (Jesus) to be the gardener.” (John 20:15)
These six words have always intrigued me. At first, I saw it as a lovely bit of colour in the story; then they became a question. How could someone who had been so close to Jesus and his disciples fail to recognise him? But as I reflect on it now, I find a richness in the idea of Jesus as a gardener in the Resurrection story, as we celebrate Jesus bringing new life to the world.
Like many of you, I am an enthusiastic amateur gardener, usually found in early April searching for signs of new growth in the flower borders and the vegetable seedlings. However, this year, we’ve decided to remodel at least part of our back garden to provide some more clearly defined spaces – a play space for our three-year-old grandson, a better space to simply relax with friends and family. It has also given us the opportunity to increase biodiversity in our planting and to support animal life – even if that involves managing the competition for the feeders between the starlings and the smaller birds.
I’ve also been reading Olivia Laing’s excellent book The Garden Against Time which explores the place of gardens — good and bad — through history and literature all while she restores the walled garden in her new home to its former glory. Her exploration of the garden in Paradise Lost reminded me that the word in ancient Greek for garden was paradeisos — paradise.
And that takes me back full circle to the creation story and both our responsibilities to the natural world, living as God’s gardeners, and also to the affirmation made in the URC’s strategy A Church with People at the Margins. This affirms our belief “that all people are created in the image of God and should have life in all fullness and to flourish with all of God’s creation”.
In a garden, new life comes in many forms: vegetables grow from seeds, well-established shrubs and trees sprouting fresh shoots, local birds raising new chicks, migrant species stopping by on long journeys around the world, and countless varieties of flora and fauna intertwining. How apt, therefore, that we find a gardener in the Easter story.
My Easter prayer for new life in our churches is that we are similarly enriched by the variety of old and new, familiar, and freshly drawn — all examples of the richness of God’s creation and our place within it.
Let us pray:
Jesus Christ, who was mistaken for a Gardener,
nurture us this Easter Day to new life in our faith in you.
Inspire in us a wonder for your creation and a commitment to live in harmony with it
Create in us a passion to bring fullness of life to all people that we meet, sowing new seeds and new growth in faith in you.
Amen
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