The One About Mistaking Jesus for the Gardener
Dear West Family
I hope and pray that you are having a blessed Holy Week, filled with reminders of the mercy, humility, love, and power of our precious Lord Jesus.
As one would expect, I have spent a lot of time this week in the varied gospel accounts of the resurrection. I love how different they all are and yet how unified they are in their main message. People get concerned that some of the details are different, but I am just amazed that they all record that Jesus literally rose from the dead! That is a big detail to agree upon, and I actually love that there are some different moments of emphasis in the different accounts as it shows the very human perspective of events. It reminds me of how differently my wife Sue and I like to tell stories. When Sue tells a story she doesn’t leave out a single detail. Not … a … single … one. That girl buries the lead so deep that we often don’t even get to the point of the story, but we know what day it was, which direction the wind was blowing at the time, what some of the major political and societal events in a variety of nations were … all of it. When I tell a similar story, I just get to the funny bit as quickly as possible, and yet we share the same experience as we were both there. I love that.
While I will be preaching from the resurrection account in Matthew this Easter, I have been so drawn to the account in John this week. It includes some seemingly superfluous and yet very human details, like the fact that John can run faster than Peter. In the midst of it there is a remarkable interaction in which we find in John 20:14-16.
14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” 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.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
There is such beauty and mercy and grace in this interaction, but I love the little detail in verse 15. Mary mistook Him for the gardener! Can you get over the mystery of that? Oh the humility even in the sovereignty of the resurrected Christ.
Humility - in that - even the resurrected Christ, the one who had defeated sin and death and proved His messianic status beyond a shadow of a doubt, was prepared to appear in such humble form that He would be mistaken for a lowly servant. I love the thought of a God who is prepared to get His hands dirty, to work in the soil of the world, at a task that others don’t really want to do, in order to preserve and promote beauty and flourishing in the world. What a humble King we have in Jesus, one who could be mistaken for a gardener.
But, there is also a real sense in which Jesus’ absolute sovereignty is on display in this interaction as well. In a way, Mary isn’t mistaken in the identity of Jesus. She views Him as a gardener because that is exactly what He is. I love what G.K. Chesterton said,
“On the third day the friends of Christ coming at day-break to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of a gardener God walked again in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but in the dawn.”
In the resurrection of Christ, our great gardener God was retelling the story of the world! He is the true vine from which we can all now grow and flourish (John 15:1). He is the seed that was sown into the ground, perishing, so that new life might grow (John 12:24). He is the new and better Adam, who has succeeded in the garden of His temptation and sorrow where Adam failed in his.
And so, dear friends, what if we actually pause for a minute today and “suppose Him to be the gardener?” If the Spirit opened our eyes I am sure that we would be able to see the many ways that He is patiently weeding, watering, feeding, nurturing and pruning so that we might be able to bear fruit. It often doesn’t look glamorous, it looks like gardening, but it is the work of the wonderful resurrected Christ growing beautiful things out of us!
Oh the humility and the sovereignty of the resurrected Christ.
Enjoy His work today. He is making something beautiful, even out of us.
A couple of things in closing.
Firstly, Spurgeon preached on this verse and it is astonishing. You can read it here.
One day, when I am big, I will preach like this.
Lastly, the music this week is from a combination of one of my favorite singers and one of my favorite musical arrangers. Enjoy the genius of Tori Kelly and Kirk Franklin.
Tori Kelly - Soul’s Anthem (It Is Well)
See you this weekend!
Ross
