MERRY WEDNESDAY BY PARRIS
“But Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept she stooped down and looked into the tomb. Mary Magdalene turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus…supposing him to be the gardener.” John 20:14, 15
“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.” G.K. Chesterton
Most of us have experience our world dying in the night or as St John of the Cross would say; “in the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God”. The scripture reads that Mary from Magdala stood outside the tomb weeping! What deep emotion! How many of us weep outside the tomb of dead things never able to let go of the loss inside! But here in that tomb in the garden Mary learns to refocus as she hears angels talking and seeing angels surrounding the place where once she rubbed oil on a bloody body. The garden becomes her resurrection, in fact all around resurrection starts its sunrise upon the earth, upon mankind. You can’t blame her thinking Jesus was the gardener —it all happened so suddenly! The first Adam failed miserably being the gardener not being the faithful caretaker of god’s beauty. Sin invaded everything from the little root pushing up through the earth, to the baby ewe nursing on his mother, to all mankind. Mary supposing he was the gardener was not a mistake! Jesus on the eve of the new day becomes the prophetic gardener cultivating life to all who believe. Christ comes to restore all that was ruined and wasted all the way back to the first garden.Instead of the thorn bush shall come up the juniper;Instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle.–Isaiah 55:13
Today the body of Christ becomes the depiction of Mary who before was a wasteland of loss now becomes a verdant garden. Oh Christ please come into my garden! For everything Christ’s fragrance touches it changes! Will you allow his fragrance to touch you today? Or are you still standing outside YOUR TOMB WEEPING? You see it’s just so much easier to hold onto death than to allow resurrection life to course through you. All of Jerusalem heard this news of the empty tomb in fact many bodies of the saints walked around! For them it was just another morning!Jesus being the gardener of the first resurrection comes to get his hands all in our stuff! Poking around in our dirt, pulling out the worst wormy stuff. His holes in his hands and his feet and his hole in side is faithfully at work within us! Roll away that stone!