Is he the Gardener?
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."
In the parish in which I grew up, there was a Reader who had, to my mind, a rather peculiar and odd view of God. In one rather dire sermon that I remember to this day - but for negative rather than positive reasons - he explained to us that prayer was a simple matter of request and answer, and I remember all too vividly how he illustrated this with regard to his own experiences of going shopping. As some of you may remember from other times that I have talked about my past, my first experiences of church life were in Kingston in Surrey - a large, suburban market town, which, during the twenty or so years I spent around it, grew and grew and grew. More and more shopping opportunities appeared, complete with more and more traffic - and this Reader explained to us that, apprehensive of the increasing parking difficulties in Kingston, before he left his home, which was in a quiet residential back street, he would pray to God that he would be able to find a parking space. And, apparently, if he remembered to say that prayer, lo and behold, he would always find a parking space in the ever more crowded town centre.
It seemed to me that, for this rather simplistic Reader, he had mistaken God for being a traffic warden. And today is the day he would have been proved wrong.
But maybe I am slightly misjudging the view of God that this Reader used to offer us. He was someone who was clear that if you asked God properly - if you prayed ‘properly’ - God would give you what you asked for. So perhaps, God wasn’t a traffic warden - perhaps God for him was actually Father Christmas. After all, most, if not all of us, probably, were told as children that if we were good throughout the year, we could write a letter to Father Christmas, and he would bring us at least some of the things, perhaps, that we dared to ask for. While there are some obvious risks with Father Christmas - the latest video games, trainers or mobile phones might be beyond Santa’s budget or inclination - there is a pretty good tradition of that jolly old man with the white beard and coca-cola coloured suit responding fairly generously to children’s requests.
And, if truth be told, I have met a good number of people - churchgoers and not - who suppose God to be Father Christmas; people who look to God as a last-chance dispenser of the things we really think we need or want, whether for ourselves or others. It is easy, sometimes, for people to mistake God for being Father Christmas. And today is the today that they are proved wrong.
I wonder what kind of figure you suppose God to be.... I’m hoping nobody here is naive enough to think that God is actually a heavenly traffic warden, directing the traffic flow in Kettering and Peterborough and Northampton so that those of us who go to church at least twice a month get the best parking opportunities. And I’m hoping that, even at Easter, you can tell the difference between God and Father Christmas...
There are some Christians who, especially at this time of year, are keen to tell us that they suppose God to be an angry judge. I remember listening to a talk - a talk designed to promote Christianity to intelligent undergraduates - a talk designed to sell our faith to those who did not share it - I remember a talk that began its explanation of the ultimate essence of the Christian faith being about the fact that God, in his righteous anger, had destined the world to be on the receiving end of his wrath. To this day, I have no clue why the speaker thought that this was an approach that would tempt students, or, indeed, anyone else, to take up the profession of Christianity - but I am afraid that this speaker was far from alone. There are a remarkable number of Christians who think that damnation has a very important part to play in Christianity, and for whom God is principally a wrathful, angry judge. And today, as far as I am concerned, is the day that they are proved wrong.
For others, again, God is a real mate. Someone who knows you well, and with whom you can chat freely and easily about anything and everything. He’s kind of like a heavenly ‘best friend’ - a really good bloke (funnily, it’s always a good bloke, never a woman....), who’s there with you as you go for a lovely walk in the country, or sit down to a nice cuppa back at home. Now, that is a much more attractive picture of God, perhaps, than the traffic warden, Father Christmas, or the angry judge. But, if I am honest, if that’s your view of God, lovely though it is, I think that today is the day that you, also, are proved wrong.
I don’t know how much you love God. I don’t know how much you are able to love God... and, luckily, we don’t have to have some kind of litmus test of the strength of our love of God. But I suspect that few humans have ever loved God quite as much as Mary Magdalene. Nonsensical though it is, people seem not to tire of perpetuating the fanciful myths that make her out to be Jesus’ lover or Jesus’ wife. But this morning we see even Mary Magdalene have not one, but three suppositions about God shattered in rapid succession.
After all, if you’d asked Mary about Jesus and who she thought Jesus was as she was getting out of bed in the darkness of that early morning as sabbath had ended, and the world was getting ready to go about its business once again - if you’d asked Mary Magdalene then what she supposed Jesus to be, she would have probably told you he was a wonderful preacher and friend and healer... except that she would have said a wonderful dead preacher, friend and healer. But that’s a supposition about God that is disproved this morning, for God allows Mary to see Jesus alive, right there in front of her.
And at that point, she supposes him to be the gardener. As is the constant stuff of Easter, the risen Christ is curiously unrecognizable until he calls people by very specific names or acts in very specific ways. And so she supposes the risen Christ is the gardener, of all extraordinary things. But, again, on this morning of all mornings, she is proved wrong.
For the risen Christ does call her by name. Never has so much hung on a simple four-letter word as that vital greeting, "Mary".... And even then, poor Mary has to have yet another supposition disproved. For the risen Christ is no longer Jesus, her teacher and friend - he has a hard message and a hard task for her: Don’t hang on to me he tells her - don’t hang on to your old, comfortable view of me. Don’t hang on to what you suppose or need God to be - that’s gone. That, too, has been proved wrong this morning.
The truth about resurrection, and the truth about Easter, is it takes us to a place where we discover that God is more than and is bigger than all we suppose about him. God is not the cosmic traffic warden, and he’s not Father Christmas. He’s not the angry judge, and he’s not your or my close buddy. He’s not even Mary Magdalene’s teacher and friend, he’s not the gardener, and, you’d better believe it - he’s not even dead.
There are - of course - there are bits of truth in all of these views of God - some more so than others, perhaps. God is the God who answers prayer, he is a friend, brother, companion, judge, teacher - and yes, perhaps, even the gardener. After all, God left two humans to tend the garden, and they mucked it up, so perhaps Christ needs to be the gardener as well as everything else. But if you want to hang on to one of those too tight; if you want to put God in a box, stick it down well and label it clearly, whether the label says teacher, judge, or anything else, then you’ll find he simply bursts out of it and proves you wrong. After all, if it could happen to Mary Magdalene, it could happen to any of us...
Oh, and there is just one more thing... the risen Christ didn’t just prove Mary’s suppositions wrong, he gave her a job to do at the end of it all - he told her go to and tell what she had discovered to those around her.
This Easter, let the risen Christ prove you wrong about all your suppositions about God, and go and tell the waiting world a truth more extraordinary and more glorious than they could ever possibly imagine. Amen.
Dominic Barrington, Easter Day, 2009
