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Jesus the Gardener: Easter Monday

I was leading our little family in reading through 1 John, and when we came to 2:15, it caused serious concern in my youngest.  It reads,

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

He was 8 at the time and enjoying the beauty of nature full-throttle—splashing in a creek, chasing seagulls at a beach, climbing trees like they are snow-covered mountain peaks. But 1 John 2:15 tells him he must not love the world or the things in it. Grown-ups wrestle with superfluous things like theories of atonement, models of eschatology, and how to understand “free will.” My 8-year old was going to lose sleep that night wrestling with John. 

“Does that mean we’re not allowed to love trees? Because I LOVE trees!” he asked.

He was genuinely concerned that the joy he received from the created order was out of bounds with orthodox Christianity (well, he might not have worded it quite like that, but that was clearly his dilemma). He deserved a sincere answer.

1 John 2:15, of course, needs to be read in light of the overall point the author is making in that chapter. But in response to my son’s immediate dilemma, I was all too happy to point him to a curious detail from the resurrection narrative in John 20. 

Gospel writers don’t normally waste words, and right in the middle of John 20:15 is a profound theological truth hiding in plain sight. Mary and the newly-raised-from-the-dead Jesus meet for the first time since Friday and she doesn’t immediately recognize him. Instead, she engages him as a stranger, “supposing him to be the gardener.”

Forget their dialogue for the moment: What was Jesus doing that Mary mistook him for a gardener? Could it be that the first thing Jesus did after rising from the slumber of death was, I don’t know… gardening? Maybe he was weeding a flower bed; perhaps pruning a grape vine; aerating the soil or planting vegetable seeds?

If I’m right and that’s all true—that John is giving a picture of Jesus the gardener—it certainly carries symbolic weight. We’re not out of line in thinking of all the metaphors that remind us of new life. It’s so easy to spiritualize, both for Christ and for us. He’s the “grain of wheat” that fell into the earth and died, thus bearing much fruit (see John 12:24). We too must die in order that we may rise. 

But there is no reason we have to limit our understanding to spiritualized metaphors. Maybe Jesus is playing the gardener role because Jesus genuinely loves life in all its forms. He loves flowers. He loves grape vines. He loves vegetables. My youngest son needed to know that yes, Jesus even loves trees. We all need to know that while Jesus’ resurrection absolutely ensures that we have eternal life with him, we also need to know that his mission went beyond that.

When it comes to redemption, Jesus is highly interested in redeeming lost souls from suffering, evil, anguish, and the list goes on. But he also came to redeem every square inch of the created order. Many of us have this incredibly false belief that in the end, God is just going to set it all on fire and we’ll get a front row seat to the fireworks from our ethereal, immaterial spiritual home in the clouds while piously strumming our harps. That is simply not true. That is based on a very poor reading of 2 Peter. 

We should never forget that at the end of each creation Day in Genesis 1, God stepped back and declared it “good.” At the end of the week, he declared it all “very good.” Since then, he has never revoked that declaration. It is still good—the dirt, the air, the trees, the vines, the flowers, the dogs, the bugs, the birds, the lions, the lambs, the creeks, the rivers, summer, winter, spring, and fall…. It has never been anything other than “good.” Corrupt? Yes! Cursed? You bet! In need of redemption too? Of course, and that is part of what Romans 8 is all about. But evil? Bad? Subject to complete and everlasting destruction? May it never be! 

When Jesus rose from the dead, he ushered in a new era for humanity, for those bearing the image of God. Our greatest enemy is death, and because of the resurrection, death no longer gets the last say—Jesus does. But Jesus also ushered in a new era for all of creation. New creation has begun. It is not finished, and it will be imperfect and incomplete until Jesus returns. But it is absolutely here, right now. Just a few months ago, we literally sang about this:

    No more let sins and sorrows grow

    nor thorns infest the ground

    He comes to make his blessings flow 

    far as the curse is found 

When 1 John 2:15 condemns love of the world, he forbids us to join in systems that contribute to and celebrate death and destruction, inhumanity and even deforestation. When John 20:15 pictures Jesus the Gardener, he absolutely endorses an 8-year old’s love for trees. The risen Jesus redeems us. He also redeems even the creation subject to thorns and thistles. It’s why he takes time to do some gardening on the morning he wakes up.  So,

Let Heaven and Nature Sing!

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