Scripture: Matthew 20:11-18
Title: The New Gardener
(This drama/sermon involved the speaker dressing up as a gardener and sharing the Risen Story in a dramatic way – looking back at a story from a family that originally served as the gardeners in the cemetery/garden where Jesus was buried.)
INTRO:
Grace and peace from God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!
Note: Speaker is dressed as a gardener (Overalls and shirt with boots surrounded by all kinds of different flowers placed in the sanctuary)
I want to share with you a 2,000 year old family story. It is one that has been passed down for more generations than I can remember this morning. It is also one that has over the years come under a great deal of scrutiny in our family.
According to the story it happened in a well-known garden cemetery plot owned by a man named Joseph of Arimathea.
If I got the story right, Joseph was quite a rich man. In those days, rich people would buy a section of a cemetery and make it their own little spot. While some of the plots would be just regular flat cemetery plots others would be areas where a body could be placed in a cave. Today, it would be like a mausoleum.
Anyway, there was this certain cave/mausoleum that hadn’t been used yet. It was here that according to the story a rather unusual man was laid to rest. He was Jesus of Nazareth.
Now, Jesus of Nazareth had become famous for his preaching and teaching. For a little over 3 ½ years he had traveled all over Israel preaching the message of repentance and salvation. He had also become quite popular with the common people for his ability to heal.
I mean there were stories of him healing lame people, people with leprosy, people who had lost their vision and a bunch of other sicknesses. There were even stories of him casting out demons. On top of all of that, it was recorded just a few weeks before he died that he raised a man named Lazarus from the dead.
What was so strange about that story was poor old Lazarus was said to have been dead for four days.
Well, you would think that such a man would be praised as a local hero or asked to join the Temple Religious Committee. But according to the stories that have been handed down through my family the Temple leaders didn’t much like Jesus.
They thought he was trying to replace them. They thought he was trying to replace the Temple and all those sacrifices. It was said that Jesus was preaching something about God wanting to live in people’s hearts instead of them killing a bunch of animals every day.
Anyway, the story is that these Temple guys got Jesus arrested on some kind of trumped-up conspiracy charges. It was then that the story took a tragic turn.
It all happened during Passover Season. The Temple leaders saw an opportunity to get rid of Jesus and blame it on the Romans. They ran with some fake news about Jesus declaring that he was going to be a rival king and do his best to get rid of the Roman government.
Well, from what the family has shared through the years if Jesus was trying to be a king, then he was trying to be a strange king. He didn’t order anyone around, and he certainly didn’t rob anyone. He wasn’t even trying to build an army. In fact, now that I think about it, from all the stories that have been handed down Jesus would have been a perfect king.
Anyway, would you believe that they crucified this Jesus from Nazareth. I mean after all the good that he had done they crucified him. Wow.
Talk about treating someone horribly. In that day there wasn’t a worse way to die. Being beaten up, nailed to a cross and left to die of exposure and/or suffocation.
Well, anyway according to my ancestors who took care of the garden they brought Jesus’s body to the cave/mausoleum. After they did all the necessary preparations they then rolled a big stone over the front of the cave.
Now, here is where it gets kind of funny and yet kind of spooky.
Would you believe that the Romans sent out some soldiers to seal up that tomb and then stand guard over it.
I mean how many times have you seen the police camp out over a grave or around a mausoleum to make sure that the body stayed put. Who is dumb enough to think that suddenly they are going to scratch their way out of a grave or walk out of a mausoleum.
My family still laughs about all of that. Never in all the years our family has been taking care of the gardens around a cemetery have we ever heard such a ridiculous story.
But then something supposedly happened that over the years has caused our family to have a lot of discussions.
According to my great-great-great (to many greats to remember) grandpa Mattathias when he went out to take care of the flowers on Rishon (that’s Sunday to you people) there was a crowd of people running all over the place.
They were talking crazy. They were saying that the Nazarene – Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from the dead. They said that some angels had told them that Jesus was no longer dead but was now alive.
Sure enough, Mattathias went around to where they had put the body and he noticed three quick things – things that down through the years we have talked about:
+The main witnesses were women of all people.
+There was no body. They never found a body.
+Jesus’ burial clothes were still there.
Now, you got to remember in those days the words of a woman meant very little. In fact, women meant very little in those days.
They were seen as too fragile. They were seen as too talkative and unreliable.
So, it just seems odd that over the years that somewhere along the line the story was never replaced with a more believable story of how a bunch of men, upright and wealthy men were the ones that first saw Jesus.
I mean if you were going to put out a story about something as unusual as a Resurrection it would be good to get some upstanding male citizens to be your witnesses. People like a Nicodemus or a Joseph of Arimathea.
You certainly wouldn’t get a Mary Magdalene or someone like that. And you couldn’t trust Jesus’ disciples. At times they seemed like a dodgy bunch.
And yet, the story has never changed. You either have to believe the woman or not. It seemed like the Early Church was fine with women being the first witnesses of the Resurrection. They didn’t try to refine the story they just keep it as it happened. That first morning the first people who saw Jesus was a woman named Mary Magdalene.
2. And then there is the fact that the body was never found.
Here it just gets plain ole fascinating.
From all accounts the soldiers lost the body.
Oh, I know there were some stories about it being stolen and we will get to that later, but the fact remains they lost the body.
What is even more interesting is that they never found the body.
Did they search for it?
You bet they did. Rome’s reputation was on the line.
Rome didn’t lose bodies.
And yet, not one person questioned, arrested and later tortured ever gave up the location of the body.
Not one of the Apostles spilled the beans.
None of the women spilled the beans.
No one. Hundreds were question. Over the years hundreds were even tortured and no one every told where the so-called body was located.
All kinds of money was reported to have been spent looking for the body and if someone had found it then I am sure that the Temple would have loved to have paid for it and displayed it for everyone to see.
After all, if you had a body then the notion of Jesus being raised from the dead could be forgotten forever.
I can’t tell you how many times over the last 2,000 years our family has talked about this very thing. Every time we have come up with a reason, we still come back to the fact that with Rome investigating the matter, with the Temple begging to find a body, with people being questioned and even tortured no body was ever found.
In fact, the case is still open.
3. And then there is that 3rd thing – those burial clothes.
They were just lying there. No body just a bunch of burial clothes.
Now, you could just theorize that what happened is that they undressed the body, hid it somewhere and with the clothes lying there then they could say Jesus had risen from the dead.
I mean, you could do that today. You could go to a mausoleum and undress the body – leave the clothes behind and fake a resurrection.
I mean, crazier things have been done.
But then Grandpa Matthias reminded everyone of something that was done to Jesus’ body three days before his resurrection.
A Pharisee named Nicodemus had wanted to do something for Jesus. What he did has caused this story to be even more confusing.
He took 75 pounds of myrrh, aloes and other spices and put them around the body of Jesus while they were putting all those strips of cloth around him. Back in the day they put a certain funeral outfit on a dead body, but then they would also put some strips of cloth around the body to hold everything together.
Now, what is amazing about all of that is the myrrh, the aloes and the other stuff would adhere itself to both the body and the cloth. It would be like pouring a bunch of sticky stuff all over the body and the clothes. And then after all the strips of clothes are used to tie everything together to put some more sticky stuff on that as well.
The story goes that Jesus had been beaten up pretty bad before they crucified him. His back had been turned into raw meat and in places they said you could even see parts of his inner muscles and bones. His face had been badly beaten and large parts of his beard had been pulled out and so there were places where there was raw skin.
On top of that his wrists and feet had nail holes in them. His head had places where the thorns had pierced little holes and there was a gaping hole in his side where one of the soldiers had made sure that he was dead.
That’s a lot of open wounded places. All that myrrh and aloes stuck that cloth all over his body and yet when they went in to examine everything all that remained was the clothes.
How in the world did they remove all those strips and clothes and not tear off a bunch of flesh?
How in the world did they unstick all of that stuff?
That has confused our family for generations.
In fact, to tell you the truth there have been many of us through the years decided that:
1. The women told the truth – That Jesus of Nazareth did rise from the dead.
2. That the reason they could never find body is that Jesus was risen from the dead and He has His New Resurrected Body
3. Jesus was who He said He was – the Messiah, the Son of God who came to give His life for all of us – that He came to rescue, redeem and restore humankind from sin, Hell, death and the grave. That Jesus Christ is the Risen Lord and Savior of the World.
And then there is this interesting side note to all of this.
Mary Magdalene mistook Jesus for one of us – a simple gardener.
Which means the person she was looking at may have been working in the dirt or with the flowers.
Now, I got to tell you that is both amazing and mind blowing.
For you see, if you go back to the book or Genesis you have the First Man – His name was Adam.
+He comes from the dirt – the LORD GOD ALMIGHTY made Adam from the dirt of the ground and breathed life into Him – God breath.
+He also was the First Gardener – Him and his wife Eve were given the job of taking care of the Garden of Eden.
And now in that garden cemetery is the person the Early Church called the Second Adam – the Risen Lord – Jesus of Nazareth and what is He doing after He walked out of the tomb – well, according to Mary Magdalene who mistook Jesus for the Gardener – there is a good chance that Jesus was working with the flowers, the trees and in the dirt.
You could say that Jesus was turning that cemetery garden into the Garden of Eden.
He was bringing life – real life back on the earth.
He was doing what He had done all the way back in the Garden of Eden – making sure everything would be okay for humanity to once again begin to recreate the earth.
You see that is what this day is all about – it about the biggest reboot or Second Chance mankind has ever experienced.
When Jesus walked out of that tomb –
+It meant that sin and evil had been defeated and that the power of sin had been broken.
+It meant that it was possible for people to be born again – to be redeemed by the Risen Lord.
+It meant that the Holy Spirit would come and do a new work inside people – that the Holy Spirit would anoint people, live within people and help them become the people that the Lord God Almighty wanted us to be.
I don’t think it is by accident that in the Early Church we read about such things as the Fruit of the Holy Spirit – Fruit that comes again through the work of the Gardener.
This morning, we have come to celebrate Easter Morning – we have come to celebrate Our Risen Lord.
We have come to tell the world that today we celebrate the fact that Jesus of Nazareth is:
+The Messiah – the Only Begotten Son of God – the Savior of the World!
+That in Jesus Christ we can experience New Life – We can be Born Again – Rescued – Redeemed – Restored!
Because of all of this we come today to receive His Grace – His Anointing – His Favor – His Blessing and His Holy Spirit.
As we close this morning, I invite you to the Lord’s Table
+Where we find both bread and wine.
Bread and wine – things that still come from the tender care of gardeners around the world – just thought I would remind you of that this morning.
+Bread and wine that are more than just mere symbols – but representations of real grace – grace found in Jesus’ body and blood.
+Bread and wine that remind us that in Jesus there is healing.
+Bread and wine that remind us that in Jesus we can have New Life; Abundant Life.
+Bread and wine that remind us in Jesus we are One – we are His Body.
+Bread and wine that remind us that today because of Jesus we are different than the world around us and we live differently than the world around us. We live according to the leading and guidance of God’s Holy Spirit.
+Bread and wine that remind us that today our mission is to share the Good News – the Good News of Salvation.
INVITATION/PRAYER/BLESSING of Holy Communion
