She Thought He was the Gardener...

There's one small detail in John's Easter story which has always intrigued me. It comes at the point when Mary is alone at the tomb. She has just heard the words of the angels announcing Jesus' resurrrection. She turns around and sees Jesus standing there, but she doesn't recognize him.

This detail in itself might seem a little intriguing, and it's always been the subject of intense debate. "What do you mean, she didn't recognize him? Did he look different?" "Was it just that she wasn't expecting to see him? After all, you don't expect to see someone standing there, when you just buried them."

However, it's not this detail that fascinates me. After all, there are other instances where Jesus appears to his disciples, but is not recognized: the familiar story from Luke's gospel, for example. Two disciples are walking down the road to Emmaus. Jesus joins their conversation, but they remain clueless about his identity until he breads bread with them. Or the story many of us heard last Sunday, about Jesus at the Sea of Tiberias. He calls to his disciples, who are fishing, but they don't recognize him.

Here's the detail that keeps me thinking. Mary turns around, sees Jesus, and mistakes him for the gardener.

She thought he was the gardener. Of all people.

She thought he was the kind of guy who would like to get down on his knees and plant flowers, who would be pruning back the hedges, who would be paying attention to the weeds. I wonder why she thought that. Were his hands dirty, did he look tired? What was he doing? I mean, I suppose on one level it's supposed to be funny. She is clearly mistaken.

But it got me thinking.

I remembered one spring that I was looking for new places to take Scout for a walk. I was getting a little tired of walking the same blocks every morning, and maybe a little tired of hearing people say, "Hey! I saw you out walking your dog today." So I started taking Scout for just a little drive over to a garden near one of our city lakes. It's a large and well-known garden, filled with many varieties of roses, and lots of other flowers. But early in the morning there were not so many walkers there.

Early in the morning, I discovered, is when the gardeners do their secret work, making the garden look beautiful, planting and pruning and pulling weeds.

Did you notice, perhaps for the first time? Jesus' tomb was in a garden.

Early in the morning he rose, doing the secret work of the new creation, planting and pruning and pulling weeds.

Sometimes in all of our talk about "heaven" we over-spiritualize the resurrection. Jesus rose and walked on this earth, the beginning of a new creation. He is the new Adam, tending God's garden, as we were supposed to do in the first place.

She thought he was the gardener. Maybe he was, and is. Making all things new. Rocks, trees, birds, dogs, rivers, stars -- even us.

The Environmental Meme

Fran tagged me for this a long time ago, and I am finally getting to it -- it comes by way of Delia, who has a birding blog (that in itself sounds interesting). Here's the idea:

Try to think of one way you and your family can lessen your environmental impact in 2008. You could consider doing something relatively easy--like giving up paper plates and napkins (yup, more dishes and laundry, but oh so worth it at
trash-time)--or more difficult--like trying to carpool more (which can be a
pain, but saves a ton in gas money, not to mention in saved emissions). It
doesn't have to be hard--it could be something as simple as trying one of those
new fluorescent bulbs in your desk lamp. How about it?

This is hard for me, because there is so much I could do -- but if I'm honest I know I haven't been very good as "making a smaller footprint." (as Ann Bancroft would say.) For example, I bought two cloth bags from our local grocery store so that I wouldn't use so many grocery bags (paper or plastic), but I sometimes forget to use them! So one of my environmental goals for 2008 would be to use cloth grocery bags more often. I'd also like to use cloth bags for some of my other shopping as well. And third, I'd like to do "using up" what we have -- whatever itis. Those are my modest goals for 2008. and oh yes, I think we will look into getting some of those LED lights as well.

I'll tag Mompriest and Katherine, because I'm really interested in their environmental goals!

Global Warming

At Thanksgiving, my mother-in-law mentioned that she heard a program at church recently about Global Warming. She didn't know what to think, she said. The man said it was such a political issue, she said. It didn't take long to figure out that the speaker she heard doesn't believe that global warming is real.

It wasn't more than a month ago that our synod invited Will Steger to come and speak to us. His presentation was "Eyewitness to Global Warming", and one of the things he said was, "this is not a matter of politics." Not for him, at least. He doesn't have a political axe to grind. He's been there, seen things, and just wants to tell people what he has seen, as a person who loves the earth, and the creatures who dwell on it. It's possible that he thinks of himself as a kind of prophet, although I don't know if he would use those words.

One small story that struck me that day: there is a small Inuit village that has been in the same spot for centuries. But, they will have to move their village due to the change in climate. The village is Shismaref. When Will Steger said this name, I sat up, because a friend of mine was a Lutheran pastor in Shismaref.

Here's the problem I have with the Global Warming nay-sayers: They are telling us exactly what we want to hear. We don't have to change the way we do anything. Everything can stay just the same as it is. We can continue to live our comfortable existence. Don't worry. There is nothing to repent about.

Kind of like the false prophets -- the ones who would say, "Peace, peace," when there was no peace.

Now I don't know for 100% sure if global warming is real, although I do think that Will Steger has some credibility. I would be the first person to rejoice if I found out absolutely that there was no such thing.

But the whole thing does remind me of our gospel reading for Sunday: not the part we are always curious about, the part where some are "taken up" and some are "left behind." But the first part of the reading, when Jesus says that "as in those days before the flood, marrying and giving in marriage..." In other words, they were not paying attention, even though an ark was being built right in front of them.

We are not to be alarmists, trying to figure out the day that Jesus is coming back (we will never know), or even what day the earth will give out. But God does want us to pay attention -- to what is going on with our neighbors, the stranger, the earth -- and to live our lives as good stewards of the earth and of one another.

The basic instructions for Christians remain: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." -- and keep in mind that our neighbor includes the earth and its creatures.