Reflections for Holy Week: Come to the Garden

This reflection was originally published in the spring 2020 issue of STILLPOINT magazine: “Generation Gordon.”

By Salome Palmer ’19 

I Corinthians 15:58 

 Mary Magdalene turns in anguish from the empty tomb to mistake her risen Lord for the gardener. Jesus devotes the first hours of this Easter morning to tending a garden. The echoes of Eden are unmistakable—new life is cultivated in the garden. It is in the garden that God fashions man into his image. It is in the garden that the Lord’s presence walks with them. It is within the garden that man is called to work, to steward and to worship.

On the dawn of this new creation, the resurrected Jesus stands as the second Adam in this second Eden. Paul writes that all of creation, the Earth and all that is in it, groans for redemption. Christ is the fullness of Adam, the redemption of creation, the fulfillment of the promise, the keeper of the garden.

It is on that glorious Easter morning that we are again summoned to the garden. This garden is a renewed creation, bursting with the promises of God. This garden extends beyond the walls of Jerusalem, on to Samaria and to the ends of the Earth. It is in this garden that God’s spirit dwells with his people. And it is to this garden that Christ calls us as co-laborers with him for the cultivating that is still to be done. Holding fast to the hope of a resurrected creation, we devote our lives to work, to steward and to worship, knowing that “our labor is not in vain” (I Corinthians 15:58).