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| The Resurrection doesn't wait to we're all pretty! |
©2025 The Rev. Seth Olson
This sermon was preached during the Feast of the Resurrection on Easter morning at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Apostles in Hoover, AL. A video of the sermon may be found here.
Holy God, may my words be your words and when my words are not your words, may your people be wise enough to know the same.
Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed! Alleluia!
The unfinished 1x10 and 2x8 boards were an eyesore. Sitting out on the church lawn, they began to catch the eyes of parishioners and passersby alike. “What are those?” one member asked as we began a Vestry meeting. “They look like coffins! Are they for a funeral?” another laughed as she chimed in the conversation. They weren’t coffins, but I could see the confusion, and even though the mission of the wood was noble, I agreed that they weren’t pretty. That wasn’t their purpose.
What were they? Why was there wood on the church lawn? O, I’ll get there, but first… Easter dad jokes!
What do you call a rabbit with fleas? Bugs Bunny!
Why did the Easter egg hide? Because it was a little chicken!
Why doesn’t Jesus wear a necklace? Because he breaks every chain!
I tell these terrible jokes on Easter morning because the Resurrection is the greatest prank of all time. Better than Ashton Kutcher on Punk’d or the Impractical Jokers, Jesus bamboozled sin and Satan, death and even his disciples on that blessed morn’ long ago. So, it’s fitting—if a bit painful—to endure some jokes today.
What wasn’t so funny was what was happening at the first church I ever served St. John’s Episcopal Church in Decatur. The congregation had soured over a new initiative that required some coffin-looking things to be constructed in our church yard. Why would a church that prides itself on decorum within a denomination that prides itself on decorum put some ugly boxes out on the lawn? Well, one part of the answer is the correct response to most Sunday School teachers’ inquiries: Jesus!
We put those boxes outside because Jesus told us to. But, more specifically they were there so that something new could grow. You see, at St. John’s Decatur, much like here at Holy Apostles, Hoover, we wanted to be good neighbors. And, instead of telling our neighbors how we were going to love them, we asked them what they needed. Well, we did that after we had almost tarnished the relationships by telling them what they needed to do. Eventually though, they let us know their dreams and we let them know our capacities and together we began to vision.
Specifically, these conversations happened with our neighbors at Banks-Caddell Elementary School. At that time, they had the worst standardized test scores of all the elementary programs in the city. Most of their students came from the literal other side of the railroad tracks in a heavily segregated city. Many were behind grade levels in math and reading. Few had any help at home. The outlook for many of these students was bleak at best. Plus, they didn’t much like our faith community calling us the scary church across the street—things were not looking so great.
However, at the suggestion of St. John’s then Rector, the Rev. Evan Garner, some members of the congregation went to meet with the principal of Banks-Caddell.
They asked what our church could do to help. The head of the school jumped at the offering and wondered, “Do you have any space for a garden? We have a gardening club at the school, but nowhere with enough sunlight to plant a community garden.”
Did we have space? Yes, we had space—in the form of a big ol’ sunny church yard. So, at a workday, we put together four big, raised garden beds. Now these were not the prettiest structures ever crafted, I mean they looked like roughly hewn caskets, but didn’t that just add to the power of what was happening here?
Amazing things happen inside a garden. Just ask Mary Magdalene.
Y’all in today’s Gospel lesson, she thought she was talking to the gardener. Which is… hilarious, and also maybe the most fitting and theologically accurate case of mistaken identity in all of Holy Scripture. Because of course, Jesus was the gardener.
There, in the early morning light, beside an empty tomb, with tears still fresh on her cheeks—Mary met the One who still tends to our grief and breaks the soil of sorrow with new life. She met the Great Gardener of the Entire Cosmos!
Think about how crazy this was: she went looking for a body. And instead, she heard her name,“Mary!” That’s when she knew that this wasn’t the end—it was merely the beginning.
And, to think the whole Christian story—our story—started in another garden: Eden. Cast your mind back to that Sunday School chestnut: After Adam, Eve, and the serpent started the blame game, which sadly continues to this day, we lost our immediate connection with Our Creator. The Fall, as we call it, was not only something that happened once long ago, but is also something we all endure through the pains of this human life. Don’t follow? Stick with me for a moment.
What I mean is that the woundings we undergo thrust us out of the proverbial garden that is our original essence. Even though we always bear the very good image of God, when we experience difficult wounds, especially in childhood, we find ourselves eating the fruit—opening our eyes to see the brokenness of this world. We begin to define life via the lens of good and evil, and we are thrust from Eden. Outside the garden, life is toilsome and broken. So, to deal with the pain, we cultivate egos to protect us from hurt. However, these egoic vessels guard us from more than injury, they also keep us from our true selves.
But, just like with Mary Magdalene, this isn’t the end—it’s the beginning.
For our true nature gets reclaimed here in another garden. Where something that looked like death—a tomb, a place of isolation, an ego-centric worldview—becomes the compost of creation. These, let’s just call them “manure situations,” surprisingly have a way of hastening our maturation—as St. Paul put it, “suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” The hard-won progress of moving from suffering to endurance to character to hope also reveals our truest selves. Of course, this path runs counter to the comfort and convenience our culture values so highly.
As much as our society loves the fanfare of an initial public offering or the party of a rebranding effort, it’s funny to think about the Resurrection, which began not with public triumph, but with intimate tenderness.
And, as much as our world (and even the Episcopal Church) loves to understand the reasoning behind why something is the way it is, the Resurrection begins not with understanding, but with presence.
And, as much as our denomination loves pomp and circumstance, the Resurrection begins not in a cathedral, but in a garden.
In other words, the Resurrection starts in all the unexpected places—where grief still lingers, where wounds still fester, where the future seems volatile, and life itself looks more like a coffin than a cradle.
That’s where God meets us—calling us each by name. God bids us step away from who we pretend to be to make it through the day, instead we are called to live as our true selves, even when the wounds still haven’t healed, or life looks more like a nightmare than God’s dream.
In a church yard, a classroom, a hospital bed, a broken heart, or a garden bed that looks like a tomb—that’s where God will find us. Wherever, you are today—that’s where God is finding you. Not to shame you. Not to lecture you. But to call you. To whisper, “Follow me into resurrection.” To say, “You thought this was the end… but it’s not. It’s merely the beginning. You thought this was a coffin, but it’s soil.”
And speaking of soil, the ground on which we started the community garden at St. John’s is still bearing fruit. Our relationship with Banks-Caddell grew so much over the five-years I was there that it was hard to imagine the church or its yard any other way. What’s more, the students at that elementary school improved their test scores two whole grade levels thanks to a tutoring program we initiated. St. John’s also started providing scholarships to any Fifth Grader who could not afford to attend a class trip to Camp McDowell’s Environmental Center. The students even stopped calling St. John’s the scary church across the street. Instead they called us their friends. As much as any of us would like to take credit for all that happened, it was Our Good Gardener’s doing.
So, friends, let this Easter morning remind you that the Risen Christ is still gardening…
Still cultivating hope…
Still turning tombs into nurseries…
Still calling us by name in the most unlikely places…
The wood may look rough,
The ground may seem hard,
But you never know what might grow there until you try.
With Our Good Gardener know: this isn’t the end—it’s merely the beginning.
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
Amen.
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