Introduction
The Easter Vigil is unlike any other service in the church year. It begins in darkness. A small flame is kindled. The stories of salvation history are told again. Creation, flood, exodus, promise. The church gathers in the quiet of night and remembers how God has always brought life out of places where life seemed impossible.
If the gospel is proclaimed during the Vigil, it arrives as the turning point of the entire service. The ancient story of creation has just been told. Light has entered the sanctuary. The church stands on the threshold between night and morning.
But even if this text is proclaimed on Easter morning, John’s gospel still begins in darkness.
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark…”
Before the alleluias.
Before the certainty.
Before anyone understands what God has done.
The resurrection begins quietly.
And where does it begin?
In a garden.
Gardens have always held deep meaning in the biblical imagination. They reflect the rhythm of life itself. Seeds are planted in the earth. Roots stretch downward into unseen places. Life pushes upward toward the light. Spring brings blossoms. Summer strengthens growth. Autumn changes color. Winter returns everything to rest in the soil.
And yet every gardener knows: beneath the quiet earth, life is waiting.
In scripture, the story of God and humanity begins in a garden. And on Easter morning, it begins again there.
Narrative Context
John’s resurrection narrative unfolds in stages.
Mary Magdalene arrives at the tomb while it is still dark and discovers the stone rolled away. Her first assumption is not resurrection but theft. Someone has taken the body. She runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple.
The two disciples race to the tomb, peer inside, and see the linen cloths lying there. The beloved disciple “saw and believed,” though the narrator immediately clarifies that they still did not understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. Whatever belief has begun here remains incomplete.
After seeing the empty tomb, the disciples return home. Mary, however, remains outside the tomb weeping. Grief has rooted her there.
When she finally looks again into the tomb she sees two angels, but even this does not change her understanding. Her grief still frames the moment: someone has taken the Lord away.
Then she turns. A man is standing there. She does not recognize him. Through tears and early morning light, she assumes he must be the caretaker of the grounds.
“Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”
And then Jesus speaks a single word.
“Mary.”
In that moment the darkness lifts. Recognition blossoms. The risen Christ stands before her.
Supposing Him to be the Gardener
One of my favorite details in the story is Mary’s assumption that Jesus is the gardener. Many of us preachers have studied this in seminary but not everyone in the pews has heard this before. And so, it’s an amazing opportunity to teach on Easter.
On the surface, this seems like a simple misunderstanding. Grief clouds her perception. Tears blur her sight. In the early morning light, she mistakes a stranger for the caretaker of the grounds.
Yet John’s gospel often layers meaning into these kinds of moments. And it raises the question: what if Mary is not entirely wrong?
Gardens appear at remarkable moments throughout the biblical story.
The first garden, of course, is Eden. In Genesis, God plants a garden and places humanity within it. Adam and Eve walk with God in the cool of the day. They care for the life that surrounds them. The garden is a place of beauty, harmony, and belonging.
But we know how that story unfolds. The relationship between humanity and God fractures. Humanity is driven out of the garden, and the ground itself bears the mark of that brokenness.
O how Adam and Eve must have longed to return.
Echoes of Eden ripple quietly throughout scripture, but rarely does the story linger again in a garden. The memory of that place, where God once walked among humanity, remains mostly in the background.
Until the night of Jesus’ arrest.
John tells us that after the Last Supper, Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley with his disciples to a place where there was a garden. It is there that Judas comes with soldiers and officials. It is there, among the trees, that betrayal enters the story.
In some ways, the scene feels hauntingly familiar.
Once again humanity stands in a garden with God, and once again the relationship fractures. Trust gives way to betrayal. Fear and violence enter the space where peace once lived.
It is Eden all over again.
The garden that should have been a place of communion becomes the place where humanity turns away from God once more. The story of the fall echoes quietly through the night as Jesus is bound and led away.
But John’s gospel is not finished with gardens.
And so, we enter the garden of the resurrection.
The New Creation
John tells us that near the place where Jesus was crucified there was a garden, and in that garden was a new tomb. It is here, in the quiet of early morning, that Mary encounters the risen Christ.
Supposing him to be the gardener.
Some ancient traditions embroidered beautiful stories around this moment. Some imagined that the cross was fashioned from the wood of Eden’s forbidden tree. Others imagined that the spices brought to Jesus at his birth had once grown in Eden’s soil.
These stories are more than likely embellished imagination. But they reveal something profound about how early Christians sensed the deep symmetry of this moment.
For in a garden humanity first walked with God. And in a garden the risen Christ stands once more before humanity.
By the time John’s gospel was written, Christian theology had already begun reflecting on Jesus as a “new Adam.” The first human was formed from the dust of the earth. Now Christ has emerged from the dust of the tomb. The first creation began in a garden. Now a re-newed creation begins in one as well.
Mary thought he was the gardener and perhaps she was exactly right.
Preaching Possibility
Life in Creation
Easter is often preached as victory over death, and it certainly is that.
But John’s imagery suggests something even more expansive. The resurrection is not simply about life after death. It is about the renewal of creation itself.
The gardener has returned.
The one who formed humanity from the dust now rises from the dust. The one who once walked with humanity in Eden now stands again in a garden, calling a grieving disciple by name.
And notice how recognition comes.
Not through spectacle.
Not through power.
But through relationship.
“Mary.”
The gardener calls his creation by name.
Throughout scripture, God’s relationship with humanity has often been described in the language of cultivation. God plants, tends, waters, prunes, and nurtures life. The work of the gardener is patient and attentive. Growth unfolds slowly. Transformation often happens beneath the surface before anyone can see it.
This is how resurrection begins.
Quietly.
Like a seed pushing upward through dark soil.
For us preachers, this imagery opens a pastoral way of proclaiming Easter. The resurrection is not simply an event long ago. It is the beginning of a renewed creation that God continues to tend.
The gardener is still at work.
Planting hope where despair once grew.
Bringing life from places that seemed barren.
Calling people by name in the midst of their grief.
The story that began in the garden of Genesis is not abandoned. It is restored.
And on Easter morning, the first witness to that restoration is Mary Magdalene. Standing in a garden, hearing her name spoken by the risen Christ, and running to proclaim the good news that life has begun again.
Micah Krey 
Leave a comment