April 20, 2025
• Rev. Mindie Moore
April 20: The Garden of Resurrection (Easter Sunday)
John 20:1-18
I want to welcome you again to Easter at St. Luke’s Midtown! We’re so glad that you’re here with us, whether you’re here most Sundays or this is your first time or somewhere in-between. I’m Mindie Moore and I’m the campus pastor here and not only is it Easter but it’s also the first Sunday of our new sermon series, Graves into Gardens. For the next several weeks, we’re going to be looking at different ways that God creates life and hope out of places that seem like the end. And there’s no better place to start with that than Easter! So let’s begin our message with a moment of prayer together.
Pray
The other night as we were eating dinner, my husband’s phone rang. Almost immediately he declined the call and we kept eating dinner. My son, who is in second grade, was kind of appalled. Dad, why didn’t you answer the phone?! Who’s calling you?!
Zack told him that it was probably just a spam call or someone wanting to sell something. This didn’t exactly soothe our son’s confusion. In fact, he seemed more annoyed by this response and he said, “But...what if it’s something you want? What if they’re selling something great?!”
Now, I’m never—ever—going to advocate that you answer your phone for random numbers BUT this whole exchange did make me wonder about the different expectations that we hold. Are we out there looking for the best possible outcome? Are we bracing for the worst to hit us? Are we just kind of numb and setting our expectations to the side because it’s sort of tiring to have them?
And I wonder, especially today, with it being Easter—what do we expect when we come to THIS story of the resurrection of Jesus? (SLIDE: What do we expect from Easter?) We tell some version of it every year and sometimes I fear we've lost our ability to expect much from hearing this story, because it’s just SO familiar. And the truth is, we might even find ourselves a bit resistant to it this year. There’s a lot of challenging, heartbreaking stuff happening in our world and the thought of telling a story that centers on miraculous hope might seem kind of difficult to engage with or even a bit out of touch.
I get that. AND...it probably won’t surprise you that I think there IS something really powerful to be found in this story and that hope is exactly what we should be talking about today. So I want to encourage you to let yourself expect to encounter something new and good and hopeful today. There’s a reason we keep telling this story—there's a reason we keep coming back to the hope that’s here.
Now, there’s an account of the resurrection in each of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and they all cover it in their own way. Today we’re going to spend our time in John’s account. And right from the beginning, John’s take on things is a little unique because it’s the only one of the accounts of the resurrection where the action begins before the sun is up. In this version of the story, hope begins in the dark.
Mary gets to the tomb first, and immediately, as she approaches, she realizes that her own expectations of what she thinks she’s going to find are about to be challenged. Something isn’t right...the stone has been moved and the tomb is open. I can only imagine how confusing this would have been for her. And very quickly following her confusion, she would have started to feel dread creeping up. Because the tomb isn’t just open...it’s EMPTY.
Now, WE know that this is good news, but we have to understand that in that moment, for her, it was NOT. This would have implied foul play. A dead body doesn’t move itself, so SOMEONE must have stolen it and there’s nothing good that can come of THAT.
So she goes to her friends, Peter and John, for help...but they’re not exactly helpful. They sort of walk around, examine the burial cloths that are left behind...and then they go home. I’m not sure what they’re doing or why they chose to leave, but for whatever reason, this puts Mary right back where she started.
At the tomb. An empty tomb. Alone. Full of grief and worry and fear.
Several years ago, my family went to Arlington National Cemetary, to visit my husband’s grandparents’ graves. Just across the way from us, there was a young widow, laying next to her husband’s grave, just weeping. Her grief was so raw and unfiltered and it was like a holy moment witnessing her there. Every time I read this account of Mary weeping at Jesus’ tomb, I think about that woman. I think about what it feels like to be consumed with your grief and, for Mary, what it would have been like to not only have the sadness over Jesus’ death, but to think that someone has taken the body in an act of hate. It’s almost too much. It’s definitely not a place where I would expect hope to show up.
But, this is exactly where hope DOES show up for Mary. The thing is, hope presents itself in a completely different way than she anticipates. Another interesting thing about John’s account of this event is that in some of the other Gospels, when the women come to the tomb, they’re there to work. They’ve come with spices and other tools to help prepare the body and they’re wondering how THEY will move the stone so they can do just that.
We don’t get that in John. Mary comes to the tomb solo and she seems to be just showing up. Maybe...just to have a moment. Maybe...just to try and find some peace. Maybe hope for Mary before she sees what’s happening at the tomb is found in something pretty uninspiring. Maybe hope for Mary...just looked like a dead body, safe and sound behind a heavy stone.
Because Mary doesn’t know yet that God is up to something that is so much bigger than what she’s imagined. She doesn’t yet know that God is doing something beyond what any of them have ever experienced or thought to anticipate. She doesn’t know that not only is Jesus not THERE, he’s ALIVE and she’s about to see him. She’s about to come face to face with the risen Christ.
She doesn’t know any of that and she doesn’t know to expect that, because it’s nothing she’s ever seen God do before. And isn’t that the challenge of our faith sometimes? We WANT to hope. We WANT to believe that something better is possible. But we haven’t seen it yet! And we find ourselves having to take a leap of faith and believe that God is able to do things we’ve never seen or dreamed up. It’s kind of scary. It can feel foolish. But I think this kind of faith is exactly where hope lives. (SLIDE: UNEXPECTED FAITH IS WHERE HOPE LIVES) And this kind of hope is exactly what lets new things come from places that seem like graves, that seem like the end.
How many of you compost? Full disclosure, I know it’s a good thing. I am very compost supportive. AND, that said...compost is kind of gross to me. It smells. It gets weird. It’s dead, rotting food. You can even introduce worms into the mix if you want and then things get really wild!
BUT here’s the thing about compost, that makes it more than just a rotting pile of kitchen trash...once it’s broken down, when you finally can mix it with soil, when you put it in your garden beds...new life grows through it. And most of the time, new life growths HEALTHIER because of it. The same dirt that we once thought was dead and decaying can create something beautiful. The possibilities are there...sometimes we just have to let ourselves see it for more than it is in that moment.
Mary begins to see this new thing that’s happening and what's really going on here, once she starts to talk to Jesus. Now, at first, she assumes she’s talking to the gardener. Again, this fits perfectly with her expectation of what could be going on here. The tomb is in a garden and it would make a lot more sense for a gardener to be walking around instead of her dead friend.
But notice how the whole turning point of Mary’s story happens in v. 15 & 16 (SLIDE):
15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir,[b] if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew,[c] “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).
It just takes Mary hearing Jesus say her name to know that there’s so much more going on here. Because Mary knows that voice. And she knows that when Jesus shows up, everything changes.
What does it take for US to have that kind of moment? What does it take to see beyond what’s right in front of us and to believe that God might be up to something huge? It’s so easy for us to just see the problems. To get stuck in the darkness. But what if Jesus is actually showing up in so many of those dark places and we just don’t know to recognize it’s him?
One of the things that has helped my own faith right now is to be actively on the lookout for people who are doing the work of hope and healing. Sometimes it’s really big stuff, sometimes it’s super local and small. But I keep trying to seek out THESE stories because...there are a lot of bleak stories that want our collective attention. And I keep sensing the Holy Spirit nudging me to, yes, pay attention to those things, and lament and take action, those are all really important things to do, especially as people of faith. AND ALSO...make sure to see the good too. Because the good is where Jesus is found, and the good keeps us going.
There’s a lot of good that I could share with you today, and since we’re in a garden theme, I want to lift up a nonprofit called (SLIDE) Sprouting Minds. Sprouting Minds is based in Cincinnati and is led by Jordan Payne, who is St. Luke’s member Lee Vriesman’s son in law. Sprouting Minds is all about sharing and creating hope in what might be a bit of an unexpected way—through therapeutic gardening programs for kids. Jordan has brought his training as a trauma-informed mental health specialist and combined it with the tangible benefits of teaching high-risk kids how to garden. The programming helps grow not only produce, but resilience...and healing...and safe relationships with adults...and stronger communities.
And here’s what I really love about their mission: the kids find hope through this program, but they also share it. While part of what they do is keep and enjoy the produce they grow, another piece of it is that they donate a certain amount to local food banks. In the 2023-2024 school year, these kids donated 210 pounds of produce!
This is so important because (SLIDE) Hope is meant to be shared.
We see this in Mary’s story after she stands face to face with Jesus. Her first instinct is to just HOLD ON as tight as she can to this hope. But what Jesus wants her to know is that there’s actually so much more for her. Hope is more than her personal comfort...it becomes her mission to share that hope.
Because hope creates hope creates hope creates hope. And when it’s shared like that, hope creates this unstoppable force of good in the world. Good that is so much more powerful than evil. Love that is bigger than hate. Possibility that creates new beginnings and better stories even when we think we’re at the very end.
That’s what Easter does in Mary. This ordinary friend of Jesus, who becomes a messenger of the most important news there’s ever been to share.
So what does Easter do in us?
As we hold that question, I want to go back to what I mentioned at the very beginning about this story, because I think it might help us find an answer. Remember: John’s account of the resurrection...begins in the dark.
When we’re in the dark, it can seem like the darkness is all there is. But it’s exactly in the dark that light gets to shine the brightest. At the end of the first season of a show called True Detective (SLIDE), Matthew McConnaughy’s character is processing the terrible things that he and his detective partner, played by Woody Harrelson, have witnessed as they’ve worked to solve a crime. And he starts talking about the night sky and how he’s been looking at it from his hospital bed as he recovers from something that happens during their case.
As they look up to the dark night sky together, Woody Harrelson’s character says to him, “well, it looks like the dark has a lot more territory than the light.”
To which Matthew McConnaughy replies that he’s actually looking at it all wrong. Because at the beginning, he says, there was ONLY darkness. But NOW, look at all these stars. He says, “If you ask me, the light’s winning.”
I believe that the light wins, that hope wins. You and I...in our personal lives, in our wider world, we’re going to encounter a lot of dark. There will be moments where that’s all we see, we will be tempted to believe that it’s got so much more territory than the light ever could. But it's exactly when we find ourselves THERE, that we need to start looking for hope. Because finding Easter hope in the darkness is not a naive pursuit. In fact, it is absolutely NECESSARY. It’s what keeps us going.
And Church, it’s up to us to lead the way on this. Not just in this building, but anywhere we find ourselves.
Because we know this story. We know what hope created on the first Easter and the power of the risen Jesus. Yes, this IS a familiar story, but it is also a story that we carry with us, far from this place, long after the songs are over and the pastel clothes are put away. It’s a story that reminds us that God takes darkness and turns it into light; takes graves and turns them into gardens; takes despair and turns it into hope.
Let’s let that reminder that we receive today inspire us to be like Mary encountering Jesus...to be messengers and creators of hope.
Let’s pray.