The Gardener

The longest Saturday after the saddest Friday had slipped into the past. Mary, free from the Sabbath constraints laid upon her by her people’s law, slipped out before dawn and made her way to the tomb where they’d placed the body of the man who’d freed her from the clutches of the devil. She hadn’t remembered what it was like to breath free air until the day Jesus ordered the seven demons taking up residence within her to leave. A day hadn’t passed on which she hadn’t wept tears of joy. And then they killed him, the one who healed the sick and freed the enslaved and preached good news to the poor. And her tears of joy dried up. She thought they’d turn to tears of grief, but she hadn’t been able to muster the strength to weep. She kept seeing him hanging there, bloodied and beaten, his face turned to mush, his chest heaving with every labored breath. And then he’d breathed his last. And Mary’s fragile world and even more fragile hope collapsed in an instant.

Something inside her died right along with him that Friday. The foundation of her soul cracked. The pillars of her entire life collapsed. Not just her joy but all her other emotions dried up like a pulled weed. It was as if all feeling rushed out of the slit in her heart caused by the death of her Teacher, and there was nothing left within her to fill the void.

It was a cruel joke, she thought. She’d been a slave for so long to the will of the forces of darkness, and then he had come and saved her soul and body, only to have the only hope she’d ever known ripped away from her after so short a time. What kind of God played such games with a person’s heart? Didn’t he know the loss was too much for her to bear? Didn’t he know his death was hers, too? And God let it happen anyway. Is this how the Father repaid those who did his will and healed the sick and cast demons out of enslaved women? She didn’t think she wanted anything to do with him.

That Sunday morning as she walked through the darkness en route to the tomb, the emptiness she’d felt since Friday pressed in hard enough to make it difficult for her to breathe. It had really happened. Her hope that it was just some terrible nightmare evaporated slowly with the growing morning light. It was real. All of it. And there was no going back.

What if the demons returned? She didn’t want to admit it, but she had heard their voices clearly Friday evening and all through Saturday.

“We’ve won,” they whispered again as she walked. “And we’re coming for you. No one to save you now.”

She checked inside herself. Still no welling up of any kind of emotion. She still felt as dead as Jesus.

Then let them come, she thought, resigning herself to whatever fate the demons decided for her. What does it matter now?

She reached the place where they’d laid the Teacher to rest. She squinted in the early light. Had she walked to the wrong tomb by mistake? She had seen them bury Jesus and roll the stone in front of the tomb. But the stone in front of this tomb was rolled back. Mary looked around. This was for sure the place. She knew because of the garden.

Mary didn’t think her heart could fall any lower. And then it did. Not only had the religious leaders humiliated him in his unjust death; now someone had come and desecrated him in his burial. She dropped her chin to her chest. Still no tears came.

She knew she had to tell Peter and John right away. She didn’t think she had the strength to make it all the way back. She’d start one step at a time. The sun was up and rising fast into the sky by the time she knocked on Peter’s door. Peter answered, and John appeared right behind her.

“Someone’s taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb,” she said. She was surprised at how coldly she was able to utter the words. “We don’t know where they’ve taken him.”

The two eyed each other. A flash of understanding passed between them that was lost on Mary. The two pushed passed her and ran out of the house and down the street. Mary figured the only thing she could do was follow them.

She saw the two running out of the tomb just as she came in sight of the stone that had been rolled back. She called out their names, but they didn’t hear and soon disappeared.

Mary again came to the place. That he was gone was salt in a fresh wound. Now she couldn’t even properly mourn him. And at last, she was again able to feel something, sorrow blacker than a moonless night and hopelessness heavier than the temple in Jerusalem. And the tears finally came, slow at first, then building, until she wept with abandon, losing herself completely to the pain, eyes blurred, hands trembling, throat on fire.

She placed a hand on the stone that had sealed the Teacher’s tomb. It reached her shoulder in height, and stooping, she finally looked inside, something she hadn’t dared do until then. Two angels sat where Jesus’s body had lain.

She hardly welcomed the sight. Not even angels were of much use now, she thought.

“Why are you weeping?” one asked.

“They’ve taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where he is,” she said between sobs.

Perhaps she could find a high place from which she could jump. She turned from the opening of the tomb and saw a man standing behind her not too far off, most probably the caretaker of the garden outside the tomb.

“Why are you crying?” he asked. “Who are you looking for?”

How many times would she have to repeat herself and to how many people?

“Please, sir, if you have taken him somewhere, tell me where he is, and I’ll take him.”

What the man said caused Mary to jerk her head up and look the man in the eye for the first time.

“Mary,” he said.

She wiped the tears from her blurry eyes and found herself looking into the same eyes from which fire and compassion had flowed on the day Jesus had looked at her, loved her, and cast out seven spirits.

“Teacher!” she said.

She ran toward him and fell before him. Her hands grabbed his ankles, and with no shame in the presence of her Lord and friend she wept all over his feet.

“My dear daughter,” the risen Christ said, bending forward and placing a hand on her head, “you can’t hold onto me just now. I haven’t even ascended to the Father yet. Go and tell my brothers that I’m ascending to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God.”

She looked up and into the gaze that had silenced her oppressors. Had she heard right?

My Father and your Father? My God and your God? One in the same then?

The thought seeped down into the cracked foundation of her soul. So the Father hadn’t abandoned his Son, and he hadn’t abandoned them either. And Jesus’s plan wasn’t simply to ascend to his own Father and forget about the rest of them still here on the earth. His Father was her Father, too, and the Father of the very ones who’d abandoned him, which made Jesus her older brother. And after ascending from the grave and accomplishing what she would later come to find out was the single greatest and decisive victory over death and sin ever to be wrought, before even ascending to the Father to receive his place at his right hand where he would sit enthroned in eternal glory, he made time to come to her and reassure her heart. When she needed resurrection as much as Jesus did, Jesus drew near and took her hand.

Jesus pulled Mary to her feet. She would carry the memory of his face in that moment with her for the rest of her life. And one day she’d stand next to him in the presence of their Father forever. Until then, she had a story to tell. It was the story of a God who raised both dead bodies and dead hope.