Easter Day sermon by the Bishop of Gloucester, the Right Reverend ...

"If you are a gardener, or indeed if you like looking at beautiful gardens (which is nearer the mark in my case), the last few weeks have been a time of pleasure mixed with anxiety. The pleasure has been at seeing the vibrant colour return after the winter in the blossom on the trees and even some green leaves emerging now and the flowers coming first into bud and then into bright yellows and pinks and blues? -? hyacinths, daffodils, tulips and more. Nature doing that apparently miraculous thing it does every year. The anxiety, of course, whether a frost might come at the worst of moments and ruin the blossom and bring the flowers to a premature end. And frost there has indeed been this last week, not too severe, especially in the city, so perhaps it will be all right.

Gardens, of course, play a key part in the Christian story, though the Bible which almost begins in a garden ends in a city, not the old Jerusalem of the gospels, but the new Jerusalem of the world to come, of which the Revelation to John speaks so eloquently. So there is hope for city dwells, urban man and woman! God is not only found in the countryside!

Nevertheless gardens are important. First there is the garden of Eden, such a crucial element in the Genesis creation myth, a garden into which God puts first a man and then a woman, Adam and Eve, symbolically the first ancestors of humankind. God places them in a garden, not just to sit and admire the blossom and the flowers, but to till it and keep it. Adam is to be the gardener, to create with God something beautiful and delightful to enjoy. There are trees too in the garden, though there is one tree in the middle that Adam and Eve are to leave well alone.

Of course it all goes wrong. They eat the fruit of the forbidden tree and the consequences are dire. Nothing less than banishment from this garden of delight, expelled, denied its beauty, driven into a barren place. Words like "sin" and "fall" creep into the story. Adam and Eve are disobedient to God and that 's bad enough, but may be not the worst thing. They try to hide from God, as if they could, no longer able to look God in the face, so to speak, which is worse. And there relationship with God is in tatters, and that matters most. That matters most? -? their relationship with God has failed. And beyond that, their relationship with one another has suffered a blow too. Suddenly there is no easy intimacy between them. They find that they are naked and, even with one another, they have to hide behind fig leaves, no longer at ease in their bodies or their souls.

Don't get hung up on whether this is history. That's not what it's meant to be. It is powerful story about alienation, separation, relationships marred and broken. The Garden of Eden, from which they are led out, and cherubim with flaming sword set on guard to keep them out and to guard the way to the tree of life.

Now turn to another garden, this one on a hillside in Jerusalem, the garden they called Gethsemane. Jesus has shared supper with his friends, taken bread and spoken of his body to be nailed to a cross, and a cup of wine and spoken of his blood to be shed for all, and then out into the garden in the dark of the night. With him he takes Peter, John and James. He asks them to pray and then he withdraws a little from them that he too may pray to his heavenly Father. Some of this story has some echoes of Eden. There are relationships that are breaking. Judas has already disappeared into the night intent on betraying his friend. Peter is about to deny his Lord. And, even before that, these three chosen companions are about to fail the simple test of staying awake to pray. Friendship is falling apart. And out of this garden also people will be led, well perhaps only one person will be led out on a journey to a barren place, only one because the others will simply flee. Alienation, separation, relationships marred and broken.

But, wait, at the heart of it there is this man on his knees, praying with such intensity that his sweat is like drops of blood, prayer that can only be called an agony, because this man, this new Adam, is trying to turn things round. "Father, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not my will, but yours, be done." This new Adam does not disobey like the one in the Garden of Eden. This new Adam is not hiding from God; he is opening himself up to God. This new Adam is perfect in his obedience to the Father's will. Here in the garden he is beginning to put things right.

Of course he cannot complete the work here, for the path of obedience will take him along the Via Dolorosa and outside the city, to the barren hill, the city tip, the place of bones. There on a new tree of life he brings to perfection the work he has begun. It is costly for him, supreme sacrifice, not just because of the excruciating physical pain, but also because, at least as Mark the evangelist saw it, he goes to his death with a sense of his own relationship with God in ruins? -? "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthan? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"? Perhaps so, but, with retrospect, we can with the Fourth Gospel hear instead from the cross the cry of triumph, "It is accomplished!"

What has been accomplished? The restoration of relationship, friendship, between God and humankind. There's a way back into the garden. Jesus has opened it up.

So it's appropriate that, when they take his dead body down from the cross and cover his nakedness with a shroud, they should place him in a garden tomb. It is in the garden that his work outside the city wall will be told and understood.

And so to this morning's story of beautiful intimacy in the garden of God's delight. Cherubim no longer on duty to keep people out of the garden, but standing at a tomb with the stone rolled back, for the one who was dead is alive again. Jesus walks in the garden, not in the cool of the evening breeze like God in Eden, but at dawn as the sun rises and begins to give its warmth. It is Mary of Magdala who sees him, standing there, seeming to be the gardener. And there is this wonderful almost wordless encounter. "Mary!" "Rabboni!" In that moment her fears are overcome, her grief is banished, her life is restored, her trust in God returns. Mary of Magdala is, in that moment, a kind of new Eve, Jesus, not so much the new Adam now as the glorious Son of God, the Eternal Word of the Father, For Mary, as a new Eve, as she stands there, face to face with Jesus, is a symbolic figure representing the return to relationship between God and humankind. And what that scene invites us to see is that we are invited back into the garden, back into friendship with God, back into an easy intimacy? -? relationship restored.? "Mary!" "Rabboni!"

This Jesus, glorious risen Lord, still bearing the scars of his obedience, says to you today, to Mary, to Peter, to Vanessa, to Jo, to Stella, to Matt, to Chris to Maggie? -? whoever you are. He says,

"I don't want you to be outside the beautiful place that is my kingdom, outside the garden, beyond the orbit of my love. Have you not noticed? The guards have gone. The gate is thrown open and wide. I don't see in you one weighed down by failure, disappointment, sadness, guilt. I see you, as God created you, full of potential, beautiful, with a capacity for good, for love, for flourishing. Can't you see, feel, that the failure and the sin that maybe burdened you has fallen off your back? That happened long ago when I gave my back to the smiters and in costly obedience to the Father's will I climbed up on that cross outside the city?

"But they buried me in a garden tomb because the garden is where I choose to be, the place of openness and joy and intimacy, where friendship can be restored, relationships deepened, life be lived with delight and expectancy.

"Will you not come back into the garden and flourish?"

Alleluia! Christ is risen!"

next iron chef next iron chef aquamarine iraq war iraq war san diego chargers san diego chargers