There is something wonderful
this Sunday: regardless of the faith tradition we follow, or even if we do not
follow any faith as closely as we
should, the Christian cannot miss praying on Easter Sunday. Easter is a
profoundly spiritual day. It is a day of joy, beauty and hope. When
the lights come on during the solemn Easter Vigil, or when we first come to
Church on Easter Sunday morning, we are struck by the flowers--lilies,
hyacinths, roses, hydrangeas, all sorts of flowers. The flowers remind us of the three gardens of the Lord we
find in Scripture.
The
first garden is the Garden of Paradise. This is garden where God placed Adam
and Eve. Genesis describes it as a
garden of beauty, a garden with an abundance of fruit, a garden of joy. It was a garden where mankind had everything
He needed. But it was a garden that demanded humility. Man had to recognize his
and her dependence on God. Adam and Eve refused to do this. They thought that
they could be like God, could be their own gods. And the garden of Paradise
became a place of sin. There is little difference between the story in Genesis
and the present state of the world as people, and sadly as we, often act as
though we do not need God.
And
all the beauties that God has given us become nothing more than the backdrop
for sin. In the delightful anthropomorphism of Genesis, God walked through the
Garden looking for Adam and Eve. They were hiding. They knew they had offended
God. They were overwhelmed with
guilt. They had to hide. “Perhaps,”
they thought, “if he does not notice us, our sin will be forgotten.” We do this all the time. We sin and
then hide from God, hoping that the sin will be forgotten, buried in time. The problem is that we cannot hide sin from God, and we cannot
hide sin from ourselves. Adam and Eve also realized that they were naked. Sin
had turned that which was beautiful into an occasion for more sin. Adam and Eve
were no longer comfortable in their own skin. That is what sin does to us
all. We are no longer comfortable
in our own skin. When we sin, we have a problem looking into the mirror. We
don’t see the person we hoped we could be. When we sin, we also have a problem
looking others in the eye. Actually, we have a problem looking at others,
period. We no longer see them as reflections of God. Instead we see in them the
images of our own sin. When we sin we become masters of transference.
God
found Adam and Eve. There were horrible consequences for their letting sin into
the world. They brought suffering and death to their progeny, but before expelling
them from Paradise, God helped
them grapple with the terrible reality of sin. He sewed fig leaves for them to
cover themselves up. This was not about sex. This was about being vulnerable. This is what sin does to
us. It makes us weak. It makes us vulnerable. But God loves us even in our
sins. He offers us fig leaves. He gives us His protection. He covers us with
His Grace.
God
also made a promise to Adam and Eve. He promised that a time would come when
the evil that they submitted to would be destroyed. One would come whose
humility and love would be so profound that the devil himself would be
defeated. O happy fault, we sing in
the Exultet, the solemn hymn sung
before the Paschal Candle at the beginning of the vigil. O happy fault, the sin of Adam has gained for us so great a Redeemer.
So
here is our God, in the garden of Paradise, giving us hope, hope for healing
from the devastation we bring upon ourselves with our own sins. In the first garden God is telling us,
“Do not give up. Do not give up on
yourselves. I will not give up on you. I love you too much to let you be in
pain. I refuse to let you remain vulnerable. There is hope for healing. There
is a magnificent Redeemer from sin, my Eternal Word. I will give Him to you, and He will return you to me.”
We
come now to the second garden, the garden of Gethsemani. Jesus is in this
garden, the Eternal Word emptied of His divinity, overwhelmed by the
realization of the sacrifice He will make to fulfill the Father’s plan for
mankind. When in His agony Jesus asked the Father to let this pass, was He
asking the Father to find another way, one less painful than crucifixion, or
was He asking that the turmoil He felt might be eliminated? We do not
know. Scripture only says that His
prayer was so intense that His sweat turned into blood. It also says that His
prayer was, “Thy will be done.
The
garden of Gethsemani is the garden of challenge and the garden of choice. We
visit this garden often. There is
turmoil in our family, and we want to strike out at the offender. But our
Christianity calls us to kindness not vengeance. There are crises and tragedies, and we join the Lord and
pray, Let this pass, but we also add,
“Thy will be done. Help me, Lord, to use this challenge as a way to draw others
closer to you, as a way for me to
draw closer to you.” In the garden of Gethsemani we unite our pains and
sufferings to the cross of Jesus Christ and know that somehow God will
transform tragedy into triumph.
The
garden of Gethsemani points us to the third garden, the garden of the
Resurrection. Now in the place where He
had been crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which
no one had yet been buried. So they laid Jesus there. Mary Magdeline went
to that garden on Easter Sunday morning. And there she found her greatest hope
realized. There she found the Lord, risen from the dead.
We
also have come to the garden. We have found the Lord. Or perhaps it is better said, He has found us. He gives us
His life. Baptism, the Easter
sacrament, infuses us with the Life of God. And our greatest hope has been realized. Jesus Christ has defeated the power of
evil in the world and in our own lives. We are not alone. Jesus Christ is with
us, always. The temptations of the garden of Paradise and the challenges of the
garden of Gethsemani, have been conquered on that hill near the garden of the
Resurrection. Jesus Christ is the
Victor. And we Christians, tempted and challenged throughout our lives rejoice
in the spiritual life we have been given on Easter Sunday. For Jesus Christ has
risen from the dead. We are
His. And He is ours.
A
hundred years ago, Charles Austin Miles reflected on the Garden of the
Resurrection and wrote[1]:
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
And He walks with me, and He talks with
me,.
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
He speaks and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing;
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
And He walks with me, and He talks with
me,.
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known ■
[1]
In the Garden (sometimes rendered by
its first line I Come to the Garden Alone)
is a gospel song written by American songwriter C. Austin Miles (1868–1946), a
former pharmacist who served as editor and manager at Hall-Mack publishers for
37 years. According to Miles' great-granddaughter, the song was written
"in a cold, dreary and leaky basement in New Jersey that didn't even have
a window in it let alone a view of a garden.". The song was first
published in 1912 and popularized during the Billy Sunday evangelistic
campaigns of the early twentieth Century.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario