Jesus the Gardener?

I love to play with today’s gospel reading from John (Chapter 20.)  Mary of Magdala, who stood outside the empty tomb of Jesus, was weeping when two angels appeared to her, one sitting at the head and one sitting at the foot of where the body of Jesus had been laid.

The angels started questioning her about why she was crying.  She explained that Jesus had been taken and she didn’t know where.  So Jesus appeared to her in his resurrected body and she didn’t recognize him.  He asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?”

I love the next part, where scripture tells us that she thought Jesus was the gardener!  She wonders if Jesus knows where Jesus is.

Jesus calls out her name and she immediately recognizes him.

He tells her “Stop holding on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” And then, in the pattern I suggested yesterday, he tells her to go and tell his brothers—meaning the disciples—that he is going to his Father, and her Father, to his God and her God.

Scripture says Mary “went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ and what he told her.”

It always cracks me up that she thought Jesus was the gardener.  I suppose the gardener would have been the logical person to be hanging around the tomb, but still, I love that line.

For me, whenever I read this passage, I always think about how we encounter Jesus throughout the day in the people that we meet, and that we, too, do not recognize him as imaged in our brothers and sisters.

How would we treat each other differently, if we were to recognize Jesus in each other?

Can you even imagine how wonderful that must have been for Mary of Magdala to see Jesus again?  And, as we will see in upcoming readings, she was not the only one.

For many of us who have been unable to go to Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist, undoubtedly we, too, will experience such joy when we are reunited with him.

May you be filled with Easter joy as you, too, meet the resurrected Jesus in the days ahead.

Janet Cassidy
janetcassidy.blogspot.com
janetcassidy.blubrry.net (podcasts)