Online Worship for Easter Sunday, April 17th, 2022

For Easter Sunday, Rev. Dr. Stephen Caine tells us about one detail from today’s gospel that he can’t help but ruminate on: Mary Magdalene, as she weeps by the empty tomb, frightened and distraught by the possibility that Jesus’s body has been stolen from its resting place, is too distracted and heartbroken to realize that Jesus is right behind her, asking her why she is crying. She thinks he’s the gardener for the area surrounding the tomb. The fact that Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener in her grief, Stephen argues, matters– because it invites us to look at who gardeners are in our society, and why we can think of Jesus as a gardener himself.