Garden

We were reading John 20 for morning prayers today. It's really caught Pastor's interest this year that Magdalena mistook Jesus for the gardener. John starts his gospel with "In the beginning" and throughout the passion account we hear about the Garden of Gethsemane and the garden where Jesus was laid in the tomb and where He appeared to Mary. Adam's job was to be a gardener; Mary mistook Jesus for the gardener (the new Adam). In the Garden of Eden, the woman was the one talking to the serpent; in the garden by Golgotha, it was the woman who met Jesus. Womanhood is redeemed here.

Pastor also pointed out this morning that John saw the linen cloths in the tomb. If the body of Jesus had been stolen, the thieves would not have unwrapped the body and left the linen. It was a bloody, messy body. The fact that the burial cloths were left there corroborates the resurrection story and not the Pharisees' spin on the missing body.