The Story that Shapes Us 2: The Promised Saviour Stands in the Garden

This podcast is brought to you by Walnut Grove Lutheran Church in Langley, D.C., in the hope that it will draw you closer to the one who loves you most.

Today's message is based in part on Genesis 3.

I'd like to share with you a portion from that chapter of the Bible that begins, what I'm about to read to you, begins after the first man and the first woman ate fruit from the tree that God commanded them not to.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God said to the man, Where are you?

He answered, I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.

And he said, Who told you that you were naked?

Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

The man said, The woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.

Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done?

The woman said, The serpent deceived me and I ate.

So the Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals.

You will crawl on your belly, and you will eat dust all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

Let's pray.

Gracious and loving Lord, on this Easter Sunday morning we especially give you thanks for the gift of your word.

For that word of yours, the Bible, contains the story of what you have done for us in Jesus Christ.

How he willingly, because of love, went to the cross and suffered and died there.

But on this day, he rose from the dead, and that changes everything for us.

And so we pray, Lord, that you would help us to hear your words of life as you speak them into our hearts this morning.

In the precious name of Jesus, we ask this.

And all God's people said, Amen.

At 8:15 in the morning on August the 6th, 1945, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

That day, 70,000 people died, and another 70,000 passed away before the end of the year.

The suffering and devastation suffered by the people of Hiroshima was immense.

And remarkably, though, a new Hiroshima has risen from the ashes of that devastation.

Despite previously being an important military center, in 1949, Hiroshima was declared by the Parliament of Japan to be a city of peace.

And plans were made, and a park was built in the very center of the city, the epicenter of the bomb blast, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

And a museum for peace was built in the middle of that park.

And today, Hiroshima is a thriving city of 1.2 million people, and the city government continues to advocate for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

A place once defined by ruin is now defined by renewal.

In many ways, we live in a world that looks at times like Hiroshima after that bomb fell.

Wars are still causing death and devastation.

And greed still and hatred fuel violence and crime that harms people and destroys property.

And beneath all of that is a hidden layer of brokenness that we tend to ignore.

The invisible life force of every human being has been twisted somehow so that we invariably hurt ourselves and others.

And the bodies that we live in are so fragile, and they're all inevitably headed toward death.

Sometimes the devastation and the grief that comes with living in this world can be more than we can bear.

And transformation like Hiroshima's seems impossible to us.

But what if God has a surprise in store for us?

What if the very place where sorrow feels the deepest is a place where God begins making all things new?

I invite you to consider this question with me as we return to the story that shapes us.

Genesis chapter 3 begins with these very ominous words.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

Based on information from other parts of Scripture, we can see that Satan has taken control of one of God's good creatures and inserted himself into God's pristine creation.

And Satan's main goal is to drive a wedge between God and humanity with a three-point strategy that he still uses today.

He distorts what God has said.

He tempts us to distrust God.

And then he lures us into taking matters into our own hands and going against God's plans and purposes.

And Satan was successful because his approach connects with something deep inside humanity.

We read: For when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it.

Eve not only saw the food as good nourishment for her body, it also awakened a desire in her heart for something more.

Now, fullness of God, fullness of life in paradise with God was no longer enough for her and Adam.

They had bought into the serpent's words when he said, For God knows that when you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

They wanted more.

They wanted to be like God.

And when Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, their eyes were opened, but not to glory.

Instead to shame.

So they hid.

God knew what happened and he called out to them, Where are you?

Now, whenever God asks a question in the Bible of human beings, it's not for his benefit, because he already knows the answer.

It's Adam who needs to know where he is.

And when God when they meet, God confronts our first parents about eating the fruit.

And Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.

And then come the consequences.

Eve will experience great pain in childbirth and struggles in her relationship with her husband.

Adam will have to work much harder to produce fruit from the ground, which will now be infected with thorns and thistles.

And death entered into the world.

God said to Adam, By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you will return.

You see, the serpent outright lied when he said to Adam and Eve, You will not certainly die.

Death in the form of a broken relationship with the living God came immediately.

And death, as in the end of life in this world, became our inevitable destiny.

And yet, even here, God speaks a promise as he condemns the serpent.

He said, And I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers, he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.

God is saying that a descendant of Eve would come, and he would confront the serpent, and he would be wounded, but he would win.

This first garden ends in hiding sorrow and death, but the story is not finished.

There's a second garden.

Centuries later, this second garden waits in the early morning darkness.

Again, the scene is marked by sorrow and death.

For Jesus, who powerfully taught people about God and miraculously healed them from their diseases, was thought by many to be the Messiah.

But within a 24-hour span from Thursday evening to Friday evening, he was arrested, flogged, and nailed to a cross to suffer and die.

He was then hurriedly laid in a nearby tomb in this garden before the Sabbath began at sundown.

Now before dawn on Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and some other women came to the tomb.

They wanted to honor Jesus by wrapping his body with spices that they had purchased and brought with them.

Mary Magdalene's life had already been impacted in an incredible way by Jesus.

Jesus had cast several demons out of her.

Grateful for the love and the grace that Jesus had shown to her, Mary, along with several other women, followed Jesus and his disciples as they traveled from town to town.

And they provided for them out of their own personal means.

Mary Magdalene followed Jesus to Jerusalem to support him.

And even when Jesus' disciples abandoned him as he suffered, Mary remained at the foot of the cross.

After Jesus died, Mary watched to see where he would be buried.

Mary Magdalene loved Jesus with all of her heart, soul, strength, and mind.

And so we can imagine the depth of her grief over the death of Jesus and the horrible way in which he died.

That grief turned into shock and horror when she arrived at that tomb in the garden and found it empty.

Mary likely assumed that on top of all the other indignities that Jesus had suffered, grave robbers had stolen his body.

She ran and told Peter and John, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don't know where they have put him.

While Peter and John investigated, Mary stood outside the tomb weeping.

Not even the appearance of two angels in the tomb could comfort her.

But then a man approached Mary.

Who is it that you are looking for?

She thought it was the gardener.

And so she said to him, Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.

And then everything changed with one single word.

Mary.

She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, Raboni, which means teacher.

She clung to him, overwhelmed with joy.

Jesus gently redirected her.

There would be time for expressions of affection later.

Jesus would remain on earth for a while.

But there was something far more pressing which Jesus wanted Mary to do.

Go instead to my brothers and tell them.

It's incredible that the first witness to the resurrection was a woman once tormented, now redeemed, once shattered, now restored, once grieving, now overflowing with hope.

The serpent had struck Jesus' heel.

But in this garden, the risen Christ crushed the serpent's head.

There's a belief, sometimes spoken, often hidden, that if we follow the right path, bad things shouldn't happen to us.

But Mary Magdalene's life tells us a different story.

God did not spare her from demonic depression, deep grief, the trauma of the cross, the shock of the empty tomb.

But God redeemed every one of those experiences.

He did not cause Mary's suffering.

He transformed it.

And he does the same for us.

The resurrection is not only good news for the moment we die.

It is good news for the moment when we feel like we cannot go on.

Just as Hiroshima rose from the ashes, the places of your greatest devastation can become the places of your greatest renewal with Jesus.

When we assume that we know how the story ends, when we hide or weep or despair, God is already writing a story with a different ending.

A story with an ending of hope and life.

Jesus took the most horrific event imaginable, the crucifixion, God took the most horrific event imaginable, the crucifixion of the innocent Son of God and turned it into the greatest possible good, restoration and renewal for all creation through Jesus Christ.

The story that shapes us began in a garden where humanity hid in shame, but it is completed in another garden where the risen Christ stands in victory.

The serpent's lie is broken.

Death has lost its grip on humanity.

And the God who once asked, Where are you?

now calls each one of us by name.

Wherever you carry sorrow, regret, or fear, the gardener of the new creation, Jesus, meets you right there.

He is alive.

And because he lives, the ruins of our lives are not the end of the story.

Resurrection begins right where we thought hope had died.

And so the challenge I wish to leave with you this week is first of all to name the darkness.

Where are you hiding?

What guilt, fear, or grief has created distance between you and God?

I want to encourage you to identify what you are thinking and feeling and bring it before God's light.

And then, second, and most importantly, believe in the light.

Jesus' resurrection proves that God has a grand surprise in store for us.

The moments of our greatest darkness are the places where he brings his greatest light.

And whenever you find yourself in an anxious or fear-filled situation, firmly believe that Jesus has something good for you on the other side of it.

And that is a sure and certain hope that we can live by because the promised Savior stands in the garden.

So lift your eyes, step out of hiding, for he is making all things new.

Amen.

Let's pray.

We thank you, Jesus, for going to that cross and dying there and rising again.

And we pray, Lord, that we would continue, you would, by your spirit, continually fill us with the joy of your resurrection and help us to see what that means for us.

How you have given us new life that begins now and carries on forward into eternity.

Thank you, Lord, for your love.

We love you too.

And we pray all these things in your precious name.

And all God's people said, Amen.

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