Paradise: The Way Back: The Gardner with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

All right, MetaCurch, it is Easter 2026.

How are we doing?

Yeah.

Man, I am so glad that you are here to celebrate with us.

If you're new with us, I know we have a lot of new people here today.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And look, I don't know how you got here.

I'm just glad you got here.

I don't know if you saw a social media ad and you thought, you know what?

My grandma will owe me so big if I go to a church on Easter, and so you should.

I don't know if a friend or family member invited you to come sit with them and you were like, you know what, it's Easter.

I'm in.

I'm not even sure some of you aren't here because you got bamboozled.

You thought you were going to Chili's with your friends, and now you're just here.

But however you got here, man, I'm glad you're here.

I think it is no accident that you're here.

I want to tell you a little bit about MetaCurch, just so you can understand who we are and you can kind of frame your experience.

We started MetaCurch a little over seven years ago.

And if you live in the San Antonio area, you know there's a lot of churches in San Antonio.

As a matter of fact, I had to wrestle with this like, do we really need another?

If you just go outside, pick up a rock, spin in circles, and throw that rock, you will probably hit a church building in San Antonio.

Like there's so many.

Here was our conviction that there needed to be a church that was designed with the correct people in mind.

Not to try to do what everyone else is doing.

We want to be a church, a culture that is designed for the unchurched.

That means you did not come up in church, religion, or spirituality at all.

We want to be a culture for the D-church.

That means you grew up in church, but at some point, probably when you became an adult, you left.

That happens for a lot of reasons.

You get hurt by the church, you get hurt by a spiritual leader.

Another thing that happens is you have big questions about faith, and you ask those big questions as you become a young person, and the answer you get is please stop asking big questions.

And that's just not good enough.

And so as soon as you can, you leave the D-Church, a place to come back and wrestle with big questions.

We even said we want to be a movement for the anti-church.

And maybe that's someone here at one of our locations or with us online right now, where if you are honest, you believe that Christianity is actually a net negative on society.

If you fall into any of those camps, you're not a believer in Jesus, you're not yet convinced by the claims of Christianity, I just need you to know that you belong here at Metachurch, that you are loved here, and that this is the place to come and lean in and wrestle with the biggest questions of life and faith and spirituality.

I do want to let you know a few other things just from the jump.

This is not like a marketing ploy.

So I don't know about you, uh, but I've been tricked by some marketing schemes before.

Maybe you have as well.

In my 20s, we were just so poor.

And this guy told me at La Cantera, he was like, if you come to this place and listen to a 15-minute presentation, then you can take your entire family, my wife and my kids, to Great Wolf Lodge completely for free.

We will pay for your vacation.

I'm like, bro, I could listen to anybody for 15 minutes.

You know, this is gonna be easy.

So I drove out to the place and I got all comfortable in the seat, and that's when they like lock the doors and bolt the doors, and they keep you for six hours, and they won't let you out without a blood sacrifice.

You know, it's like it's six thousand dollars to get out of the room so you can go on the vacation.

Unfortunately, sometimes churches will do that as well.

And what it looks like is this we kind of go through and we think through all of the parts of God's word that we think might be offensive to you, or might feel like too high of a cost, or too big of a sacrifice, or the things that are just really in collision with our culture, and we don't tell you those things.

We just tell you the good things about like God loves you and you can like not die someday.

And then we wait till you're further in and we're like, also, you gotta do a lot of hard things.

We just are actually convinced this is the word of God, that this is the path to live the life that God created you to live.

We are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ here at Meta Church.

We do not pick through this, we just preach it, we preach it unapologetically, and we believe that Jesus is enough, and that if you actually need Jesus, you will choose on your own to come into a full relationship with him, and that we don't have to try to market him in a way he has not marketed himself.

And so we just get in the word and we preach the word.

Can I tell you this?

Uh, this is what cults do.

Every cult does this, they do not tell you the hard parts of their belief system.

They go, we just love God and we just love each other.

And then, like, usually it's right after they baptize you, and then they pull you up and they're like, and now we're gonna shave your head, and you're like, Oh, I didn't sign up for this.

I didn't know.

We don't do that, we we just preach the word, and we have nothing to hide.

We're gonna tell you what we believe, and we're gonna try to show you what Jesus has done in our life.

You need to know this religion is like an us and them.

We don't believe that.

Jesus didn't come to start a religion, he came to call broken, jacked up people just like me, into relationship with the divine.

There is no us and them, there's just us.

And so we are here and we are on equal footing at the foot of the cross, and we are all striving towards God and figuring this out together.

Here's something you need to know about MetaCurch.

You've already seen it, but I'm gonna describe it to you.

We move with urgency at Metachurch, we worship with urgency, we pray with urgency, we preach with urgency.

Now, there is one reason we do this that you can't argue with, because you know this.

Everybody's life is heading towards the same earthly destination.

This is a very diverse community here at MetaCurch.

We thank God for that.

But in this very diverse community, we all share one thing in common.

All of our lives at some point will end.

Death is the one thing we all share in common.

And you know this tomorrow is not promised.

We've all lived long enough to experience someone that we are close to or at least connected to, who just passed too soon.

We know tomorrow is not promised, so we move with a sense of urgency.

Now, speaking of beliefs that we hold that we're not interested in hiding, we also believe every word that came out of the mouth of Jesus recorded for us in the gospels, the historical narratives of his life.

And 40 days after Easter, Jesus ascended back to heaven and he told the people who were following him, the same way I'm going, someday I will crack these skies and I will come back and I will gather up my people to myself.

And we do not know when that's coming, and we really don't know.

If you're new, I know that you've seen how these charlatans make money.

They write a book, 29 Reasons Jesus is coming back in 2029.

That's catchy right there.

I could make some money just on that title.

We're not gonna sell you that book in the lobby because we don't know.

And because we don't know, we live with a sense of urgency.

It could be a hundred years from now, it could be tonight.

And even though I don't know every person who has gathered at our venues today, every person who's with us online, I do care about you.

That's the position God has given me is to care about you.

I care about your life, I care about your soul, and I care about your eternal destination.

We know tomorrow is not promised.

And it's easy to distract yourself and immerse yourself so much in this world that you don't stop to contend with the big questions that are lingering over your life.

But there is one question above them all that is in fact lingering over your life because we know that all of our lives end in death.

The question is, what comes next?

And if you cannot answer that question, then you do not have anything transcendent outside of yourself and outside of this world to establish your hope.

What is it all about?

What is it all heading towards?

Why deal with all the suffering?

Why put up with all of the pain?

That is a question that today, however, you got to service, some of you are here at our Hilotus Venue, you're with us online.

However, you got here today, God is giving you an opportunity to contend with the biggest question in your life.

The reality is, someday your time on earth will be done.

What comes up next?

To help us think through this, we're in the middle of a series that we called paradise.

And the subline to this series is the way back.

There are some things I know about you, even if I don't know you, and it's not because I have some kind of spiritual insight, it's just because you're a human and I'm a human and I've lived for a little while now.

I know that there is pain in your story.

I know that there is pain in your story as far back as you can remember.

I know that pain leaves marks on our minds, on our hearts, we believe on our souls and on our psyches.

Here's a few things that pain does to us.

Pain creates false narratives in our minds.

These are the tracks that run through, especially when you're on the cusp of something significant, when you're about to step out of your comfort zone and do something really meaningful, when you're about to enter into a relationship that will propel your life forward.

These are the little tracks that are constantly there to remind you that you're not really good enough.

You aren't smart enough.

You weren't educated in the right way.

No one will ever really love you.

You ruin everything.

You'll always be an addict.

These are these false narratives that run through our mind and often ruin our life.

These false narratives create patterns.

We simply call them our worst way patterns here at Metachurch.

These are the patterns that our life gets into to try and alleviate the pain that always lead us to chaos and eventually lead us to destruction.

Here's part of how the world works.

We are born, and for most of us, we get a period of innocence.

And the way I'm defining innocence is you have significance, you know that you're valued and you know that you're loved.

You have significance and you have security.

You believe that you can trust people and that the world is predictable.

Nobody makes it to 10 years old without experiencing the kind of pain that causes you to lose your security and question your significance.

Some of you came into very difficult circumstances.

You only got a few months here on planet Earth before pain entered into your life.

Some of you were a little more sheltered, but nobody makes it to 10 years old without going through a moment of pain that causes you to lose your security and question your significance.

In other words, I don't know that I'm really valued.

I question if I am loved, and I don't know if I am worthy, that significance.

In other words, people can't always be trusted.

The future isn't always predictable, and I'm not always in control, that security.

That moment in your life, some of you can remember it, some of you are thinking about it right now, some of you have no idea.

Everyone has this moment, and that moment is like walking through a door that shuts behind you and locks behind you, and you can never make your way back to that innocence.

We don't really know how to deal with our pain, and that's a real problem.

Because we live in a world that is saturated with lies.

We are marketed to all of the time.

And what the world is trying to convince you is if you go down this path, or if you go down that path, or if you just get this, or if you obtain this, then it will finally give you security, and it will finally give you significance.

And so if you just make a certain dollar amount, if you live in the right home and you drive the right car and you wear the right brands, you'll finally have security.

If you just get the promotion, if you just have enough power, if you just have enough influence, you'll finally have security.

The world markets you these paths and says you can find significance, you just have to have the right title in front of your name.

If you can get to the right title, if you can get to the right degree, some of you are cycling through programs, getting a master's, and then a PhD, and then another one, not out of a sense of purpose.

You're just performing to try to find significance to speak to a wound that happened before you were 10 years old.

Some of you have bought the lie.

If I just sleep with enough people, if I can convince enough people to get into bed with me, I will finally feel like I'm valuable and worthy.

I will finally speak to the significance that I lost at a young age.

And yet, what happens is you go down these paths to find out their dead ends.

And if you live long enough, you'll get to the end of some of these paths.

Even if there are some high highs along the way, at the end of the path, it will leave you emptier than when you began.

And so here's part of what we believe.

We believe that we cannot deal with our pain because we don't know how to accurately diagnose our pain.

We spend a lot of time in the very opening of scripture because what we see in the first pages of scripture, we believe is God's design and desire for the world and for your life.

And so here's what we believe as Christians.

That pain that you're trying to address, that pain started in a garden.

If you don't know the creation narrative, whatever you believe about it, however, literally you take it, it's true at the deepest level that it describes how the world works.

It describes the pain that we can't fulfill.

It describes how God sees us.

God creates the world, and then he creates us, and he does create us uniquely.

Scripture says that we are made in the image of God.

We are made as creators.

We're given dominion, the right to rule.

Now, you may be a skeptic of Christianity and you don't really believe that.

You have a much different version of how the world came to be, and that's an interesting and fun topic.

And we might actually have more in common about what we think about that than you might imagine sitting in these seats right now.

But I do believe that God created the world, and I do believe that he created humans in a very unique and special way, and I do believe that we bear the image of God.

And if you are more of a materialist, you have some issues as well because we are distinct from the rest of creation.

We do have a consciousness that nothing else bears, and you might say, Well, God's not a good explanation for that.

That's fine.

Science can't explain it either.

We don't know where consciousness comes from.

We don't know why we have this obvious peculiar peculiar peculiar peculiar We have a vocabulary that we can't always we are peculiar among creation.

And we don't know why.

We think we know why.

We think it's because God, the creator, made us as creators and he made us in his image.

And he placed us in a garden and he made that garden for us.

And here's the purpose of God's garden that we call Eden.

The purpose is so that we can be in relationship with God.

If you want to know our diagnosis for the pain that you'll spend the rest of your life trying to fix, it is that humanity was created for relationship with God.

We were created for relationship with God.

Now we we learn in scripture, God reveals himself, God is love, it's his nature.

And so anything God creates, he has to create out of his nature.

And he creates us with love, which requires freedom.

In fact, God gives us so much freedom that we have the freedom to break the covenant that establishes our relationship with God.

And if you know the garden narrative, you know that's exactly what happens.

In the course of time, humanity in our rebellion, we are not happy to just rule under God.

We want to be like God.

We disobey God.

We break the covenant with Him.

And because of that, we exile ourselves from the garden.

Our pain started at that decision in a garden.

Outside of the garden, we are outside of relationship with God, and we were made for relationship with God.

Ecclesiastes says that God has placed paradise on all of our hearts.

And the world will convince you that that's actually a longing for more money, that's actually a longing for more sex, that's actually a longing for your latest addiction, that's actually a longing for attention, but you will try to fill that with all the things the world tells you, and it will just leave you empty, or you're longing for a garden and you don't know the way back.

You are longing for a relationship with God.

And so here's what we call the gospel.

Our sin separates us from God.

We have no way of bridging that gap.

But God loves us, and so God came down to us.

Scripture says that he emptied himself, he took on human flesh.

Jesus lived in this same pain-filled, broken world, which means he suffered just like we suffer, and he experienced pain just like we experience pain, and he was tempted in every way that we are tempted, and yet he never sinned.

He never fell short of God's standard.

Because of that, he was both sinless and God.

He was the only perfect sacrifice that could cover the cost of all sin forever.

Last week we picked up with Jesus on the cross.

We saw that Jesus was hung between two thieves.

One of the thieves mocked Jesus.

The other thief confessed him as God.

And he put his faith in Jesus with two simple words.

He said, Jesus, remember me.

Here was Jesus' response.

Jesus said to him, Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.

Here's what we learned last week.

That word paradise, it's a transliteration.

If you translate the Greek word paradiso, it just means the garden.

All of our pain is from an exile, from a garden where we're in direct relationship and communion with God.

We do not know the way back.

And what we saw and what we believe as Jesus followers is the cross is the bridge that will cover the gap between our sin and our heavenly Father.

The cross is the way back.

Some of you are skeptical of that claim, and you're in the right place.

I want to kind of frame the argument for you.

I don't expect you to be keeping up with all the latest scholarly debates about Christianity, but just so you're aware, there is virtually no one who questions whether or not Jesus of Nazareth really was a real person in history.

Even the most ardent atheist scholars contend that there is overwhelming forensic historical evidence for the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

If we can't know that, we cannot know anything about ancient history.

Here's what no one argues about: that Jesus of Nazareth was an itinerant preacher, which means he went town to town preaching his message.

Here's what no one argues with: that he ruffled the feathers of the Jewish leaders and the Roman politicians.

Here's what Noah argues with.

That outside of Jerusalem, during Passover, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified on a Roman cross.

Just so you're aware, that is not in contention today.

No one debates the cross.

Everyone debates the tomb.

You see what Jesus did is he caught his own shot.

He said, I'm going to die.

My death will cover the sins of the world.

And here's how you'll know that I actually pulled it off.

Here's how you know all of these claims I'm making are true.

Is that after they kill me, three days later, I will be back.

Everything hinges on the tomb.

No one debates the cross.

Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross.

The question is did his death cover the sins of the world so we could all go back to the garden and be in relationship with God?

What determines that is the tomb.

No one debates the cross.

Everyone debates the tomb.

Here's what I wanted to do.

Metachurch has grown.

Multi-site, lots of people, lots of services.

I wanted to take everybody to the tomb.

So I looked at our budget.

And it turns out I can take half of one person.

I don't really know how to do that, but I couldn't figure out how to get us to Israel, to the tomb.

But I think, I think we did the next best thing.

We're so thankful for them.

We're thankful to be out here today.

We're starting in what Capernaum Studios calls their scripture garden, which is appropriate not just because of our Paradise series, where we're talking about how all of history started in a garden called Eden, and all of history is headed towards the gardens of the new heaven and the new earth.

It's also appropriate because of a key detail that is often left out of the Easter story.

We read in John chapter 19 that there was a garden right near the place where Jesus was crucified.

John 19 · chapter mention

And because it was the Jewish day of preparation, a very important day on their calendar, there was a tomb in that garden, and it was in such close proximity that that's where they decided to lay Jesus to rest.

Now we should really just slow down sometimes in scripture and appreciate that at the beginning of history, Jesus, the agent of creation, creates the garden called Eden and places humanity inside of it.

And now here at Easter, at the pinnacle of history, Jesus dies and he is placed in a garden.

Adam is exiled from the garden because of his sin.

Jesus is placed in the garden because of his perfection.

It was Adam's decision that brought sin and death into the whole world, and it was Jesus' death that brought salvation to all of us who are living in sin.

The amazing irony of this moment is lost on us because we just read through and we know the Easter story so well, but it's worth stopping and considering that Jesus is laid to rest in a garden.

Now, we know historically that Jesus of Nazareth, he really did live.

We know that he really did die on a Roman cross.

Everything hinges on whether or not Jesus stayed dead.

We know that he was buried and likely buried in a garden tomb, but the question is, did Jesus actually walk out of that tomb?

The Apostle Paul writes in the New Testament that if Jesus was not raised, that our faith is in vain, which means all of this that we're doing is pointless.

It's just a waste of time.

This is the question we have to contend with, and we're gonna look at John's historical account of the resurrection to help us understand why we can lend credibility to the claim that Jesus really came back to life.

As we walk into John chapter 20, which is his chapter on the resurrection, we have to understand who the main character is that's driving the narrative.

John 20 · chapter mention

Now, you're probably already thinking it's Easter.

We know who the main character of Easter is.

It's obviously Jesus.

And you're right.

In a cosmic sense, Jesus is obviously the main character.

Jesus is God who stepped out of eternity and into our world and died on a cross and walked out of his grave.

Jesus is the main character.

However, the way that John tells the resurrection story, it is not Jesus who's driving the narrative.

In verse one, it says that on the first day of the week, it was Mary Magdalene who went and visited the tomb.

Now, there's a lot of Mary's in the Bible.

There's Mary, the mother of Jesus, there's Mary, the sister of Martha, and then there's Mary Magdalene.

If you're not familiar with scripture, you may not know her background.

Mary Magdalene lived an incredibly difficult life.

Like all of us, she has significant pain in her story.

Like all of us, that deep longing is for paradise.

It's for the garden of God.

And the same thing all of us do, because of this inner longing that just eats away at our soul, we try to find paradise with enough money or the right relationships or enough success or through manipulation or through power or control.

But what happens when all of that fails?

What happens when everything in your life fails?

That's where Mary found herself.

When everything falls apart, instead of trying to work our way back to the garden, we just start living trying to numb and medicate and suppress the reality that we are in fact exiled from it.

The thing that we know about Mary, we learn in Luke's gospel that when Jesus met her, she was possessed by seven demons at the same time.

This is unimaginably heartbreaking.

I don't even know how to put into words the desperation, the heartache, the actions that she had to take in her moments of need that would open the spiritual doors to even allow this to happen.

All of this comes to the heartbreaking reality of a life who just has no answers, has no hope, and has no options until she meets Jesus.

And when she meets Jesus, her life is radically, totally, fundamentally changed.

She gives her whole life to following and serving Jesus and his ministry.

As a matter of fact, in Holy Week, what we see is Jesus is arrested.

All of the disciples run and Mary stays by his side.

We know this because Mary Magdalene is at the foot of the cross as Jesus dies, even as we open John chapter 20.

John 20 · chapter mention

All of the other disciples are still locked away, hiding away in the upper room.

It's very dangerous to have been a known associate of Jesus who three days earlier was crucified.

No one dares to leave, except Mary Magdalene.

But Mary leaves.

She braves the dark of the morning, and she goes to the tomb because even in his death, she wants to be near Jesus.

Back in episode one of The Chosen, Dallas and his team made a really interesting artistic choice.

They focused the entire episode on the life of Mary Magdalene and on her meeting Jesus.

Everyone knew the chosen was going to be the story of Jesus.

Even Jesus, the main character, doesn't show up until the very last seconds of episode one.

Now, I want to be clear, this first episode really doesn't come out of the pages of Scripture.

It is an artistic imagining of what it was like when Mary met Jesus.

However, what is true is the plight of Mary Magdalene, and what is true is who Jesus is for her when he shows up.

And that's exactly who Jesus wants to be for us.

Mary's life is in shambles.

She's demon-possessed, she's being abused by men and women, she's the dregs of society.

No one seems to be able to help her.

In fact, she long ago has given up her name Mary, and she is known by everyone in town as Lilith, a name which means the monster of darkness, a reflection of how she might have seen herself.

Now, when everything else fails, we see Mary give up hope entirely and look for something that can self-medicate her hopelessness.

She is hoping to maybe drink until she blacks out, or maybe to drink until she never wakes up again.

And that's the moment where Jesus comes into the picture.

Now, like many of us, we first encounter Jesus and we maybe don't want anything to do with him.

She runs from him and Jesus very patiently follows, and she's trying to get away until one specific moment Jesus stops.

And while everyone else calls her Lilith, Jesus calls her by her name.

So did it work.

Come on.

Not now.

Now she smells anyway.

I don't know what else I can do to help you.

Give me that.

Not of it.

That's not going to solve your problems.

It's meant to distract from the preaching.

Just give it to me.

And he who formed you.

Fear not.

For I have redeemed you.

I have called you by name.

So many of the disciples had had their lives radically changed by Jesus.

They were no longer just fishermen or tax collectors or soldiers or housewives.

Now, they were the people who had joined with Jesus to bring the kingdom of heaven down to earth.

The hope that they now experienced, the joy that they had, just in their daily lived experience, was like nothing they could have ever imagined for themselves.

And then, in the blink of an eye, everything shifted.

Everything changed.

Jesus was arrested.

He was tried illegally.

He was beaten within an inch of his life.

He was stripped and mocked and humiliated.

And then he was hung on a cross.

And he died.

And when Jesus died, hope died with him.

By the time we pick up in John chapter 20, everyone's been in the upper room for three days, hiding away and making plans.

John 20 · chapter mention

Peter's got to figure out how to go back to being a fisherman.

He had dropped his nets.

Maybe he can find them.

Maybe he's got to buy new ones.

Andrew, James, and John are in the same boat.

Matthew was a tax collector.

He's got incredible skill as a mathematician, as an organizer.

Maybe someone will hire him in Israel.

Maybe he could go back working for Rome in some capacity.

Everyone has to make a plan, and they have some kind of fallback.

Even the women who were following Jesus, they had social circles and families to go back to to get their lives back on track.

Hope was gone.

The Jesus experiment was amazing while it lasted.

Now it's over.

The same isn't true for Mary.

Mary had nowhere to go.

She didn't have family to fall back on.

Mary didn't have a job to go back to.

Mary didn't have a friend group before Jesus.

Mary was living in hell.

And perhaps hell is really all that was available to her as something to go back to.

Mary's out of options.

And maybe this is why she's the one person desperate enough to show up at the tomb.

And the only hope that Mary could possibly have is if somehow Jesus would come back to life.

And yet, everyone knows people don't come back to life.

You know, maybe you're watching this today and you're in that same boat.

You just, you live in the world of science and material, and we're post-Enlightenment, and a guy walking out of his own grave is just too big of a leap for you.

And if that's you, what I need you to understand is you're in the exact frame of mind that Jesus' followers were in 2,000 years ago.

We're also familiar with the Easter story, and we know it, and we've said it, and we've repeated it.

And so we hear the story as if all of Jesus' followers had complete, implicit faith that Jesus was going to rise again.

That's not the story that scripture records.

As a matter of fact, we see in John chapter 20 on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb.

John 20 · chapter mention

It's still dark outside, and she notices the stone has now rolled away.

She goes in, she sees that Jesus is gone, and her response is not, oh my gosh, Jesus rose again.

Her response is, someone has taken his body.

She runs back to tell the other disciples, Jesus' body is missing.

The men don't respond with some spiritual insight of he probably rose again.

No.

They sprint to the tomb, they look inside, and they realize the body is missing.

And what do they think?

Someone has taken it.

They don't have a category for resurrection.

They're in the same skeptical seat that you're in right now.

For those who are naturally skeptical of the resurrection, the good news is you're in the same frame of mind of Jesus' followers 2,000 years ago.

They did not expect him to come back to life.

On the third day, they didn't stand outside the tomb counting down to when the stone would roll away.

Jesus was dead and they expected him to stay dead.

Which raises the question of how this movement we call Christianity got started.

We know historically it was started by those same men and women who were so scared they had locked themselves away in the upper room.

The same men and women who, when they investigated the empty tomb, assumed that Jesus was still dead and his body had been stolen.

Not only that, they started this movement at great cost to themselves.

They didn't become celebrity megachurch preachers riding around in expensive cars and living in mansions.

They were bankrupt because of their faith.

They were imprisoned, they were persecuted, and to a person, every one of Jesus' early disciples were brutally martyred for their faith.

And so what happened?

Why did this movement start?

And how did this movement start?

What we have to conclude is that the movement of Jesus did not start because his followers expected a resurrection.

The movement started because they experienced a resurrection.

Mary was at the tomb.

She still thought Jesus was dead.

In John chapter 20, it says that Mary stood outside of the tomb and she wept.

John 20 · chapter mention

She stooped in and she looked, and there were two angels there.

And even in the presence of angels, the miracle that had taken place could not register with her.

She asked, Where they had taken the body of Jesus.

Mary had lost all hope.

Everyone else had left the tomb, dejected.

But for some reason, she could not pull herself away.

And even after she looks in the tomb, and there are angelic beings there.

She still cannot wrap her mind around the miracle that is getting ready to take place.

Her thoughts are consumed with hopelessness.

Where does she go from here?

How does she make a life for herself?

How does she continue without Jesus in her life?

Those are difficult questions.

I even wonder if Mary thought back to the first time that she met Jesus, the state of desperation that she was in, how everything changed the moment that he called her name.

It was then something got her attention.

Verse 14 says that Mary turned around and Jesus was standing there.

But there was a problem.

She didn't recognize him.

Mary simply did not have a category in her mind for Jesus being alive again.

She still thought that Jesus was dead and his body had been removed by someone.

Even as Jesus stands in front of her, she actually mistakes him, and it's an understandable mistake.

The next verse says that Mary supposed he was the gardener.

Now, this is a miscategorization.

It's a mistake.

She is incorrect about the identity of Jesus, and yet, at the same time, she is absolutely correct.

Jesus is the gardener.

He's the agent of creation who created the world, who made the garden we call Eden, and who placed humanity inside of it.

It was us in our rebellion who walked away from God's command and exiled ourselves from the garden.

And now it's us who are living every day trying to find the way back to paradise.

It is Jesus who, in the ultimate plot twist, because of his love for us, stepped out of heaven and into our world, lived the perfect life that we could not live, died the death that we deserve.

And now that he has died, Mary is at his tomb, standing right in front of him.

She can't see him.

Jesus obviously is not going to keep her on the hook.

He's going to reveal himself to her.

And there are just countless ways he could have done this.

He could have just said, It's me, Jesus.

He could have moved closer, where in the dim light of morning, she could have made out the features unmistakable in his face and known who it was.

A million different things that Jesus could have done.

But Jesus chose very simply in verse 16 to look at her and say her name.

Jesus said to her, Mary.

And as soon as Jesus called her name, she knew exactly who he was.

We believe that Jesus really is God, that he really did come to earth and live among us, that he was actually perfect, he was tempted in every way that we are, and yet he never fell into sin.

We believe that Jesus died not just as a historical fact, but that he died on a Roman cross to pay the penalty of all of our sins.

And yes, we do believe that Jesus three days later walked out of his own grave.

Since Jesus is alive, hope is alive.

Since Jesus is alive, the very person who gives us our identity and purpose is capable of still offering that to us because the gardener rose again.

He and he alone has the ability to once again spring forth the garden of God and Jesus and Jesus alone will lead us back to paradise.

Jesus called Mary's name and it changed her life forever.

And if you're listening to this today and you don't know Jesus, you need to know that he's calling you as well.

And Jesus today is still every bit as capable of changing your life forever.

Scripture calls Jesus the firstborn of the resurrected.

And what this means is that there is a promise that the same way that Jesus walked out of his own tomb, that someday you and I have the very opportunity to escape our grave as well.

Jesus said it this way while he was on earth that God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus so that anyone who just believes in him will not die, but will have eternal life with their Heavenly Father.

What he's saying is that Jesus is the way back to relationship with God, the way back to the deepest longing of our soul.

We have to slow down in scripture and recognize that when Jesus came off of the cross, he was buried in a tomb in a garden, which means three days later, when his stone rolled away, his first step he took was into a garden.

And all of the pain that has animated our life, it is sourced from a garden that we are longing for.

And the promise that Jesus offers is that if you put your faith in him, that although our bodies will die, that Jesus will come back from us.

And when we walk out of our tomb, our first step will also be into the garden.

What you're longing for is a relationship with the divine.

And I know that because I've been where you are, and I tried the options that the world presented me.

And when I ran it out long enough, they just left me emptier.

Scripture says that spiritually we are dead in our sins, and that it is faith in Jesus that brings us to life.

I know that because I lived it.

I was just dumb.

I didn't care about life.

I had no dreams.

But he called me.

And it changed my life forever.

And some of you are here and you're just running out of rope.

And you keep trying to numb your pain, satisfy your pain, find your own security, create your own significance.

Today you have an opportunity to find hope that is outside of yourself, that is outside of this world.

God loves you, He's calling you, and He's giving you the choice.

As we close service, if you wouldn't mind across our venues, just bowing your head and closing your eyes, creating a little bit of space.

If you're kind of new to church, closing your eyes, there's nothing magic about that.

We're just creating some space for reflection and for application.

And I just wonder if there's anyone here, and you know there's never been a point in your life where you have intentionally decided to put your faith in Jesus.

Maybe you came here today, and if you're honest, you do not have an answer to what comes next.

You get however many years you get here on earth, what comes next?

Jesus offers us an answer to that.

That your sin that separated you from God both now and eternally was covered by his cross.

And he proved it when he walked out of his tomb.

And so, if you're here and that's you, my guess is that the Spirit of God is pressing into your life right now.

That is the love of God seeking after you, calling you to surrender, calling you into relationship.

And we are not promised tomorrow.

And my strong encouragement would be to humble yourself, to put your faith in Jesus as your only hope for today, and your only hope for what comes next.

With everyone's eyes closed, across our venues, if that's you today and you are ready for the first time to put your faith in Jesus.

I want to ask you right now if you would just raise your hand up.

This is a symbolic gesture that just says, today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, we can say with confidence from God's word that He sees your faith, accepts your faith, forgives all of your sins, and has given you a gift that no one and nothing can take away from you, the gift of eternal life.

And so for those who raised your hand, all I want to do now is help you acknowledge this moment.

I'm gonna ask you to repeat this prayer with me.

I'm gonna ask all believers across our venues to pray this out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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