Easter Sunday Year B: Garden and Dominion
Featured Contributors: Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson
We explore in this week’s readings three wilderness themes: Firstly, the interwoven hope for healing between humans/earth, humans/God and humans with each other in the echoes from Song of Songs in John 20. Second, the awareness of the imperial death “shroud” that seeks to separate the Creator from the creation that is addressed in Isaiah 25. And finally, the holy call to embrace all creation as family in the passage from Acts 10.
Commentary
-
vv. 1-2: Mary Magdalene, introduced to John readers first as a witness to the cross (19.25), is the first of the disciples to head to Jesus’ tomb to anoint the body. She represents a group of women disciples, as indicated by the “we” of whom she speaks (v. 2). Upon discovering the disturbing truth that the stone had been rolled from the tomb, she runs to the two disciples who most clearly represent the males among Jesus’ disciples. Her message to them assumes an explanation not grounded in God’s recreative power: some people have stolen or displaced Jesus’ dead body.
vv. 3-10: While Peter will be the one to whom the risen Jesus turns with the question of authentic love, and the “Beloved Disciple” is this Gospel’s symbol of faithful following, neither has a resurrection experience at the tomb. When they find it empty as Mary had said, they return home, because, as the narrator notes, “they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
vv. 11-13: Now the fun part starts! While the men leave Mary bereft at the tomb, she looks into the tomb and has a vision of two white-clad divine messengers, sitting where Jesus’ body had been. But just as the men did not yet understand the Scripture, Mary does not yet understand what she is saying, speaking to the angels as if they are ordinary folks and as if it’s nothing strange to find them there! She is love-blind for Jesus and nothing else matters to her.
The imagery of her asking around for her missing man is a clear echo of the Song of Songs:
"I will rise now and go about the city, in the streets and in the squares; I will seek him whom my soul loves." I sought him, but found him not. The sentinels found me, as they went about in the city. "Have you seen him whom my soul loves?" (Song 3.2-3)
What is our author pointing to in this intertextual connection? We’d like to suggest that it is the entire Song of Songs that is being evoked here and in the following scene:
Scarcely had I passed them, when I found him whom my inmost being loves. I held him, and would not let him go…(Song 3.4a)
Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me…” (John 20.16.17a)
We turn to the work of biblical scholar Ellen Davis, whose work on the Song has transformed us and others. In her reading, the bodies of the lovers express a triple metaphor: the healing of the relationship between YHWH and Israel, the healing of the relationship between humanity and earth, and the healing of relationships across genders. In other words, it is a poetic attempt to undo the damage of the Garden behavior in Genesis 3 (see the PDF of the many body/earth parts and sensory elements in the Song).
Our gospel takes this poem and gives it flesh in the encounter between Mary and the Risen One.
vv. 14-18: With the Song ringing in our ears, we hear Mary’s double turning (v. 14 and v. 16), intertwined with her encounter with “the gardener,” in the context of the Song’s imagery. The true “Gardener,” as Jesus told the disciples at the Last Supper, is the Creator (15.1). Jesus is not the Creator, but a creature in perfect resonance with the Creator (10.1; 17.11, 22). Jesus is simply a “vine”: a specific expression of God’s life-giving power. Experiencing the risen life of Jesus pulsing through our cells is what allows us to “bear fruit” (15.1-5). Neither Mary nor the disciples could understand this until now. It takes a two-stage “conversion” for Mary to know what she is experiencing in “the garden.” The first “turn” (v. 14) is from death to life, from the tomb to “the gardener.” The second “turn” (v. 16)—plainly a metaphorical turn, given that she was already facing Jesus—is triggered by the voice of the Beloved calling her by name, “Mary.” She then turns from Jesus-the-gardener to Jesus-rabbouni, an intimate term for a teacher found only here in the Bible.
The final “turn,” which is not named as such, is from “rabbouni” to “Lord” (v.18), when she truly comes to know that her Beloved cannot be contained by death. In this movement, she follows Jesus’ own: one sent (Greek, apostolos) by the Creator to bring the Good News of resurrection life to her siblings in discipleship.
-
This text is in the midst of what scholars call Isaiah’s “little apocalypse” from chapter 24-27. We should therefore not be surprised to encounter imagery of cosmic conflict between the forces of life and the forces of death. The contrast is between the forces of death, who cast a shroud—that is, the imperial “cover story” that legitimates the domination system— over all peoples in an attempt to break the connection between earth and sky, between creation and Creator, and the force of Life in the person of YHWH, who promises to be the chef and host for a world-wide banquet of earthy delights. The images of “rich food” and “well-aged wines” are each repeated in v. 6, so that we can’t miss it.
The “shroud,” resonant with the imagery of Revelation’s seals, is empire’s effort to silence and hide the Creator’s “face” and voice, so that the exploitation of earth’s creatures can continue without dissent. But the Creator’s intervention is promised: the death shroud is destroyed! It will lead to a grand celebration of the abundance of earth’s holy provision among all peoples. In a startling image seemingly right out of Harry Potter, God is revealed to be a “death eater” (25.7). But unlike the eating done by those unholy wizards and witches, God’s consumption of death leads to the end of tears and disgrace for all. With the shroud of death removed, earth can again bear fruit for all.
-
vv. 34-35: In an encounter engineered by the Holy Spirit (10.3-6, 19-20) Peter responds to the Roman centurion Cornelius, “"I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” It’s a fine truth to name, but curiously, Peter reaches his conclusion as a result of a vision of a thrice descending sheet full of animals (10.11-15)! It is the flip side of Isaiah’s death shroud: this comes from God as a revelation, rather than the imperial “cover story” that Isaiah unveils. God’s “sheet” contains what had previously been understood as “unclean” animals (reptiles; Lev 11.10, 30). For the authors of Leviticus, keeping a clear line between “clean” and “unclean” by ordinary people in daily life was meant to generate an ongoing awareness of both God’s power/authority and the specialness of Israel’s call as the “chosen people.” But alongside Leviticus’ program is that of Genesis, in which all creation is deemed to be “good” by the Creator. Luke/Acts regularly sees Jesus’ message and mission through the lens of Genesis: from the genealogy with which Luke begins, to the anti-Babel story of Pentecost in Acts 2. So, yes, Peter, God does not prefer one people over another. But God also doesn’t prefer one nonhuman creature over another!
36-43: It is this renewed vision of God-as-Creator (as opposed to God the savior of Israel alone), Peter speaks his witness to the death and resurrection of Jesus as the culmination of what one might call a divine rewilding project: the return of earth and its creatures to the original divine intention, wherein all are included, cared for and received as holy gift.
Preaching and teaching ideas
Gardening and Dominion
suggestion 1: Once, many years ago, I was digging out “weeds” along the front walkway of our house and getting ready to plant summer annuals in 4” pots I'd grabbed at the hardware store. A neighbor girl, about eight years old, asked me what I was doing. I smiled at her and said, “I'm exercising dominion.” When she looked at me quizzically, I added, “I'm deciding who lives and who dies in this little piece of ground.” What gardening choices do we make supplant God’s vision of wild and free creation? How might we move from garden “controllers” to garden “collaborators”?
suggestion 2: A story on NPR (see “sources”) noted the controversy over whether to plant sequoia seeds to compensate for the climate-change caused fires that destroyed some 20% of the ancient giants in Sequoia National Park. The a first perspective was that humans caused the death of the trees, so humans are responsible for “fixing” it. But another voice demurred. This view noted that “we are not earth’s gardeners. We are better just to leave it alone and let it heal on its own terms.”
On a global scale, what might it look like for us to cooperate with creation rather than seeking to control it?
Song of Songs
How can we more fully embody our God-given unity with nonhuman creation and the land? Can we experience earth as our “beloved”? Consider the Greek concept of eros as expressing a holy longing for universal communion, for the complete integration of flesh and spirit. What imagery from the Song inspires our passionate love for all of creation as our “love partner”?
Removing the shroud
Consider what the “death shroud” looks and feels like in your world. What imperial messages seek to “cover over” the domination system’s efforts to appear “natural” and “God-given”? What do we imagine is revealed when God destroys the shroud?
Mary Magdalene double turning
What painful experiences of the death of a loved one have we suffered? What might it look like not simply to imagine our loved one bathed in resurrection light but to experience it? How does such a “turning” affect how we move into the future from that period of pain?
Sources and Resources
Sarah Augustine and Mark Charles, The Land is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery (Herald Press, 20121)
David M. Carr, The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
Ellen Davis, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs (Nashville: Westminster John Knox, 2000)
Wes Howard-Brook, Becoming Children of God: John’s Gospel and Radical Discipleship (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994; reprinted Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003)
Wes Howard-Brook, “Resisting Christian anti-Judaism: Jews, Judeans and Ioudaioi in the New Testament” Wild Lectionary https://www.salalandcedar.com/wildlectionary/2024-3-resisting-christian-anti-judaism
Wes Howard-Brook, Radical Bible Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@radicalbible
NPR story on sequoias: https://www.npr.org/2024/02/26/1232963498/sequoias-wildfires-climate-change-replanting
Jessica Miller, “Wonder and the True Easter Lily” Radical Discipleship https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2018/03/29/wild-lectionary-wonder-and-the-true-easter-lily/
Lydia Wylie-Kellermann, “Learning from Laughter and the Trees: Tell Me About Easter Mommy,” Radical Discipleship https://radicaldiscipleship.net/2016/04/19/learning-from-laughter-and-the-trees-tell-me-about-easter-mommy/
Contributor Bios
Wes Howard-Brook and Sue Ferguson Johnson share the ministry, Abide in Me (John 15), seeking to interweave the mystical and prophetic, the personal and the political, the human and the nonhuman in the name of Jesus https://www.abideinme.net/ . Wes and Sue have been teaching and writing on the Bible for nearly 40 years. Sue is a spiritual director for individuals and groups. Wes, after 20 years teaching at Seattle University, retired in 2021 to create the “Radical Bible” YouTube channel, a free, word-by-word, video commentary on the Bible (https://www.youtube.com/@radicalbible). They dwell in the Issaquah Creek Watershed, traditional and unceded land of the Issaquah Band of the Snoqualmie people. They are blessed to have three of their five adult children and three of their four grandchildren in the same watershed.