Christ the Gardener

We are sometimes blindsided by moments of complete and utter terror.  I remember such a night over at our neighbor Jorie’s house where several of us junior high school kids had gathered to watch a new TV program, “The Sea Around Us” in living color.  Her family had the only color TV in the neighborhood.

At one point, during an intermission, we broke for snacks that her mother had made.  As we passed through the dining room some of the kids were looking out the sliding class door.  “Look at that,” one exclaimed.  They were all staring at a very large bullfrog out on the patio.

When I looked out the window all I saw was the pitch-black night.  I was overcome by a terrifying sensation of being sucked into an empty void.  I don’t ever think I have felt such fear since.  The experience was one of overwhelming existential terror.

I wonder if that was the experience of those first arriving in the wee hours of dawn to anoint Jesus’ body with spices.  When they peered into the gaping black hole of that tomb carved out of rock, what moments of terror seized their souls?

The gospels record no details about what had actually happened at that moment – the seconds when his body was there and when it wasn’t.  There were no witnesses.  The guards were all asleep.

The entire event, the most seminal happening for Jesus’ followers – and nobody was there.  No reporter from NBC Nightly News.  No Lester Holt at the anchor’s chair.  No bright lights and cameras.  No one there.

The first gospel narratives were written a generation or two after those events.  Tales passed down from one to another, Mark’s version being the first iteration.  John’s version most likely being narrated by his community of faith maybe five generations removed from that first Easter.

Christian writers, attempting to explain the inexplicable down through the centuries.  The entirety of that Easter Event still alludes our capacity to understand.

John Cobb, the eminent process theologian in his work, Christ in a Pluralistic Age,[1] explains the astounding experience of that first Easter.  That morning, the spiritual reality of who Jesus was, is now let loose into the created order. 

Remember, Dr. Cobb would remind us, “Christ” was not Jesus’ last name.  It denotes the spiritual reality of his life and message now transcending his death.  The core of his being.  A new, transforming power let loose in the world.  Passed from one follower to another down through the hallowed halls of time by the faithful – a long procession of members of the Jesus Movement.

Christianity so understood, is not a set of dogmas, not a rule book, but a way of life.  In the first years after his death, Jesus’ followers were known as “Followers of the Way.”  Look out the door of our parish hall to that garden that feeds some 470 people a week — that’s what we believe.  That’s how we roll here at St. Francis.

As such, it is a mature Spiritual understanding capacious enough to encompass

the gifts of all religious traditions rooted in the way of compassion and servanthood.

Here is one way in which an ecumenical “generous orthodoxy” works itself out.  Let me tell you a story told of an interfaith gathering.  Unfortunately, the host pastor preceding the featured speaker of the evening – this pastor who was to give opening remarks and welcome, was from a very conservative church.  His agenda was not interfaith understanding.  He used his brief moments of introduction to score religious points for Jesus.

He was there to prove the supremacy of his Christian faith.  He was solely bent on demeaning the speaker’s faith, proving the superiority of his own, rather than entering into any interfaith dialogue.  He cared not a whit about the sensitivities of those in the room who were not Christians.

He addressed the crowd reading from one of the most exclusivistic passages of the John’s gospel.  “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father but by me.”

What a jerk, many thought.  Way to make our guest feel welcome!

Most in the audience were embarrassed by this lack of charity, by this lack of basic manners.  Folks sat in their seats in stony silence, glued to their places as interfaith relations were possibly set back hundreds of years.  As the guest speaker approached the podium, all wondered how he would respond.

The speaker stepped up and benevolently smiled at his audience.  After a pause, he proclaimed, “The pastor is absolutely correct.” 

“For, what is the way of Jesus, but the way of peace, humility, truth, gentleness and respect.  That is the only way one can approach God, enter into the Holy.”  No matter what his or her faith might be.

This Hindu man had seen in Jesus that which this pastor failed to register:  the Inner Light of God.  The speaker had seen the same spiritual luminosity that those Wise Sages saw in that baby’s eyes, lying in the poverty of a manger.

The same vibrancy those early witnesses experienced on that Easter Morning.  John Cobb asserts that this is the spiritual reality let loose in creation that yet lives through the humanistic values and ethic of the Renaissance.  Christ has infused the spirit of that age.  In the work of Michelangelo, DaVinci and Fra Angelica.  Artists who through their work testified to that God-spark they perceived in all human flesh and endeavor.  Through the milieu of the Renaissance and later the Age of Science, that human capacity for invention and exploration of those men and women who understood the grandeur of the created order – through their lives that same Spirit yet lives.  Just as it did among the first astounded followers that Easter Morning.

We will soon baptize Luther James Forney, calling upon the very same Spirit let loose that first Easter — the Holy Spirit, if you will – to give him the same discerning mind and generous spirit as we’ve known in the Risen Christ.

We call upon God to give him the same passion for justice and freedom as those intrepid souls who followed Harriet Tubman through the swamps of the South to new lives of dignity and promise in the North.  Following the Drinking Gourd to freedom.  Terrifying journeys often steps ahead of the trackers and baying dogs.

We call upon the Holy Spirit to give him the courage to stand for what is right – just as did those German farmers who hid Jews in their fields and barns.  Never knowing when Gestapo agents might show up and kill everyone involved.  Just as did that family in Amsterdam who for two years hid Anne Frank in their attic. Never knowing when some nosy neighbor might betray them and summon Hitler’s SS agents.

We ask for a discerning mind to speak truth to power as did Bishop Mariann Budde after witnessing our president desecrate one of her churches.  Leading an entourage of cabinet officers across Lafayette Park to hold a Bible upside down in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo op. 

For it is in these inspired and intrepid souls that Christ is known today.  These are true and trusted people of the Way, the ones of whom that Hindu teacher spoke.  For the authentic Way of Jesus, the Risen Christ, is the face of all who daily live out that humble care for their fellows.  Yes, even to the point of death, as did two ICE protesters in Minneapolis.

We pray that Luther James might have that same generosity of Spirit as did that Hindu speaker, a capacious understanding of divine purpose that transcends our limited sectarian boundaries.  An openness to the magnificent depths of our common humanity and the marvels of this created world, honoring God’s presence in all persons.

Frederick Buechner, in his book The Faces of Jesus,[2] makes the point that we have no idea of what Jesus looked like.  Despite all the glorious attempts of our noted artists down through the years.  We have absolutely no idea.

Mary Magdalene thought he might have been the gardener.  And why not?  He is the face of even those who presently tend our St. Francis Garden of Hope.  When it comes down to it, in the last reality, the face of the Risen Christ is your face.  And mine.  And the sweet face of this tiny child Luther James whom we will baptize into the family of the Jesus Movement.  Luther James, you are the Easter face of the Risen Christ.

As we gather in thanksgiving and gratitude for his life, as we pour out our prayers, hopes and dreams for him – that he finds his own way as a blessing to our common life as a part of the Beloved Community – we raise the Easter Greeting.  Christ is Risen.  He is Risen indeed.

Amen.

Christ the Gardener, Albrecht Dürer, c. 1511

April 5, 2026
Easter Sunday, 2026 – the Baptism of Luther James Forney

  “Christ the Gardener”

The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney

Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24;
Philippians 2:5-11; John 20:1-18

[1] John B. Cobb, Jr., Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1975), 33.

[2] Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus: a Life Story (Brester, MA: Paraclete Press, 1974).