The Fourth Garden
And our steadfast Gardener
Our story begins in a garden paradise fashioned by the fingertips of God.
Genesis 2:5-17 says:
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the LORD God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”
In his commentary on Genesis 2, Warren Wiersbe writes:
God planted His garden “eastward in Eden” (Gen. 2:8). “Eden” means either “delight” or “place of much water” and suggests that this garden was a paradise from the hand of God. Bible history begins with a beautiful garden in which man sinned, but the story ends with a glorious “garden city” (Rev. 21-22) in which there will be no sin. What brought about the change? A third garden, Gethsemane, where Jesus surrendered to the Father’s will and then went forth to die on a cross for the sins of the world.
We are people of the garden. We find our beginning in a garden paradise infected by an idolatrous parasite. We find hope in a future garden city consumed by the presence of God and the glorious goodness that overflows from his presence and into our hearts. And that hope was purchased for us because of Christ’s bloody, tearful submission to the will of our Father in a garden of twisted olive trees.
But there is yet another garden, one that grows between the garden of Christ’s prayer and the the garden-city of God’s presence.
Yet Another Garden and Its Gardener
Following the death of Jesus, Mary and Mary made their way to his tomb to tend to his body.
Of course when they arrive they are astonished to see the stone already rolled away. John writes about Mary Magdelene in John 20:1-16:
Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.
But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher).
The exact burial site of Jesus Christ is debated, with the two most likely places either being the famed “Garden Tomb” site or the location upon which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is built.1
Regardless, that Mary Magdelene mistook the risen Christ for a gardener tells us that the burial site was in the midst of a garden. Otherwise, it wouldn’t make much sense for her to mistake the voice of a man in her midst as the gardener.
Here we have a fourth garden—the garden into which Christ was buried and from which he rose. And was Mary Magdelene, in fact, mistaken, to think the man was the gardener? I suppose so, as she didn’t think it was Jesus. But in a sense she was not mistaken.
Mitchell Chase writes in Resurrection Hope and the Death of Death:
She thought the voice was the gardener’s. She did not realize Jesus had spoken to her. And yet Jesus was, in a more important sense, a gardener indeed (see Gen. 2:15). He was the last Adam, not returning to dust but risen and tending to matters of new creation.
Mary Magdelene was mistaken to think that the man who spoke to her was merely a gardener, and we would be mistaken to overlook that Christ is, in fact, a gardener.
The One by whom God created everything out of nothing is renewing everything for himself as the gardener who rose from the grave.
I spent a month in Israel in college and have had the opportunity to see both sites. While the Garden Tomb location is probably a solid representation of what Christ’s burial site looked like, I find the evidence for the site at the Church to be more likely.