“Then the Lord God formed mankind from the dirt of the ground.” Genesis 2:7

“Turning around Mary saw Jesus, but she didn’t know it was Jesus . . .  thinking Him to be the gardener.”  John 20:14-15

“From dirt you were formed, and to dirt you shall return.” Words from a traditional funeral service.

(I am pausing the theme of “People On The Way” for the purpose of sharing this Easter message.)

On the first Easter Mary Magdalene sees Jesus but thinks He’s the gardener.  Fascinating!  Why?  Certainly, there is something different about Jesus’ appearance.  This can’t be the Jesus in white resurrection robes as is so often depicted in artistic renditions.  Rather it must be Jesus in work clothes, perhaps a worn, rough, dirty tunic of some sort, with dirt on His hands and under his fingernails, and maybe kneeling, digging around in the ground.  What a Word picture! On the First Day of Resurrection Life begins in the dirt!

This shouldn’t surprise us, for that is how all life began.  At least if we put some faith in the message of creation as found in Genesis.  God formed and fashioned mankind out of the dirt.  We are called human beings for a reason.  The etymology of the word comes from the Latin “humus”, which means “of the earth”.  This is the reminder that is traditionally spoken at funerals, that just as we are fashioned from the earth, we will also return to the earth.  Perhaps this explains why the tradition for followers of Jesus was to be buried, not burned, as was customary in the culture of the day.  Followers of the way were buried not simply to imitate the entombment in the earth of the body of Jesus, but to place the body back where it came from; back where it belongs. If we believe the promise of Resurrection, life begins again in the dirt.

Too often I have lived under the delusion that life is found above ground, on mountaintops, reaching for the highs and eschewing the lows.  I have believed that faith, Jesus, the Gospel, means a life lived with rainbows and unicorns, in a Willy-Wonka land of wonder and delight, where my wildest dreams must come true. This is an illusion, a distraction, a deception.  It’s not real life. The Truth is that life is found in the dirt. 

Gardeners know this.  So do farmers.  Spring is a time of plowing the earth, tilling the ground, planting the seeds, and then covering them with shit.  It is a process of bringing life to the dark dirt that appears so lifeless.  But the appearance is not the reality.  With a bit of sunshine and water life springs forth.  St. Paul uses this metaphor in the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to The Corinthians.

If we have lived at all we know that a lot of life is spent in the dirt.  At times we have felt buried, as if we were dead.  Some things, many things, happen to us to suck the life out of us.  We have felt the betrayals, the denials, the accusations, the condemnations, the humiliations, the floggings, the pummeling, the pounding, the punishment.  We have felt as if we were going to the ground, buried alive, enshrouded by graveclothes, and placed in a tomb.  But somehow we clung to faith desperately seeking to find our lives in the dirt.  Desperately believing that in time, whether three days, three months, or three years, we would rise again.  

And so it is. So it must be.