Easter “Garden Walk: New Life”
April 17th, 2022 – Psalm 16:5-6
He is Risen! _____________________
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Risen Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ!
We have made it! We have arrived at our destination. We have walked through the wilderness, on our Wilderness Walk for forty days. We have been brought through to where we were headed – or to say it more accurately – to where Jesus was leading and bringing us.
“Where exactly were we headed on our wilderness journey?” you ask?
To answer that, let’s look to our ancestors of old as we have been doing.
Where did God bring the Israelites after their 40 years in the wilderness?
Where was it that God returned His people to after he exiled them for their sin?
Where is it that God wants us to ultimately end up?
The answer to this is the Promised Land. Paradise. The land flowing with milk and honey. The good land God promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The land God promised to us, as those adopted into the family, and its inheritance, through our baptism into Jesus Christ.
God’s plan all along has not changed. Right from the first page of Scripture to the last. The plan wasn’t just to bring us back into Jerusalem, the place of peace, to have us sin and mess it all up again.
Since the very beginning, God has wanted to bring us back into the Garden of Eden. Back to the tree of life where we eat from it and live forever. God has wanted to bring us home where sin is no more and we live as we were created to, walking with Jesus in the Garden.
Picture a garden for a quick moment here. Close your eyes.
What do you see?
The beauty is that we will all see something different when we thing of a garden based on the life God has given to each one of us. What do you see? A lush green vine? A blooming lilly. The smell of fresh dirt in the air. A big, strong oak tree. Lush grass. A cool breeze in the heat of the day. Birds playing. Life. Plump fruit and vegetables ready for harvest. Walking hand-in-hand with the Gardner through it all. Delighting in the fruit of our work together of caring for His good creation.
Peace. Not a care in the world. Rich, beautiful life without end.
Open your eyes.
That vision is what Jesus made real for you by dying and rising. The Garden. Life, finally right with God, that is Home. This earth, ours perfect and good, forever in the Resurrection to the Garden. That is Home for you and me for eternity.
That is where we have come to on our Wilderness Walk. That is what each of us will now have when we rise again to new life after having died and been planted as a seed in the ground.
As you’ve no doubt noticed, we are there, and yet not there at the same time.
We live right now with this hope being reality as each of us lives and dies. Right now, we have been brought by Jesus to the Garden. We eat of the eternal fruits of His cross – eternal food – in His blessed risen body and blood.
We have been brought to this Garden Walk with the new life God has gifted us.
Forgiven, perfect saints at peace with God and man.
And yet, even though that is fully true, we are still on the wilderness walk with Jesus at our head. We still need to be led, forgiven, chastised, cared for as we wander in this life.
We are dual-people. Perfect yet imperfect. Arrived yet still wandering. Saints yet sinners.
Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, you would only be imperfect, wandering, sinners.
Without His resurrection, we would have no hope of being brought back into the garden.
But, He is Risen! ______________________!
So, you will rise too! You will walk in new life in the Garden! Before the face of God, through Jesus, you are right now Perfect Saints and Citizens of Paradise!
Thanks be to God!
Amen!
May this Easter peace and Joy fill your heart to overflowing for love to God and neighbour through Jesus Christ our Risen Lord and Saviour!