Easter 5 “Garden Walk: The Guide”
May 15th, 2022 – John 16:13
Greace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
Our message theme for this morning follows our Easter theme. In Lent, we walked with the Israelites in the wilderness as we ourselves walked through the wilderness of this life with Christ to the cross.
This Easter, we walk with Christ in the new resurrection life. We walk in the peace and joy of a Garden Walk with God at our side.
To carry on the theme of a garden walk, imagine you are again walking through that beautiful resurrection garden of Eden. Everything is lush and good just as God intended.
But how do you know what is what in the garden? Is that beautiful tree an apple or an oak? That plant a zucchini or a squash? A cinquefoil or a strawberry?
If you’ve ever walked someone else’s’ beautiful garden by yourself, it can be hard to identify everything in it, especially if you’re like me and don’t know much about plants.
But, if you have the owner of the garden walk with you through it, you are opened up to a new level of understanding and appreciation – a new level of beauty as they guide and reveal to you everything that is there and share their love of the plants in the garden with you.
After all, the one who owns the garden, planted the plants, and knows how to care for them is the one who can correct you if you wrongly mislabelling or calling one their beloved plants a noxious weed (as I made the mistake telling Marion’s dad about the oxeye daisies he had in his garden.)
The point is, when we walk through this Garden with Christ, with new eyes in light of His resurrection and our eternal life which is safe in Him, we need Him as our guide to point out the beauty of His garden, to gain a deeper appreciation of it, and to be corrected to what something truly is.
The guide we have right now to show us truth as we walk through this life is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as Jesus said who will “guide [us] into all the truth.” The Holy Spirit guides us to know the Father and the Son and what is true (John 16:13-15).
The Holy Spirit called us up this morning and gathered us here so we can again hear about the truth of the Father and the Son, and about His great love and forgiveness for you. The good news that Christ died for you! And he lives that you will live – even after your body gives out in death.
The Holy Spirit is not just for the Israelites of Jesus time, but for Gentiles like you and me. The First Reading from Acts 11 made this point this morning as the Holy Spirit guided Peter to the Gentiles and told Him to make no distinction between these people. In the telling of the good news, the Holy Spirit even came upon the Gentiles, and they believed! The Israelites who Peter was telling this to were guided by the Holy Spirit to know the truth of God’s Will for all to be saved.
Just in case you, or someone you know, is tempted to believe the Holy Spirit ordinarily reveals new and different things about God’s Will to different people at different times, (like some people are special and others are not) God’s Will isregularily revealed through the Holy Scriptures which is the way God speaks to us in and the primary means through which Holy Spirit guides.
In the case of Peter and the Israelites, it should have been no surprise God’s gift of forgiveness in Jesus was for Gentiles because God had been revealing His will to call and gather all nations, tribes, and languages around His throne in the Old Testament Scriptures for millennia!
The Holy Spirit works through the Word of God. Guiding us. Revealing to us. Opening our eyes to see the Scriptures through the lens of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour who the Father testified to and the Holy Spirit bears witness to.
The Holy Spirit reveals many things to you and me about the Garden of this world as we walk through it with Christ on our hearts and lips. His word shows us the beauty of this plant or that. He shows us love, compassion, and appreciation for something we may have otherwise been missing. He shows us that His garden is composed of many different, beautiful, wonderfully made creations which He loves and is calling us to care for with Him.
To value every life He has given. To proclaim to all people the Holy Spirit’s truth, love, and forgiveness in Jesus’ name.
To proclaim the gardener’s good work and the Hope of the perfectly clean weed-free, pest-free day to come. To proclaim, Guided by the Holy Spirit, freedom and release for the captives and a Garden Walk with our God in Paradise forever.