You might not feel able, or have access to buy new plants.Īlternatively, you could buy some seeds, which can often be a bit cheaper. This could be a good way to bring some new life into your home, as a reminder of our commitment to step into the renewal of creation. Alternatively, you could make it inside, in a plant pot or window box. If you have a garden, allotment or even a church garden you could make it outside, rearranging some plants and cuttings. Using your hands to create something physical, especially in the repetitive and careful process of handling plants, offers a chance to use your body and mind together to reflect. This week, why not create your own Easter garden? You could use this as an exercise in mindfulness, or ‘soulfulness’, a process through which to reflect on what you’ve learnt through your Living Lent. They often include plants and flowers, and have a cross, or stone or pot to represent the empty tomb, After Lent, where most churches don’t use flowers or much decoration, this has been used as a sign of new life. This is often made on Maundy Thursday or Good Friday, and kept up until the end of Easter week. Since the middle ages, it has been tradition for church communities to create an ‘Easter garden’ during Holy Week. In Isaiah’s vision of recreation, seeking justice and the restoration of the earth are one and the same. As a consequence, they are promised a land which thrives, a restoration of creation which sees new light and living water. God’s people are called to seek justice, to restore the oppressed and to live a life which feeds the hungry. He will satisfy your needs in the sun-scorched land Then your light will rise in the darkness,Īnd your night will become like the noonday. With the pointing finger and malicious talk,Īnd if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, Like Mary, we don’t do this passively but by actively seeking out Jesus within the restored creation.Īnother instance in which the garden is seen in the biblical narrative seems to sum this up very well. In recognising this hope, we have responded to a call to step in and welcome God’s promise of restoration. We have recognised that the journey of lament, while necessary in recognising the place in which we find ourselves, is not the end of the story. We have journeyed with the knowledge that our destination is the garden found at the break of morning light, bathed in the glow of new life. Yet, as we have journeyed towards Easter, we have also been called to look towards the garden of restoration. We recognise a creation in darkness, longing for redemption. We see the brokenness of God’s earth destruction which has come at the hands of humanity – our own. The renewal and restoration of creation we have sought throughout Living Lent is captured in these garden narratives.Īs we respond to the climate crisis, we face a creation in which we lament. By the end of the Easter story, the garden has turned from dark to light, to become a place of life and flourishing – of resurrection. And to extend the metaphor, so he is: in this garden, Jesus’ resurrection has begun the process of restoration, the journey of creation back to the full life in which it was created. In a rather ironic turn of events, in John’s account Mary mistakes Jesus for a gardener. Here, Mary finds herself next to Jesus, in a garden of new and resurrected life. As the sun is rising, she is confronted with an empty tomb, an angelic host and finally, the resurrected Christ. In John’s gospel, Mary Magdalene finds herself here at the break of the morning. Under the cover of night, Jesus turns to lament in the brokenness and corruption of creation.įollowing the events of Jesus’ betrayal, trial and death, the story returns to a garden, this time by the tomb in which Jesus is laid. In popular imagination, this moment tends to be seen in darkness, probably because it takes place after Jesus shares supper with his friends. In this garden, Jesus anticipates the brokenness of creation – the destruction of God’s sign of love to his creation at the hands of his own people. Here Jesus cries out to God, asking for the inevitable events of his death to be taken away. In Gethsemane, we witness a garden of lament. In the narratives of Holy Week, Jesus can be found twice in a garden: first, the garden of Gethsemane, where he goes with friends to pray and is arrested, and finally in the garden by the tomb, where he appears to Mary Magdalene in his resurrection. However, as we draw closer to Easter, this barren setting is replaced with something filled with more life – a garden. This year, this image has been particularly appropriate, as through Living Lent we have thought about the ways our climate is in crisis. Our Lenten reflections usually begin with Jesus in a wilderness.
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