2022.04.17 | In the Garden
“In the Garden”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ
Hayward, California
Easter Sunday 2022
April 17, 2022
The way that John tells the Easter story, after much sturm und drang, Mary Magdalene saw the risen Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, and went and told the disciples all about it.
If you are like a lot of Mainline Protestants, you may not be entirely sure what happened on that first Easter Sunday, but you are confident that you have met the living God in a garden.
I know this sentiment to be true for many of my Iowa relatives who are card carrying Christians and farmers, and who trace our lineage as farms back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
I remember, in particular, how my erstwhile father and my mother’s parents (who rarely discussed their faith) would tell me quietly as we hoed the garden, or rode through the fields on a tractor, that they could feel the presence of God while they were working in their vegetable gardens and flower beds, and driving through the pastures checking livestock and working crops on our family farms.
I never doubted the truth of these rarely-shared testimonies, because I could feel that presence, too. I could see my people’s sense of communion with God in nature and the way that this presence transformed their auras and inspired their sense of stewardship of the land and every living creature that had been entrusted to their care.
II
When I went away to college in Wisconsin, I found a similar theology and spirituality evident amongst the dairy farmers and cheese factory workers who filled the pews of the little country churches that I served in those days.
None could wax theological like the professors who I studied with at Lakeland College, but they all knew their Bible and their Heidelberg Catechism quite well, and they sang hymns like “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and “In the Garden'' with gusto. The sincerity of their faith was palpable and undeniable. I was humbled and awed.
Even though my college alma mater was situated in a rural setting, it was filled with a surprising number of city kids from Milwaukee, Chicago, Gary, and St. Louis. Some of those city kids took Hebrew Bible and New Testament classes with me. I soon discovered that none of them knew anything about agriculture, ancient or modern, or the flora and fauna of the Ancient Near East or of modern day Wisconsin.
“How in God’s name,” I asked my Grandma Nehring on the phone one night, “will they ever understand the Bible?”
Grandma responded charitably: “We will pray for them, and we will pray for their professors; because it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to till the garden of these young souls and get them in shape for the harvest.”
III
Fast forward to my seminary years and my first call to ministry after graduation and ordination. Much to my surprise, this country girl found herself serving one of the oldest congregations in the nation, in downtown Boston. This eventuality was, I thought, divine humor at its finest. And yet, I soon encountered people who were certain that they, like my people back home, had encountered the living God in a garden.
One of them was the head sexton at Old South Church, David Clark. He was from a small town in Oregon. David told me right off that he was thrilled that I had come to Old South. He explained that we were the only two employees out of 50 who had grown up in rural America. I asked him if he missed country life.
He said, “Sometimes.” Then he went on to explain that he especially missed “digging in the dirt.”
I asked David how he coped with missing country life. He said that he had figured out how to grow hothouse amaryllises and an amazing variety of annuals in the basement of the Old South Church during the deepest, darkest, coldest part of winter. I was one of the few people who ever saw David’s subterranean garden, but everyone eventually saw the fruits of his labors.
Each Easter Sunday, David would place his amaryllises on the organ console for all to see and enjoy. When the snow was gone and the frost had leached out of the soil, David planted his seedling annuals in front of the parish house along Boylston Street, so that the public could enjoy a wee bit of God’s creation amidst the man-made jungle of steel, glass, and cement that surrounded David’s floral oasis.
A few months after I met David, I met another urban gardener in Boston. This guy was an urban gardener. His name was Bill Amidon. He was married to a woman named Pam. The Amidons sold their lovely ranch home in Sudbury, where they had raised their two children, and used the proceeds to purchase a four-story fixer-upper in the South End. Most of the Amidons’ longtime friends thought that they had lost their minds — and maybe they had — but the change worked for them.
Pam had a reverse commute for her last decade of teaching 5th graders in the burbs, and Bill traded his suit and tie and a marketing career for his avocation as a home improvement specialist and his gift for hospitality by converting one story of their home into a bed & breakfast.
Bill had a hard time sitting still after the home renovation was completed and the small business was off the ground, so he looked for a new project and decided to get involved with a brand new craze called “urban gardening.”
Together with a host of neighbors resembling the United Nations, Bill and his new pals (who for the most part did not share a common language) turned every spot of bare earth in their neighborhood into an urban garden. They fed themselves. They shared fruits and vegetables across fences and cultural boundaries, and they contributed fresh produce to a downtown soup kitchen.
Pam attended worship every Sunday. She served on the Board of Deacons. She sang in the Parish Choir, and she attended a feminist theology discussion group that I facilitated. I saw Pam two to three times a week. Bill, not so much.
If I wanted to see Bill, I had to show up for dinner at their home. Bill was a great cook, and he knew how to pair food and wine. Over dinner, Bill would keep the wine glasses full while simultaneously telling me all of the reasons why he didn’t make the cut as a “good Christian.”
I never bought any of his hyperbole, because I’ve always thought that actions spoke louder than words, and I could tell what a significant contribution that he was making to that South End neighborhood. Bill couldn’t hide from me, and lots of others. We knew that he had met the living God in that urban garden.
IV
Since my early ministry days in Boston until these later days in Hayward, I have met a lot of people who weren’t particularly sure what the Easter story was all about; but they, like my dad and my grandparents, like the country church people near my college, and the urban gardeners who I met in Boston, knew that they had met the living God in a garden.
Their experiences are as compelling and convincing an account of the resurrected Christ to me (and maybe you, too) as all of the erudite testimonies shared by the high profile Christians in the popular press, and all of the great tomes of theology that are collecting dust in the world's religious libraries.
If you identify with any of these people whose stories I’ve shared, know that you are in good company, not only with these modern Christians, but with the first followers of Christ. Trust that your experience is real, and that your truth is as good or better than anyone else’s. Then go and tell others what you have seen and heard — that you’ve met the living God in a garden — and they can, too.
Happy Easter, and amen.