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Your message for the moment with Dr. Bruce W. Thielman, "Of Glory in a Garden." Let us give reverent attention now to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 15, beginning the reading at the verse number 22. "And they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha, which means the place of a skull.

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And they offered him wine mingled with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him, and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, 'The King of the Jews.' And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and

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one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, 'Aha, you who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross.' So also the chief priests mocked him to one another with the scribes, saying, 'He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross,

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that we may see and believe.' Those who were crucified with him also reviled him. "And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani!'" Which means, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

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And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, He is calling Elijah!" And one ran, and filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.

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"And the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and when the centurion who stood facing him saw that he had thus breathed his last, he said truly, 'This man was the Son of God.'" There were also women looking on from afar, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Younger, and of

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Joseph and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for

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the kingdom of God, took courage, and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. And Pilate wondered if he were already dead; and summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead. And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the body to Joseph. And he bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud,

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and laid him in a tomb which had been hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb. Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. After he breathed his last prayer, "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit," after he had given up the ghost, they took him down. They took him to a garden. They wrapped him in purest linen.

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They surrounded him with rare anointing spices, and bunches of flowers from the garden. And they laid him to rest. And they rolled a great stone between him and the world. And it was evening, and the Sabbath drew near. And it was the Sabbath of his life. He was now at rest. He was where the wicked could not reach him anymore, where the persecuting and the troublesome could not lay

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hands on him. He was at peace, in a garden. It's a curious fact, you know, that the Via Dolorosa began in a garden and ended in a garden, that the way of suffering had its genesis in Gethsemane, where the night was filled with the sound of sobbing angels, but it has its finale in the garden of Joseph of Arimathea, where you hear the sound of great glory. You've read that bit

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of poetry perhaps a hundred times, "The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God's heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth." I'm not so sure that's always true, but I am sure that in Gethsemane and in the resurrection garden, one is right up against the very heart of God. It was the custom in those days for the rich citizens of Jerusalem to have

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quiet gardens outside the city, far from the dust and the pressure of the big town. And it was in such a place that Jesus was buried. Now the Jews believed that the spirits of those who had departed hovered about the tomb, the last resting place, for a period of three days after death, and so it was the custom of the Jews to spend time about the tomb during those three days, having at least

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spiritual communion with the one whom they had loved and lost a while. But Jesus, you see, was buried on a Friday evening, and the Sabbath, the Jewish holy day, had come, and it would have been a violation of Jewish law to have gone to the garden on Saturday, so no one came, and not until early Sunday morning, very early Sunday morning. John suggests to us that it was sometime between

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3 and 4 a.m. that Mary Magdalene hurries to the garden. It was April, and the April moon in Palestine is something to see, but I doubt if Mary saw it. It painted everything with a splendid silver, silver fruit on silver trees. Did she see that? A silver mouse with silver claw and silver eyes scampered by. Did she see that? Doves with silver-coated feathers nestled in the trees. I

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don't think she noticed them. Or the moveless fish in the silver water by silver reeds. No, Mary didn't see this. She only was hurrying to be close to Jesus. She had been a woman of the streets, you know, a prostitute. We'd call her a lady of scarlet. Yet here she is, hurrying to the side of Jesus, and if you put those two facts side by side, you understand why. It was precisely because Mary had

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been forgiven so much, that she was so anxious to be close to her Lord. She'd hit the bottom of life, you see, and when she hit the bottom, she found Jesus. And he put her feet on a new path, and from that day until that Easter morning, she had been moving onward and upward always. So now she hurries to the tomb of this one she loves. That's the reason Christians always hurry to the side of

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Jesus, because in him they found a new beginning, a new start in life. That's the reason that if this morning Shakespeare were to walk through that door, we would stand and applaud. Or if Michelangelo walked through that door, we might press about him to touch the hands which fashion such beauty. Or if Abraham Lincoln crossed that threshold, we would stand in awe and respect and

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admiration. But if Jesus walked through that door, we would fall on our knees and scramble to kiss the hem of his garment. Because he's the one you meet at the bottom of life, who starts life over again for you. It is not so, of course, for those who are too proud to admit that they need someone like him. It's not so for those who scan their lives and measure themselves by themselves and

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so are without understanding. It's not so for those who sheath their sins in sophisticated verbiage, who think they can take their moral errors and enumerate them on the fingers of one hand with perhaps a couple of fingers left over. It isn't for those who fool themselves with the witchery of words, who delude themselves with the trickery of terms, those grubby souls that go

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through life always under an alias. Not so for them. But for those who have discovered in Christ newness and beginning again. For those who hit the bottom and found him there, they're always anxious to hurry to the side of their Savior. So Mary comes, and when she gets into the garden she makes a startling discovery. The stone has been rolled away. And she says, "They have taken away

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my Lord." Now there are those who say, you know, that Jesus' resurrection appearances were merely hallucinations, that his disciples so much wanted to see him alive that they imagined he was alive. But here comes Mary. She was one of those very close to him. No one wanted to see Jesus alive any more than Mary did. Yet when Mary comes into the garden and discovers that the stone has been

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rolled away, does she think he is alive or give any indication that this is her expectation? Not at all. She says, "They have stolen his body away." That is not the kind of mental soil in which the weed called hallucination grows. So Mary turns and she hurries from the garden and she rushes to the disciples and tells them what has happened. And Peter and John come hurrying. And John, because

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he is younger, gets to the tomb first, but he does not go inside. He simply bends down and and peeks inside. And Peter, lumbering afterwards, barges onto the scene, and with that impetuous nature, that sanctified arrogance and self-confidence, that blessed belligerence of his, he charges right into the tomb. And John, given courage by Peter's courage, goes in after him. And there

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they make an amazing discovery. The grave clothes are still in the tomb. Now that was quite surprising, you see, for if they'd stolen the body, they would certainly have taken this purest linen. It was worth a great deal of money. Or if they were stealing the body, it would have been much easier to transport a dead body carefully wrapped than than one that had been unwrapped. Why would one

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take the time to unwrap it? And yet here were the grave clothes. And they weren't thrown about the tomb, or they weren't unwound and put in a pile at one side of the tomb. They had, and the Greek is very specific here, and must be carefully noticed, they had fallen in upon themselves. That is, they had not been unwound or unwrapped. It was as if the very body of Jesus had evaporated from within

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them, and then they just fell down upon themselves. And John, seeing this, suddenly grasped the significance of it. That Jesus had in fact risen and had left the tomb, but the grave clothes in the process of his rising had not even been disturbed. Now I will make no pretense at standing before you this morning and telling you how the resurrection happened. I cannot describe to you

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by what magnificently mysterious process Jesus rose from the dead. Public was his death, but power and might, life again, victory, these things, these things were hushed within the dead of night, behind the shuttered dark in secrecy, and it was alone, alone, alone that he rose behind the stone. I don't understand how it happened, yet I've seen in my life again and again the miraculous power

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that Jesus has over men's bodies. I've gone into hospital rooms where persons have, have been dying, not because they had to die, but almost because they wanted to die. Their friends encouraged them, their loved ones supported them, the doctors told them that they would get well, and yet the chart, the, he trades the fact that the course of their illness was steadily downhill, and then one comes

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who is in touch with the Lord, and he prays, and he puts his hand upon them, and the crisis is reached, and they're made whole again. I've seen that too many times to deny it. I've seen those who were crippled, I've seen those who were the bearers of deadly disease, which by all natural process should have ended their lives, saved and made whole again. And if Jesus has this kind of power over

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the bodies of men, then it's not hard for me to imagine that by some strange alchemy of his power, he could evaporate from the very folds of those grave clothes, and then in some way be restored, so that we could recognize him. It is mystery, but it is magnificent mystery. And John and, and Peter grasp the significance, and they run out of the tomb to tell others about it. Have you ever noticed

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that? Have you ever noticed that the first Easter parade was always a double time? They ran all morning. Mary hurried to the tomb, she hurried away from the tomb, Peter and John hurried to the tomb, Peter and John hurried away from the tomb. Now comes Mary again. She'd been running with Peter and John, but they'd outstripped her easily, and now she comes, and she's in the garden alone again,

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and she does a very courageous thing. She bends down, and she peeks into the sepulcher, and through her tear-filled eyes, she sees an angel of God. I think it's only tear-filled eyes that ever see the angels of God, the messengers of his truth. And seeing them, she turns a little from the tomb, beginning to move away, awed by this spectacle in sight, and, and suddenly she discovers behind her,

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in the dimness, for now dawn has come, another figure. She doesn't think for a moment that it would be Jesus. It is that hour of the morning you see when the moon, the princess of the night, is in retreat, and the sun, the queen of the day, is just beginning to rise. It is that time when the servant of Joseph of Arimathea could be expected to be coming to the garden to put things

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in order for the day. So Mary is not surprised to see him there, and she turns and she says to him, "They have taken away my Lord. If you have taken him, sir, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away." I've always been amazed at that statement. How could Mary, how could this frail woman, who had already gone back and forth from the city of Jerusalem three times that

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morning, how could she have carried away the body of Jesus? But she says to him, "Just tell me where he is, and I'll take him away." Love, you see, never has any understanding of limitation. When the love of Jesus Christ comes and takes up residence in a person's heart, they're not concerned about limitations. They don't see boundaries. They cross all those marks that

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somehow stagger and stop smaller men. I learned the other day about Tommy Ogan. He lives in Seattle, Washington. His father, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Ogan, have twelve children. The twelve children are of three different races and eight different nationalities, all adopted. A few years ago they were contacted by an orphanage in Korea about a little boy named Song Chul-ho. He was

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in some way crippled from the waist down. No one knew the exact nature of the ailment. A very timid child who cried all the time, no one wanted him. The orphanage said, "You may not be interested either, but will you think about it?" Ed Ogan worked for Boeing, and things were as bad then as they are today, and he was a little bit concerned about the economic situation. But love knows no

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limits. So they spread their arms and they received this little lad, Song Chul-ho, and they gave him a new name, Tommy. And they took him to the church and he was baptized, and they dedicated him to the Lord. And about ten days later he stopped crying, and he started laughing. And about three weeks later he started to crawl. And then after he crawled he walked with a crutch, and then after

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the crutch the cane. And today Tommy Ogan runs like every other child in the neighborhood, lifted you see by the love that dwelled in the hearts of his parents, lifted by the surroundings of love of which he had become a part. Christ was resident there. When Christ is resident in a home, when Christ is resident in a heart, when the love of the Lord is alive there, there's no limits,

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there's nothing that cannot be done. So Mary says, "I'll take him away." People have often wondered why she didn't recognize Jesus. Well I think she didn't recognize him for two reasons. First of all she'd been weeping, and you never see clearly when your eyes are dimmed with tears. I think that's an important

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thing to remember. When we have lost a loved one we weep, and that is good and proper, for emotion is better released than contained. But there comes a time, my friend in Christ, there comes a time when tears must be put away, when tears begin to blind us to the glorious resurrection truth of our faith. Now take Hope Friedman. She lives just a few miles from here in Altadena, California.

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At the time this happened, however, she lived in Minneapolis in Minnesota. She and her little daughter had gone on vacation to visit her parents, while her husband and the three sons went off to a farm for a vacation. They were looking forward to a great time. She'd been there three days when the telephone rang.

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It was her husband. Kent, their little five-year-old, had contracted poliomyelitis and had been rushed to the hospital. And she was suddenly terribly afraid. "Is he paralyzed?" she said. And he, the husband, responded, "It's bulbar polio. It affects the brain. It doesn't look good. Make your plane reservations. I'll call you in the morning." And for the rest of that day she paced

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and she prayed and she talked and she didn't talk. And when she went to bed that night, she found herself unable to sleep. She tossed and she turned. This was the little boy, Kent, five years old, who'd said to her not two weeks before how much he loved Jesus. How could this happen to him? This was the little boy who had said that he wanted to go into the ministry.

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This was a little boy who again and again had thrilled his mother's heart with the promises of faith. And now she had visions of him alone in that hospital and afraid. Did he know, did he understand that she was coming to his side as fast as she could get there? And with those kinds of thoughts disturbing her sleep, she tossed and turned and finally fell into sleep, exhausted.

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And then, and then she was suddenly awakened. And she looked at the clock on the nightstand and it was 5 a.m. But she noted the clock only momentarily, for suddenly she became aware of the fact that there was someone in the room. There was a presence in the room and she felt no fear. His face was obscured and yet there was a warmth and a radiance about him. And he came very close

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to where she was and he said to her, "I have taken care of everything and all is well. Do not worry." And she went back to sleep and the next morning she couldn't remember whether she had been awake or asleep. It all was so clouded and so mysterious and yet somehow comforting. She finished a little packing she had to do and was having a cup of coffee with her family in

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the kitchen before going to the airport and while they were there the telephone rang. "Must be the hospital," her mother said. She went and picked up the phone. It was the voice of her husband and he whispered, "Kent has died, darling. At five this morning he went." And the man's voice broke

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and she broke into uncontrollable sobbing and she ran to the arms of her mother and her mother held her close and silently like mothers do at those kinds of moments. She couldn't get the thoughts together in her mind. This boy, this Kent, this beautiful little five-year-old with thoughts of faith and Christ and servants. How could it be true? And yet it

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had to be true for her husband had called her. She'd heard his voice on the phone. Kent was gone. Kent had died. At five o'clock this morning he had... At five o'clock this morning... At five o'clock this morning she had felt a wonderfully comforting radiating presence in her own room who said, "I have taken care of everything and all is well. Do not worry."

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Please turn your cassette to the other side. And so at that moment that woman laid at the feet of Christ a gift far more precious than the gold or the frankincense or the myrrh that the wise men brought. She laid her sorrow. So my friend who weeps for one you've loved and lost a while, let Easter speak to your hearts

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this morning. Though you may not have had the gift of some radiating presence speaking to you the words of truth, Easter is the affirmation that he has taken care of everything. That all is well. That there is no need for you to worry. Don't let your tears blind your eyes to that truth. And the other reason that Mary didn't recognize Jesus was that she was looking at the tomb

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and not at the garden. She was looking at death and not at life. Our lives are not a flame that can be extinguished with some vagrant whiff of air, not a grain of sand that slips through the fingers or moves through the hourglass and then is lost. Our lives are not such ephemeral things. We are the children of God. We are imperishable. We take

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upon ourselves in death incorruptibility. I see a daughter bend over the casket of her father and say, "Goodbye, Dad." And I shrivel up a little inside, "She's consigning him to death." And I see another daughter bend at the casket of her mother and say, "Goodbye, Mom. Have a grand time and we'll be together soon." And I thrill within because she's consigning her mother to life.

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Easter says that we can stand on the foundation of our faith and look God in the eye and say, "I choose for my loved one glory and let no loneliness of mine, no selfishness of mine, no sorrow of mine cloud all the splendor you've stored up for her. She's lost in wonder, love, and praise. Just promise me that day when together we'll stand in your presence."

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And then, and then Jesus looked at her and he said, "Mary," not a sermon, just a word, "Mary, but how much love there can be in a name." And she looks at him and through the crystal tears she sees who he is. And she says, "Rabboni, Master." And she falls at his feet and he lifts her up and he says,

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"Don't stay here. You know the secret. Don't stay here mumbling gratitude. Mary, I've risen from the dead. Go and shout that from the housetops. Sing that from the mountaintops. Carol that in the valleys. Mary, death is dead. Go and announce that truth." And Mary, thrilled with what she has discovered, moves out into the world singing a song which has been taken up by the lips of

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millions, a song so triumphant that it draws us 2,000 years later to this place at this hour to sing that same song. And now the light was full in the garden. The sun had risen and was high in the sky. The crocuses pushed their way through the earth and the daffodils and the narcissi unpacked their trumpets to the dawn. And the green grass revealed the hiding place of the purple

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violets and the little rivulets of water made the place sound happy with gentle sound. And the poppies lifted their red petals in announcement to the sky. And the earth, scrumbly and ragged and patched with places of dampness and of dryness, looking like the oldest thing and smelling like the newest thing on the world's surface. The earth gave rise to forsythia that spewed out suds of

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blossoms. And Mary didn't see it all. She didn't see the thistle fluff blown upon the wind. She didn't see the flash of painter's brilliance in the wings of a butterfly. She didn't hear the half silent hum of a honeybee. Mary didn't see the moon that night and she didn't see the sun that morning. The glory in the garden to Mary was the glory of a risen Christ. "I hath not seen nor ear heard,

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neither hath it entered into the heart of man the good things that God hath prepared for those who love him." But Mary had a peek. Mary had a hint. Mary had a whisper. And she went forth changing that whisper into a song. She hurried out into the world announcing the secrets that Jesus Christ had risen. And that's the secret it is given to us to announce, with all the glorious truth that is

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part of it. So lovely lilies clean, lilies that spring up green, lilies that burst white, lilies that give us delight. Lilies grow in our hearts again that we may flower this truth to all men. Jesus Christ is risen. There is a glory in the garden. No, he is the glory in the garden. And may the love of God and the peace of that risen Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit

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that communicates all the magnificence that is to be found in him be with you and all those whom you love this Easter time and always. Amen. [Music] [Music]

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