17/04/2022
JESUS THE RULING KING
The Bible tells us that at that beginning point of history, in that other Garden, when the woman ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and when the man ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, a curse came up on the universe in which their bodies were turning into dust, in which the world that they live in is full of thorns and of thistles. What the gospel of the resurrection tells us is that Jesus took that curse upon himself. Those thorns that God said would appear on the ground were crushed down onto his head. He, the King of all the universe, was taken down off of the cross, purple and bloated and drowning in his own blood with water pouring out of his side. He was a dead body, he was a co**se, he was under the bo***ge to corruption and decay, and Mary expected to find him in that condition.
She was bringing with her some spices. She was bringing some embalming stuff to try to keep him preserved just a little bit longer, but she doesn't find him there. She doesn't find the corruption of that first Garden there. Instead, she finds angels, just as angels had been present from the very beginning. In the first story, the angel was there outside the Garden with a sword because God said, "I do not want my children who have turned themselves corrupt. I do not want them to eat of the tree of life and to live that way forever and ever and ever without hope." This angel speaks to the woman and says to the woman, "Go out into the garden." He points her out of that grave. As she runs out of that hole in the ground, she runs into what she thinks is a stranger.
Notice also that in this garden God reverses the story of alienation. Mary is standing there, in verse 11, outside of the grave. She thinks that she is alone in the garden and she is sobbing and crying. She thinks that her whole world has come to an end when someone speaks to her and says, "Why are you crying, why are you upset, what's wrong?" The Bible tells us that she thought that this was a hired worker who was there tilling the ground in the garden, and she turns and she starts sobbing to him. She does not know who he is until he speaks her name.