Ooops!

It’s maybe a little like John. A little like the Gospel of John, when Mary’s thinking, Oh. This must be the gardener. I mean. I’ve known some gardeners. I’ve known quite a few gardeners, actually. A number of them heavy. A number of them sort of what you might call obsessed with food. Hence the gardening, maybe. Hence the interest in the soil. In food and the dirt it grows in. Grows out of, if you will. And then. Eventually. Turns back into.

But not all of them. Some of them thin. Some of them paradoxically thin. And in their case, one wonders what the theory should be. Maybe that. Well. Vegetables and such—garden truck—are really hard, all by themselves, to get heavy on. Healthy is what they are. Not so much calorically endowed as other foods, such as hoofed meats, for example, and dairy products and. Well. Almost everything else. And the gardening itself. Well. It keeps you fit, especially if you have a large garden. All that bending and stooping and squatting and digging and hoeing and staking and spading and. Well. Enough of that. You get the picture.

But what I’m really talking about is Mary. Not the gardener so much. Mary Magdalene. Minding her own business. Minding her Ps and Qs. Grieving over her friend. Her dead friend.

And all of it in the dark, mind you. Groping her way to the tomb. Finding it open. Finding the stone moved. Finding her friend gone. Running and getting her other friends. Then they all run back, and sure enough. The men friends discover the same ridiculous, silly, incredible story that she’s discovered there in the tomb. And so the men take off, like most men do. Or want to do, whether they admit to it or not. When there’s any trouble or sign of trouble. Or any story they have no idea what to do with.

But Mary remains at the tomb. Faithful Mary. A woman I wish I’d known. And she bends over and looks into the tomb again. And what. What the. There are not one but two angels in there. Two angels in white. And they chat. Chat very amicably. A kind of an odd place for chit-chat about where her friend might have gone, but so be it.

And then she turns around. And this is what I really want to talk about. She turns around and sees a gardener standing there, who’s wondering why in the heck she might be crying. Wondering why in the heck all the waterworks. And she. Well she is looking for her friend, you see. And she thinks maybe this gardener has taken him somewhere. I don’t know. Maybe she’s thinking he’s buried him, as gardeners are wont to do. You know fish. And other stuff. In their gardens. To help their gardens grow. So maybe she thinks this gardener thinks Jesus is a kind of fertilizer. A kind of growth gimmick for his garden, you see. A kind miracle grow for his vegetables. For his flowers. Whatever.

In other words, she’s looking for Jesus but she’s not looking for Jesus, if you get my drift. If you get what I’m laying down. She’s all worked up. The waterworks and everything. Enough waterworks to water a garden, maybe. And Jesus is definitely gone. And she wants to know where he is. But she’s just having a bit of trouble here. A bit of trouble getting that he’s. Well. He’s not dead. She’s looking for the dead Jesus. So she’s not at all expecting a living Jesus. A Jesus living in the gardener, for example. Looking out of the gardener’s eyes. Speaking with the gardener’s mouth.

She’s looking. Oh yes. She’s looking. She’s distressed and genuinely so. After all, these are genuine waterworks. No. This is no acting job. She’s really looking. But what she’s looking for is a dead man. And that’s her problem. The deal is. This guy’s not dead. Maybe he died, but he’s not dead. And then, Mary. Mary, he says.

Ooops, is what she’s thinking. Ooops. Category mistake. Rabboni! she says. Which is a form of ooops. Rabboni!

Because, turns out. Turns out. He’s what you might call a miracle worker. Now that he’s died but isn’t dead. Appears and disappears at will. Like a magician. And what we get a bit later in John is that Jesus breathes on everybody. Breathes his Holy Spirit into them. And then they. Well. That’s another story. That’s another whole deal. Is what I’m saying. Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and that whole new deal.