The Rev. Greg Johnston

April 17, 2022

This Christmas, I received a surprising gift. It arrived in a large cardboard box, about four feet tall, and after I cut through the tape and laid out all the parts, it took me a few minutes to figure out what it was. As I assembled it, things became clearer in my mind. What it was was a six-foot tall, all-in-one, WiFi-connected, fully-automated indoor hydroponic garden. It’s a remarkable machine. It starts with a six-gallon tank of water on the floor, then rises, with two strips of 75-watt LED lights on one side, facing three plastic columns studded with round holes, about this large. In each one, you place something that I can only describe as a Keurig cup for plants: a tiny, compostable-plastic cartridge containing a matrix of fluffy rockwool and, nestled within it, a single seed. Just fill the tank with water, insert up to thirty-six cartridges, plug in the device (and connect it to the mobile app!)—and wait.

Soon enough, a few green sprouts shoot forth: herbs and lettuces first, the slower-growing tomatoes and peppers a few days later. And over time, as the plants unfurl, what was once a few dozen seeds hidden within their little pods is transformed into a garden of surprising beauty: basil and mint, jalapeños and cherry tomatoes, kale and chard and a dozen different heads of lettuce all growing in your apartment. And if you’re truly bored, you can log into the mobile app to check on how your garden is doing, because, yes, this thing comes with not one, but two cameras and it takes photos at 30-minute intervals throughout the day. (It is the world’s least-interesting app.)

Imagine, for a moment, that you had never seen a tomato before, and someone showed you a time-lapse video from these photos. At first, you’d would see a little pod of wet mineral fluff, then a pale green thing peeking out, then a rather-impressive tomato plant as it grew. But even if you’d watched the whole video intently, the experience of eating a cherry tomato would be unimaginable. You could never picture the red, or yellow, or purple fruit that was about to emerge; and you certainly couldn’t imagine its smooth skin or its elastic crunch or that distinctive burst of sweet acidity that defines the cherry tomato experience.

Early in the morning, on the first day of the week, Mary and Mary and Joanna and the other women come to the tomb, expecting to find Jesus’ body resting where it was laid, and to tend to it, giving it a proper burial, preparing it with spices and ointments (Luke 23:56) for the life of the world to come. But the tomb is empty. Jesus’ body is gone. And their response is an interesting one. They’re not frightened at first, or sad, or angry. They’re “perplexed.” (24:4) And who wouldn’t be? Who on earth has rolled away the stone? And why? Has someone moved his body? Stolen it? Who knows?

And then the angels speak: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” (24:5) And the women’s perplexity turns into joy, and they run to share the good news. But my perplexity remains, even grows. “He is not here, but has risen.” Amen! Alleluia! But what could that possibly mean?

“Christ has been raised from the dead,” Paul writes to the early Christians in the Greek city of Corinth, “the first fruits of those who have died.” Jesus used the same image once to describe his coming death: “Truly I tell you,” he told his disciples, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) It’s a powerful metaphor for understanding the mystery of Easter. Jesus’ body has not been stolen or moved. He is risen. But his rising is not a resuscitation, as though three days after he died, he woke up suddenly and went back to his ordinary life. It’s a resurrection, and it’s something else; it’s more like the growth of a fruit from a seed. Jesus rises, and he has a body, but his life is not longer quite like our lives; in fact, it’s quite different, as different as a cherry tomato is from its seed. The resurrected Christ is still that same Jesus of Nazareth, but transformed into a beauty and a sweetness and a fullness of life beyond anything that we could ever imagine, because we are only seeds, and we’ve never seen a tomato.

As a kind of illustration to explain the theology of the Resurrection by way of a funny anecdote about my surprise hydroponic garden, perhaps this is interesting food for thought. But that’s actually not the point of what Paul says. He’s not trying to explain what Jesus’ resurrection means, full stop; he’s trying to explain what it means for us. And so he doesn’t simply say that the resurrected Christ is like the beautiful fruit that has grown from a simple seed; he says that he is the “first fruits,” the first ripe tomato plucked from the vine. Easter is not a story about the past, about the resurrection of Jesus. It’s a promise for the future, for all of us. “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died,” but there is more fruit yet to grow. We are yet to grow, we who’ve been watered in baptism and nourished in communion, sheltered in the garden of his love and warmed by the strength of his light. And in a world of loss and pain, it bears repeating that the Resurrection is not only a metaphor, not only a claim that love always win in the end, not only an invitation to look for new life in the world around us. It is a promise that you, and I, and everyone we have loved and lost—and everyone, by the way, whom we hate—are like seeds, and that one day, when Christ has destroyed “every ruler and every authority and power” that keep us down, when Christ has defeated “the last enemy,” death itself, (1 Cor. 15:24, 26) we will bloom into that same eternal life, and be a garden flowering in the light of God’s love.

“If for this life only we have hoped in Christ,” Paul says, “we are…most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19) This life is hard. We are imperfect. Even with all the grace of God, we will never fully become perfect on this earth. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we will be endlessly disappointed. But even in this life, we get a taste. Even here and now, God’s work in us begins to bear fruit. We see it in the lives of those who inspire us, who are sprouts while we are seeds. We see it when we feel the light of God’s sustaining love, and let ourselves grow toward it. We see it when we encounter Jesus in all the places he has told us he is found: in the hungry, and the sick, and the imprisoned; in children, in communion, in community, and in prayer. And if these tidings of the resurrection appearing all around you seem to you to be “an idle tale,” then do as Peter does when Mary and Joanna and Mary come to tell him the good news. (Luke 24:11-12) When someone comes to you with the good news that they have found some sense of peace, or truth, or God, listen carefully. And then run toward the places they say they’ve found it, and see if you can catch a glimpse of the Resurrection there before it disappears.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!