The sun has not yet risen above the eastern hill, and here in this dusty blue haze, I am taking the short walk from my porch to the garden gate. The morning air is damp, and the birds have just begun to sing. The true wonder of the garden happens when no one is here to witness it—while we’re on vacation; during a thunderstorm; and in this case, overnight, while we all rested. Today the earth smells fresh and new, the roots have done their work, and the garden has grown without our involvement at all. Fruit has emerged, flowers have budded and are ready to open as soon as the sun breaks through the trees, and I feel as though I am the last one to arrive at the symphony as it rises in a morning crescendo.
Sometimes, the most victorious things happen in the dark.
Here, in this early morning dirt, I think of Mary Magdalene. I think of her, spices in hand, eyes swollen from shock and grief, heading toward the tombs before the sun has even risen. Before the hills are dusted with that vibrant light, she is looking for Jesus. The women have risen early to care for the body of the Man who knew them by name. The Man who looked them in the eye and welcomed them into his followers, who did not snub the lowly, who wasn’t concerned with status and charm, but who instead tended to their hearts as the one who created them.
Anyone near her that morning would realize she is a woman in mourning, as the scent of the herbs would give it away. She is exhausted, afraid, and carrying the heavy weight of grief all the way into that garden cemetery.
Yet, as her eyes begin to adjust to the predawn light, where she expects to find the body of Christ she is met with an empty tomb and a radiant stranger. The flurry brings an abrupt change of plans, and after the disciples have come and gone, she is once again alone in the garden, fumbling still in the wake of grief and confusion. The symphony has already begun, and she’s just about to hear it rise.
It’s here she turns to see a man and thinks he is the gardener (John 20:14–15).
And of course, the beautiful irony is that he was the gardener, and he still is, but not in the sense she imagined. Here, the Gardener himself, the one who tends to all those he has redeemed, is not simply wandering around looking for something to do. He is a man at work with a purpose. Where once a garden was a place of defeat and sorrow, where Eden was broken and couldn’t save us, Christ has returned as the gardener to make all things new.
Christ—who knows Mary’s heart, her eyes, her tears—calls her name.
“Mary.”
We know the voices of the ones who love us. We each know the sound of our name when it rings out in a familiar voice. For Mary, this is the same voice that called forth Lazarus, that spoke the words “Talitha koum” with power (Mark 5:41), that cried “Tetelestai” from the cross (John 19:30).
Mary enters the garden in fear and grief, and in Matthew 28:5, the angel says to her, “Do not be afraid.” This call echoes from Christ’s conception (Luke 1:30) and birth (2:10) to here in the garden tombs, and Christ will announce this once and for all when he returns:
“Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades” (Rev. 1:17–18).
Fear not, those of you who walk in the dark, who rise early and await the brilliance of the morning light, who long to be seen by a Redeemer who knows you by name. Fear not, you who walk amid the aroma of death; you do not need those spices to mask your pain. Here in our dirt, our grief-aroma-filled world, do not mistake him for just the gardener. He is indeed the Gardener, the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the one who knows your name better than you know your own soul. Dawn has broken. The Gardener has faithfully brought life in the darkness. The symphony is rising, and we can join the chorus: Christ is risen, and he holds the keys forevermore!
Andrea Burke is an author (A Bit of Earth, Lexham, 2024; The Quiet Resistance, Baker, 2026) and is on staff at Grace Road Church. She is married to Jedediah, and they are raising their two kids, two dogs, two cats, a few strays, six ducks, and a lot of chickens in an old farmhouse near Rochester, New York.
