God's Gardeners
Since the beginning God has been looking for some laborers to work His garden (Matt. 20:1). Not primarily a garden of plants of flowers but of people and promise. God placed the Man in the garden to work it, (Gen. 2:15). The word play between the name, Adam, and the Hebrew word for ground adama can't be a coincidence. God tells His first gardeners to be fruitful and multiply, (Gen. 1:28) Unfortunately, Adam and Eve fell short.
After the flood, Gen. 9:20 says that Noah “became man of the soil, and planted a vineyard” God tells them the same thing He told Adam, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth," (Gen. 9:1). Unfortunately Noah and His descendants fell short too.
God raises up new gardeners through the nation of Israel. When God renames Jacob as Israel He tells him "be fruitful and multiply." Unfortunately Israel falls short too. Ever since the beginning God has been looking for some laborers to work His garden (Matt. 20:1) but time and time again they fall short. They leave you wanting more. They leave you hungry for a real gardener, who can grow a real Kingdom of peace and prosperity.
Adam and Eve were created on the 6th day and then rested in the work God had already finished on the 7th day, Before going to work on Sunday. Fast forward a few centuries: "Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid," (Jn 19:41). Just like at the original creation, on the 6th day, Jesus does all the work and then declares from the cross: “It is finished,” (Jn 19:30). He then rests in the tomb on the 7th day, before getting up on the 1st day Sunday, at Resurrection. Through the broken soil of His body, watered in His blood, the perfect seed of the Gospel has broken through the ground of this new garden. Jesus fulfills where everyone else had fallen short. He will “be fruitful and multiply” like no one else. So is it any surprise that Mary mistakes Jesus as a gardener (Jn 20:15)? He is the true gardener. Who will finish creating and cultivating His garden, not of plants and flowers, but of people, and peace, and promise.