Everything was perfect in that perfect garden until the day the woman chose to listen to a creature instead of her Creator. The twisted serpent twisted the words of God with this simple question, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’” That simple question planted a seed of doubt in Eve’s mind that sprouted into a thought that maybe God didn’t really know what was best for her, and that thought led her to make a willful choice to disobey God, which is the definition of sin. Eve ate the forbidden fruit and invited her husband to join her. Together, they willfully disobeyed God and allowed sin to enter the perfect garden in this perfect world.

That choice opened the door to sin, and sin opened the door to shame, so the woman and the man immediately felt the consequences of their sin. They felt ashamed, so they tried to hide from God. They realized they were naked, so they made a pitiful attempt to cover themselves with leaves. But, even though they had disobeyed God, God didn’t give up on them. He met them right where they were, and then He did what He always does: he confronted them with truth and grace.

God told them the truth: just as He had promised, there would be consequences because of their choice to sin. Then God lovingly displayed his grace to them as He did something completely unexpected: He provided a covering for their nakedness with a garment of skin. But, in order to do this, an animal had to die. A sacrifice had to be made. The wages of sin is death, and the first death in Creation was a direct result of sin.

Over the next few centuries, many more animals would be sacrificed for the sin of people. Each and every one of those sacrifices pointed to a day when Jesus, the pure and perfect Son of God, would give his life as a sacrifice to cover the sin of the people once and for all. Centuries after sin entered the world in that first garden, Jesus, the precious Son of God, became the sacrificial lamb who gave his life on a cross. He died, and He was buried in a tomb–in a garden.

So, once again, there was a garden, and in this garden, there was a woman named Mary Magdalene. Her world was far from perfect. Like the very first woman, she, too, had met the perfect man. He had freed her from her demons, and he had become her teacher and her friend. This man had treated her with tremendous love and respect, and that was a rare thing in her world. He really was perfect. Even though He was completely pure and righteous and had never done anything wrong, He was arrested and crucified on a cross between two criminals.

Mary had watched him die a painful, horrific death. It was agonizing and awful, but she couldn’t tear herself away. She stood by as his body was placed in the garden tomb. When she saw the guards roll that huge stone in front of the entrance of the tomb, she felt as if all her hopes and dreams were sealed away behind that stone.

She and some other women who had followed Jesus wanted to show their love and respect for Jesus by anointing his body with burial spices, but they had to wait until the third day because of Sabbath restrictions. So, they dutifully observed the Sabbath, but they got up at the crack of dawn on the third day to make their way to the tomb. They weren’t sure how they would get to Jesus because of the Roman guards that had been stationed at the tomb, and they worried about how they would roll that massive stone from the entrance, but they kept on walking and hoped they would find a way to get to their Lord. When they arrived at the tomb, they realized their worries were in vain because the guards were nowhere to be seen, and the massive stone had been rolled away! The women thought the grave had been robbed, but what they didn’t yet understand was this: the only thing this grave had been robbed of was its power!

Mary didn’t yet understand that the Earth had rumbled, the Savior had risen, and the guards had fled. All of this had happened before she got there. All she knew was the stone was rolled away from the tomb, so she ran to tell the other disciples what had happened: “They took away our Lord, and we do not know where they laid Him!” 

Peter and John ran toward the tomb to investigate what they thought was a crime, but what they found didn’t look like a crime scene. Everything was orderly and organized. The burial cloths were lying there where Jesus had been laid, but his body was not there. This tomb had not been raided; this tomb had been vacated.

Peter and John left the scene, but Mary Magdalene lingered there in the garden near the tomb. She was weeping because she still thought someone had taken her Lord. Through her tears, she saw a man she thought was the gardener. He asked her, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” She answered, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”  It was a bold thing to say to a guy suspected of stealing a dead body, and it was audacious of Mary to think she could recover the body all by herself, but Mary was willing to do anything to get closer to Jesus.

The next words she heard changed everything for Mary Magdalene as a man she thought was the gardener called her by name. When she heard that familiar voice calling her by name, she realized it was Jesus, and He was alive!

Jesus could have chosen to announce his resurrection in the same way his birth had been announced. He could have called on the same heavenly host that had announced his birth three decades earlier, but instead, He chose to give a crying, grieving formerly-demon-possessed woman in a garden the privilege of being the very first person to share the Gospel, the good news that Jesus died to pay the penalty for our sins and had risen victorious over sin and death and the grave!

It was in a garden that a woman had chosen to turn away from God, and it was in a garden that a woman turned towards God and chose to believe the good news of the Gospel. She not only believed the good news; she shared the good news as she went to the disciples and told them her simple, yet amazing, story: “I have seen the Lord!”

Jesus has entrusted us with this very same privilege of believing, receiving, and sharing the Gospel. He meets us right where we are. He calls us by name, and He offers us eternal life. When we accept his offer and place our faith in Him, our sins are forgiven! Our mission is to believe, receive, and share this good news with others as we tell them our story and share with them what we have seen the Lord do in our lives.

May we celebrate the miracle of Easter every day of our lives by sharing the good news of the gospel with everyone we meet.