Beyond Deuteronomy
Joshua and the Garden City
Alleluia, Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!
Come, you who have kept a full Lent since Ash Wednesday, who have observed the fasts, deepened your prayers, given alms and grown in the image of Christ!
Come, you who came late to the journey, but stood with the crowds on Palm Sunday at the gates and laid your garments at the King’s feet, baring your souls for re-creation!
Come, you who joined the new Passover the night before Our Lord died, who passed through the waters to Gethsemane, who watched and waited in the garden!
Come, you who knelt at the Cross on Good Friday and witnessed the Atonement and the victory!
Come, you who come only today for this holy day of Resurrection: for even the workers who arrive at the eleventh hour receive their reward.
On our journey through Jerusalem this week, we have seen Our Lord live out the Torah: the hints of Genesis in the olives and the palms, the Exodus crossing of Maundy Thursday, on Good Friday the sacrifice of Leviticus and (though I did not mention it then) the Bronze Snake of Numbers uplifted on wood for healing from the serpent’s poison. Today, Easter Day, takes us to Deuteronomy, the final book of Torah — and beyond.
For the Torah ends unfulfilled. Moses dies before he can reach the Promised Land, looking out over the Jordan which he will never cross. Moses has to hand over his leadership of Israel to someone else, someone who gives his name to the next book of the Bible: Joshua. His name means “God saves.” And in Greek, that name is Jesus.
What Moses could not accomplish, Joshua, that first Jesus, does. He leads Israel through the Jordan to the Promised Land. But it is a land not made to last. The tribes fight, the kingdom gets broken, Israel and Judah are conquered over and over again. Jerusalem is built only to be razed, rebuilt, and razed again.
Today, the new Jesus – who is also the new Adam, the new Moses – fulfils what His ancestors foreshadowed. He leads not just His kinsfolk, but all people, across the waters of death and into a Kingdom that will never end.
In so doing, He fulfils all of the Torah. The Passover lamb freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt; the Lamb of God offers all people freedom from death and sin. The patriarchs ate the manna bread and yet died; our Lord gives Himself as bread which endures to eternal life. The High Priest on Yom Kippur made sacrifice and entered the Holy of Holies annually to cleanse his people of a year’s sin; our true High Priest pleads His sacrifice in heaven, the sacrifice which cleansed the sins of the whole world, once and for ever. He becomes for us the Way to God’s Presence.
The old Adam crossed from Eden to the wilderness. The new Adam leads us back to something greater even than Eden. The Bible starts with a garden, but ends with a garden city, the City of God. This is the true and new Jerusalem, where there is no need of sun or moon, because it is radiant with the light of Christ; where there is no temple, because God and the Lamb are themselves the temple; and where nothing of this world, this life, this body is lost, but all is brought to its intended perfection, our garments of skin transfigured into garments of light.
But now we are in another garden: the Easter garden outside the tomb. In the early dark, St Mary Magdalene sees the stone rolled away, a barrier removed like the torn veil of the Temple; inside, a deeper darkness, dark as the dazzling cloud on Sinai. She dares not enter, but runs to fetch St Peter and St John. From outside, the Beloved Disciple glimpses discarded garments within, linen like the High Priest’s robes. But Peter, as though taking up that mantle, is the first to enter this Holiest of Holies, where God’s Presence had lain. When they leave, Mary looks inside, and sees two angels, like the cherubim above the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, who enthroned God’s Presence there. And turning, she is first to meet that Presence face-to-face.
She thinks He is a gardener. And she is not wrong. Adam was the gardener of Eden; the Risen Lord is the gardener of the new creation, the Garden City of God. The seed of the Garden City is borne by the Spirit from the tree of Eden to Ararat and Sinai and Tabor and Sion, to Gethsemene and Golgotha. Now in the nearby garden, outside the tomb, the Gardener offers us His fruits. New grain rises from dead earth to make the Bread of Life. New vines press wine into new skins. The pressed olive yields oil to light the city, to cleanse its citizens, to anoint new kings, new priests, new gardeners to govern it and offer up its fruits.
My head reels at the scale of all this: thousands and thousands of years, innumerable stars and planets, all arrayed perfectly for the birth and life of our little garden world. And behind all the mathematics and harmony and order needed for it all to exist, mind unimaginable, uncontainable, the Logos, the Word of God. He is the Gardener who walked in Eden. And now, He walks out of a tomb. All of space and all of history are somehow in this one man. He is the King of Glory, He is the High Priest, and He wants to grab us by the hand and drag us from Golgotha to the Mount of Olives to ascend with Him into communion, oneness, with the Father of Lights beyond all worlds and rule with Him forever.
What we do here today may seem nothing in the eyes of the world. We may be few, our services this week ignored by our neighbours. But it is of cosmic importance. We stand in the garden at the empty tomb as a priestly kingdom. We have been granted entry to the Holy of Holies. At this and every Eucharist, we stand side-by-side with St Peter, St John, St Mary Magdalene and the holy angels, ushering heaven into earth. We are doing the Word’s work of re-creation. We are being formed more and more closely into His image, until He can say to us, “ye are gods,” because we too are gardeners and builders. We go out to fix the broken edifices of our society, to fertilise the charred ground, to bring family, parish and nation under the reign of the King of Glory. The seeds we sow may be tiny, but God gives the growth.
So come. The King is here, in Word, Bread and Wine, in sister and in brother. He is here to stay. He lives, and offers His life to the world. He offers it through you.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed, alleluia!