A Good Enough Faith

March 31, 2024 - John 20: 1-18

In their book, Good Enough: 40ish Devotionals for a Life of Imperfection, Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie describe “a proud British gardener named Steve Owen [who] specializes in prizewinning breeds of snowdrops.” 

Many of you gardeners and landscapers among us will know that snowdrops are one of the very first flowers to blossom in a season. In fact, they come up more in late winter even than early spring. Their dangles of white petals hang on delicate green stalks and herald the coming of a new season. In my experience, they can provide hope and also hasten some of our impatience for warmer weather. 

This Steve Owen, who Bowler and Richie describe in their book, seems to be the most patient breed of gardener though. On a visit, he once, beaming, pulled out a specimen of this cultivar for them and announced that these white petals were the first blooms this particular plant had ever produced after fourteen years of his tending it. Most of that time it had been a fight just to keep it alive. “Look at it now,” he declared joyously to the women, “Alleluia!”  

Writes Bowler, “Gardening requires a certain kind of hope, envisioning new life in the midst of despair and death. Gardeners toil and trowel, pluck and prune, all [sometimes] for a single bloom. The very act of gardening is one of hope. And it’s the exact kind of hope that a woman was hunting for that first Easter morning (226).”  

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.” 

She had waited out a grief-filled sabbath day before she could return to the body of her beloved friend and teacher to anoint his shrouded corpse with the customary fragrances and oils that were part of her religious and cultural practice of mourning the dead.

But when she arrived she found the stone moved.   

How could this be? Who could be so cruel as to steal this beloved body from its grave and rob would-be mourners of carrying out their traditional grieving practices? 

Peter and John come to the tomb, too, and confirm what Mary has seen. Undone by their grief they return home. 

This cold, empty tomb was not what any of them had wanted. Whatever they imagined when Jesus described the coming kingdom or commonwealth of God, despite his warnings, they never seem to have imagined it with him tortured to death first and now his body desecrated. 

Some of Jesus’ followers even hoped that he was talking about overthrowing the powers that be with violence and bloodshed if necessary. Their ideas of success and the path they wanted to follow him on did not end in an empty tomb. Yet, that is where they found themselves. 

Where do we think following Jesus will take us? 

Do we suppose that following Jesus will make us successful in life? 

And how do we define that success?

There is a very popular ideology running rampant in this country that teaches us that we know we are loved and blessed by God if our bank accounts are full, our social media connections are beyond count, we are paragons of health, and nothing bad ever happens to us.

But if that is the case, then how do we reckon with the empty tomb? 

If bad things never happen to good people, how then do we reckon with bad things happening to Jesus, God made flesh?       

Can we instead, begin to admit to ourselves and to each other, that despite all our trying, striving, and ladder climbing, we will not be able to keep ourselves from all harm no matter what we do or how we believe?

Suffering, evil, bad luck, mistakes, injustices, and imperfections are all part of this life no matter how good we try to be. 

Instead of kicking ourselves and each other when we’re down, or bemoaning the rung of some ladder of success that has just ruptured beneath us, we can apply the kind of grace, compassion, and tender garden keeping care that Jesus, the Good Gardener, longs for us to experience.

After Peter and John are gone, Mary stays to keep watch. She ducks her head back into the tomb as if something would be changed. And lo and behold, something is. Two angels in white ask her why she’s crying. She doesn’t linger long with them and their seemingly cruel question. She turns and finds some stranger standing there. He, too, asks why she’s crying. As if life doesn’t give us more than enough opportunities for our hearts to leak out of our eyes. This man she supposes to be the gardener. 

Why do you think that was? Does he have dirt under his nails? Has he borrowed the gardener’s clothes after his were stripped from him and gambled over? Does he look like a laborer of some kind? “Maybe,” writes Bowler, “he looks ready to cultivate new life, to pull us toward resurrection with his fingers digging in among the worms.” 

Maybe he carries himself with the kind of hope gardeners know about - the kind of hope that can plant a seed in cold ground, cover it with manure, and trust that with the right amount of water, sun, and time, new life will mysteriously grow.

What seeds are planted in your life now? Is it hard to believe anything will spring up from this cold ground? What will it take to renew your hope that God makes beautiful things even out of dust and even out of us?

In her confusion and her grief, it’s her name in a familiar voice that reaches her. When the risen Christ uses her name, Mary, she gets grounded somehow and can finally see the person miraculously standing before her. 

“Teacher,” she answers. And later, she declares to the rest of the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.”       

Easter is tricky when it comes to faith. We come for the happy ending–the “and then they lived happily ever after.” The resurrection story proclaims hope over despair and life over death. Yet, we know that life continued for them, and continues for us, as a story of spiking heartbreak moments and too often endings that come too soon. But perhaps a good enough faith is one that moves through the chronic nature of being incurably human with an eye for resurrection moments that assure us that this good enough life is worthy of our amazement. 

How will the new life and enduring love that God mysteriously brings amaze you this season? Will you look to the blossoming bulbs that lay sleeping all winter? Will you listen to the bird song that heralds the eternal cycle of seasons and days – of all the little deaths and resurrections? Will you try on a little hope and a little good enough healing? 

Whatever you do, may you know that you do not need to be perfect or have some kind of perfect faith to be loved. You are good enough just as you are. You are blessed not because you are successful but because God goes with you through all life’s triumphs and trials, leading you not to perfection but to good enough experiences of transformation and that is miraculously good enough, too. 

I want to leave you with a last word from Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. It’s “A Blessing for You Who are Being Planted (232).”

Blessed are you who are buried. You who feel stuck in the depths of grief and despair or who sit in the pit of unknowing. You who are learning to trust the timing of a tender Gardener. 

Blessed are you who are growing, you who burst with new life, fresh creativity. Who understand the pain that sometimes comes with stretching and changing, pruning and being cut back. 

And blessed are you in your season of fruitfulness. You who are learning to abide in the vine, and who taste the sweetness of God’s loving-kindness. The God who was there all along–planting, waiting, watering, pruning, delighting. The God who pays careful attention to God’s hope-filled garden. 

Alleluia, indeed.

May it be so. Amen.