Of course, Jesus is a Gardener (an Easter story that moves beyond substitutionary atonement)

Last year I was asked to do the children’s story at our church for Easter Sunday. I said yes, and then I panicked. How do I tell this sacred story for children without the substitutionary atonement script that is so deeply engrained in our culture and that I grew up with as the only available script?

I’ve been writing for quite a few years now about my journey to step into the important work of dismantling substitutionary atonement, prompted by my own children. (See “Maybe Jesus came to show us how to live, not to die?” here and “Understanding and Sharing a Theology of the Cross” on YouTube with Rev. Traci Smith and Herb Montgomery here.) But moving this intellectual work into a short story time for the children in our church community was another level entirely!

I knew I wanted to center Mary Magdalene as she’s going to be part of the future volume II of Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints, and her being present early Sunday morning is almost the only detail that all of the Gospel narratives agree on.

Thanks to inspiration from the Sparkle Stories podcast (a wonderful audio stories podcast my youngest listens to), a life-affirming framing of Jesus as a gardener came through my panic.

I immediately loved this framing both because it’s true to the sacred stories we have, and because spring gardening and being literally in touch with Mama Earth has been a life-giving practice for our family in the past few years.

Of course, Jesus is a gardener who planted the seeds of ideas about how we should care for each other through his teachings.

The stories we’ve inherited tell us that Mary took Jesus for the gardener in that early dawn light. And this framing makes sense because in his public ministry, Jesus planted seeds of ideas about how we should all take care of each other through his teachings.

I offer this story for all of you who might be needing or wanting to share this story with a slightly different lens. Please feel free to tell this story in your circles.

Note: My eldest daughter made a beautiful prop with some of the teachings of Jesus written out and planted in a gorgeous plant. We made extra slips of these teachings for the children to take with them. This is an easy and lovely tangible visual to accompany this story. Passing out wildflower seed packets could also be a lovely take home.

Jesus the Gardener Easter Children’s Story

Happy Easter!

I want to tell you a story today that’s one of my favorite about this special day. Do you know we have different versions of the story of Easter? The one I like the best goes like this…

Mary Magdalene came to Jesus’ tomb early Sunday morning. She was very sad because her good friend and the teacher of many people had died on Friday. Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mother Mary, a woman named Salome, and another woman named Mary had all stayed with Jesus on that really sad day when he died. They never left him. But they hadn’t had enough time before the Sabbath rest day to properly prepare Jesus’ body for burial.

So now Mary is here early on Sunday morning with special anointing oils. The other women are all coming soon too. (Fun little fact tidbit—many traditions say Mary brought some eggs with her—maybe as a snack?)

But Mary had been one of Jesus’s closest friends and students, so she came at the very first light.

Mary gets to the tomb and sees that someone already there. It’s a man tending to the plants.  Ah, he must be the gardener!

A gardener made her think of Jesus because he had really been a lot like a gardener with his teachings.

Jesus planted seeds of ideas about how we should all take care of each other through his teachings. Teachings like:

- Love each other.

- Treat others how you want to be treated.

- Love your neighbor.

- In the family of God, the people who are used to getting everything their way will be the last in line, and the people used to always being the last and having the hardest time will be the first. (This teaching made the people in charge pretty nervous….)

- Feed the hungry.

- Be kind.

Those were some of the seeds Jesus planted about how we should live and how we should treat each other.

So Mary likes seeing a gardener, even though she is still really sad about what had happened to Jesus.
Then the gardener looks up and sees Mary holding back tears.

“Why are you crying?” he asks.

And then he says her name: “Mary,” and suddenly she recognizes him—somehow, this was Jesus! She doesn’t know how he is alive—that’s a mystery that she isn’t very concerned about because she is so overjoyed. Not only is her dear friend alive, but now his teachings can still be alive still too.

And these teachings are still life-giving for us today too! These teachings aren’t always easy to follow. They were hard to follow 2,000 years ago just as they still are today.

And on this Easter day, we still don’t understand everything about the Easter mystery, but I believe it’s a story that reminds us that love wins in the end, even when it seems like everything has been lost. Sometimes it just takes time. Sometimes we have to wait until early Sunday morning with Jesus the gardener to remember that love and new life comes with the morning.

We can practice a little bit of Easter morning every time we live out one of Jesus’s teachings.

You can take one home with you if you’d like. (Pass out the slips of paper with the seeds Jesus planted about how we should care for each other written down.)

Let’s pray: Dear Mama God. Thank you for gardens and new life. And thank for Jesus the gardener who planted ideas about how we should live and how we should treat each other. Thank you for Mary and the women who stayed with Jesus even through the sad times. And thank you for the hope that one day, love will win. Amen.

Daneen Akers is the author of Dear Mama God and Holy Troublemakers & Unconventional Saints.