Why Easter used to be New Year's Day

[Mary Magdalene] turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” (John 20:13-15)

Up until the 1500s, many parts of medieval Europe marked the beginning of the year not on January 1, but at Easter. Why? Because they believed the first Easter launched the ultimate new thing—God’s kingdom coming on earth as it is in heaven—a project God has called us to participate in with all the vigor we naturally feel at the start of a new year.

There’s a beautiful symbol of this buried in today’s passage in which Mary Magdalene mistakes Jesus as a gardener that first Easter Sunday. Jesus had just risen from the dead. Clearly he could have chosen to be mistaken as anything vocationally: a carpenter, a king, a fisherman. So, why a gardener?

Some scholars suggest it’s merely coincidental. Jesus was buried in a garden and that’s why Mary mistook him as a gardener—case closed. That certainly might be true. But I think the God who created more than 6,000 species of mammals including the capybara is a bit more creative than that.

Leading New Testament scholars such as Dr. N.T. Wright believe that John is intentionally contrasting Jesus, the Last Adam at the Garden of the Tomb with the First Adam in the Garden of Eden. 

“In the beginning,” God inaugurated the first creation, but he didn’t finish it. He called Adam and Eve to help him cultivate heaven on earth beginning in the Garden of Eden (see Genesis 1:26-28). And now, here at Christ’s resurrection, God is inaugurating the final creation. And the Last Adam is choosing to appear as a gardener as a symbolic way of saying that he is planting heaven on earth once again. 

But here’s where you and I come in: Just as the First Adam had his bride Eve to help him cultivate the first creation, Jesus, the Last Adam, has his bride, the Church, to help him cultivate the final one. 

As Dr. Wright explains, “Easter has a very this-worldly, present-age meaning: ‘Jesus is raised…God’s new creation has begun…and we, his followers, have a job to do…announcing his lordship to the entire world, making his kingdom come on earth as in heaven!’”

Amen. 

Believer, Jesus is king of heaven and earth today. His kingdom is at hand in your workplace and industry. Your job is to partner with Jesus the gardener to reveal glimpses of heaven on earth today—to weed out conflict, injustice, and corruption; to plant seeds of beauty, order, and abundance; and to trust that the Lord will bring his kingdom to bear in part through your faithful tilling of the soil.