May 11, 2025
• Rev. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
May 11, 2025
Mother’s Day
Graves into Gardens
“More Loved than You Dared Hope”
Genesis 2:8-10,15; Revelation 22:1-5
Prayer: O God as we listen now, open our hears to hear, to hear the truth about who we are, and the truth about who you are, and what that means for us and all the world. Amen
I just finished a wonderful book about the spiritual and intellectual formation of
Tim Keller, the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, who died in 2023. He was a brilliant man who looked like Patrick Stewart in Star Trek-New Generation. He was an intellectual preacher, but he never put you to sleep. He started Redeemer in 1990 to reach young skeptics in New York City. The church has since started over 750 other similar congregations around the country and even beyond the US. I found this book fascinating because it reveals the influences that shaped Keller’s thinking which, therefore, shaped the church.
In particular, I came upon this statement that is like the secret crystal or computer chip that runs the whole machine. You know how in a lot of sci-fi movies where there is a massive computer or machine or Death Star, there’s always some little something at the heart of this thing that powers it all, like a computer chip or crystal. You can hold it in one hand, and if you remove it, it shuts down the whole enterprise, Well Redeemer developed this statement that if you took it away, everything about the movement would have crumbled. It goes like this: “Cheer up! You are a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine; and you are more loved than you ever dared hope.”
And you may think, that can’t be right. How can a complex spiritual operation depend on such a simple, almost simplistic statement like that? But it does. That statement has the power to hold lives together, communities together, and it has the power to hold nations together and even all of history.
Cheer up! You are a worse sinner than you ever dared imagine, and you are more loved than you ever dared hope.”
I want to use that thought as we do a really fast summary of the Bible from cover to cover. And I want to start where we began this series on Easter Day. We looked at the Easter story in John’s Gospel, attributed to the Apostle John. He put a detail in the story the other Gospels don’t have. He points out that Jesus’ body was placed in a tomb in a garden. No one else mentions garden. This, of course, means Jesus rose from the grave in a garden. It is why Mary, when she first met the risen Christ, thought he was…what? The gardener. Now that sounds like just an unimportant detail put in the story, that this took place in a garden, until you go to the last book in the Bible, Revelation. Again, this was written by John. He tells a vision of the future where all of history is completed. In the last chapter he gives a picture of what things will look like when God has final victory over the forces opposed to God. Listen again to the verses we heard a moment ago…
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life…flowing from the throne of God…On either side of the river is the tree of life…producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more… his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads…
John says heaven will look like a garden. Now why is John so fixated on gardens? Because he wants us to think about another garden, the first garden mentioned in the Bible, the Garden of Eden. This is where humanity started. Adam and Eve lived in a place of perfection. How could it not be? Wouldn’t it be a perfect place when we have all the food we ca eat. We talk with God face to face. And we can live nude. Okay, maybe not perfection. But even the nudity has meaning.
Because the Garden is where things went terribly wrong. They ate the forbidden fruit. Think about what that means. As ample as the garden was to provide for their needs, they felt that because there was something they shouldn’t have, then they would be missing out. They might not be as satisfied; that they don’t need to follow God’s rules to be happy. I don’t needs God’s way to be satisfied.
And what’s the first reality of this disobedience? They realize they are naked, which really means they feel the need to cover up. They have to hide. And now for the first time there is distance in the relationship between human beings and with God. Sin simply means distance and separation. And the consequences are tragic. They are expelled from the garden. They have to leave perfection. The earth is cursed, and death enters the picture.
John wants us to go back to that first garden not to assign blame for everything wrong in the world, but to see ourselves as Adam and Eve; to understand that we all make that same choice at times. We choose to have what we want in order to be happy. We can all be selfish. John takes us back to this garden to say, Cheer up! You are a worse sinner than you ever imagined. Because John understands that if we don’t see this truth, we are fooling ourselves. We will just say things like, “I know I’m not perfect, I have a few flaws I need to work on, but I’m not a bad person.” And we end up going through life blind to our own potential to make the world a messier place.
So when you get to John’s Gospel and the end of the story of Jesus’ life, and it says he was buried in a tomb in a garden, John wants us to know Jesus was buried in the place where human sin can be blind to its potential. We are capable of crucifying the purposes of God.
But, here is where hope emerges, because Jesus was resurrected in that place. He rose to new life in a garden. He broke the curse. He healed the garden. He overcame the powers that destroy life.
BUT, our problems aren’t over. We still have to live with the reality of sin and death. We still live in a world with crime, and injustice, and selfishness, and sin. And so you come to the end of the Bible where John records a vision he has, a vision of the ultimate outcome of the world. A picture of how things will turn out one day. It will be paradise restored. It will be a garden. And the Tree of Life will be there, only this time God will welcome us to eat of it, because this Garden is different from the first. In this garden we realize we welcome God’s help. We don’t want to be like God. We are grateful for what God gives us.
And so the Bible is bookended by two gardens. One where we fell away, and the other where God makes it all right again. But what will allow that to happen? What brings us to that place where its all made perfect again?
Are you ready? It’s Judgement. God’s judgement. Most of Revelation is about conflict, the ultimate battle between good and evil. The beast, the ten-headed dragon, the Lamb. And in the end, God wins. That’s the point of Revelation, everything opposed to God’s will one day be judged, so judgement is the path through which we must pass if we are to get back to the Garden of Perfection someday. I know that might not be what we want to hear, especially on Mother’s Day. This should be a day to talk about love and mercy and grace. How can judgement be an act of grace?
Well, let me tell you a story about my mother. When I was four or five years old and my mom took me grocery shopping. I was sitting in the front part of the shopping cart, in that place where kids can sit and we went past the candy shelves. I saw something I wanted, but my mom wouldn’t get it. She said no.
Well, when we go to check out, you know how they line those aisles with all kinds of treats. Lo and behold, there was the candy I wanted. Now I hadn’t clearly formed a concept of Divine Providence, but this certainly felt like God wanted me to have my wish. And this time, it was within reach. So when my mother wasn’t looking I reached out and grabbed it.
On the car ride home, I was sitting in my car seat in the back and I took out the candy and held it up so my mother could see it in the rearview mirror and I said, “Nah, nah, nah na, nah.” Which was not smart on my part.
My mom, to my knowledge had no interest in Nascar, but she whipped a U-turn in a four lane road that would have impressed Richard Petty. I held on wondering what was happening, and when she pulled back into the parking lot of the grocery store I started to get an idea. She parked, took me by a firm hand into the store and called for the manager. She held my hand as he walked up and said to me, “What do you have to tell this man?” I said, “When I got in our car I found this…” Tight squeeze on my hand.” “I said, “I mean I accidentally may have…” An even tighter squeeze on my hand.” I said, “I stole this and I need to give it back.”
Now that was a terrible thing for me to say. The only thing I associated with stealing were bad people. And here I was admitting I stole. It was a realization that I was a worse sinner than I ever dared imagine. But here’s the thing, my mother kept a hold of my hand. She didn’t let go. She didn’t say, “I’m not going to have anything to do with a son who steals.” No, because my mother didn’t think I was a bad person. She loved me. But she wanted me to understand I am someone capable of doing bad things. And only I could choose otherwise. She never let go of my hand.
And as I grew up I came to understand that this is what Jesus does for us. He comes and holds us by the hand and doesn’t let go because we are more loved than we ever dared hope. Even when He leads us to be judged! He does so because He loves us too much to let us hold onto things that do not belong in God’s company. He loves us too much to hold onto the sins that cling so close and can destroy and ruin the gardens of our lives.
Oh, it would have been so easy for my tired, haggard mother, to just say to me in the car, “Well, just promise me you won’t do it again,” but she knew! She knew I well could. I may try to take again an excuse by saying, “The store has plenty. They’ll never notice. After all, it’s not like I’m a bad person.” And I would grow up thinking, “I’m not bad. I’m not like some people. I just cut a corner here and there. I just shade the truth a little.”
And it all comes back to having. The need to have. To have a forbidden candy. To have a forbidden fruit. And if we don’t go back to that first garden we never understand how we can live a whole life worrying only about the need to have and never care two-wits about the have-nots. And even worse, we won’t even see how we contribute to the have-nots, because all we need to know is that I’m not a bad person.
And as painful as it is to face up to that fact that I am a worse sinner than I ever dared imagine, there’s actually hope in that, because we realize there is someone still holding our hand who doesn’t give up on us, who says, AND you are more loved than you dared hope. That’s when we can enter the new garden, because now the fruit of that tree is given to us, we don’t have to get it. We don’t have to grab it for our own. Now we are willing to say, “God I trust you to care for me.”
There is healing in that. Notice what it says about this tree, “And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” (Revelation 22:2) This garden is the hope of the world, because now we realize life is not about having but helping. Life is about seeing everything as gift, and it frees us to work toward that day when everyone knows they are welcomed into that garden.
The other day I went to the Y to exercise. As I walked toward the gym I passed a table where a man was reading to a group of children who come to the Y for after school programming. The man was professional looking. I could tell by his voice he was articulate and sharp. And he was reading to these kids with passion and energy. And those kids listened with rapt attention.
As I walked into the gym I thought, that man could be doing any number of other things right now. Things that could probably be very profitable to himself. But here he is not just reading to kids, but reading to them in such a way as to feel like he would not want to be anywhere else. And you know what he was doing for them? Making them feel like they are worth someone reading to them. That they are people who matter. That their lives count.
That’s what God wants everyone of us to know.
Look at this one other description of the perfect future garden of Revelation. It says,
“They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” (22:4). His name. God’s name. God wants us to know, everyone to know, we are His. To get there, we just need to let Jesus take us before God to have him judge and remove everything that doesn’t belong with God.
And as unwanted as we think judgement is, the truth is we live with judgement all the time. And you know what the toughest judgement is we face? The judgement we give ourselves.
So let me close with this…