In the Garden // Rev. Matt Kennedy // Apr 20 2025

There is a phrase we often use when tragedy strikes. Whether it's suffering an injustice, grieving a death, or experiencing a betrayal; I will often hear a person describe the feeling this way, "my world fell apart." It's an apt phrase. We live our lives with a certain set of expectations that the world should work with a certain amount of order. We count on a certain amount of predictability. Work hard, get paid. Early to bed, early to rise. But then comes the things that break predictability: diagnosis, downsizing, displacement, divorce, death. In these moments, the world stops making sense. On the beginning of pages of the Bible we read of a world taken from chaos and made orderly (Genesis 1:1-2:25). In the subsequent chapters, we read of that orderly world confused by sin (Genesis 3-11). In the volumes following that, the Bible tells a story of God's redemption of a world of chaos and sin that climaxes in the strangest and greatest of stories: God lovingly enters the chaos, endures its sufferings, and emerges from death's grip with a new life and order to bring to creation (John 20:1-21). The story of Easter is more than just an amazing trick performed long ago. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is a look into the meaning of existence. It is a way to understand life's tragedies in the light of God's life-giving love. When we take this story to heart and put faith in its promise, it turns wild wastelands into fertile fields. It brings order to chaos. It makes graves into gardens. Believing this good news is the start to putting our world back together again.