Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them.  Take our minds and think with them.  Take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen

I have two particularly strong memories from my 6th grade year.  Unfortunately both were very sad moments for our nation and our world.  It was 1986 and my favorite band was Duran Duran who had just come out with their hit single Wild Boys—which has nothing to do with what I want to share.  The first memory is of the Space Shuttle, Challenger, exploding.  I wasn’t watching it on TV, but I remember my history teacher entering the room.  Her eyes were filled with tears as she told us about the terrible tragedy.  For weeks following, we watched the explosion each night on the news…not unlike the images of the twin towers collapsing in the weeks and months following 9/11. 

The second difficult memory I have from that year is of the nuclear reactor meltdown in Chernobyl a city in the Ukraine which at the time was a part of the Soviet Union.  Though the Cold War was coming to an end in 1986, there was still a lot of fear in our nation and in our lives about the world coming to a violent end in a catastrophic nuclear war between the West and the Soviet Union.  I remember Sting wrote a popular song at the time that had the chorus, “I hope the Russian’s love their children too.”  Which was silly because of course the Russian’s loved their children too, and they didn’t want war anymore than we did in the West.  Nonetheless, Chernobyl became a living, breathing example of the unimaginable destructive power of nuclear energy—which fed the fears of many in our nation.

Estimates of human fatalities, both direct and indirect, include 41 people in the immediate aftermath to tens of thousands in the years that followed.  It is estimated that five million people were exposed to radiation in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia and that the radiation fallout, the equivalent to 400 Hiroshimas, triggered an epidemic of thyroid cancer that is yet to abate—22 years later.  Doctors believe that thousands of people may have died prematurely. 

Perhaps aptly, they call the 18 mile radius around Chernobyl the “dead zone”—a place where no human being can live to this day because of radiation levels.  This dead zone lives on in popular imagination as a post-apocalyptic wasteland irreparably poisoned by radiation.  It is a corner of Europe associated with death and alarming stories of genetic mutation—a post-nuclear badland.  For many, Chernobyl was and remains a sign and symbol of human imperfection and human mortality—truly a dead zone—a place with no life, no hope, no future. 

Perhaps in some small way you have had a time in your life that felt like you were in a dead zone—a place with no life, no hope, no future.  Perhaps it was when you lost a loved one; or maybe you made a poor decision that has had lasting implications; or perhaps you experienced crippling abuse by another person; or maybe you performed so poorly in school or at work that you feel you simply can’t overcome it.  Our lives can, at times, feel like a wasteland irreparably poisoned by our own weakness, or the thoughtlessness of others, or the loss of something or someone we believe we can’t live without.   

Certainly the disciples felt like they were in a dead zone—a place with no life, no hope, no future—as the events of Holy Week came to their dramatic and unexpected conclusion.  To begin with, they watched their friend and teacher, Jesus, be betrayed into the hands of those who would have him dead by one of their closest friends—ironically using a sign of love—a kiss.  Then Jesus who they had grown to love and respect in the most intimate of ways is falsely accused of lies and blaspheming God by their own respected religious leadership.  And still worse, they witnessed these very same “Men of God” turn their beloved friend over to their despised Roman occupier to be judged, mocked, and brutally beaten. 

And finally the worst of all possible conclusions, they watched the man, who preached love and life to all people, be painfully and violently killed by being nailed to a cross—the most excruciating form of death the inventive Romans could devise.  And what was the charge levied against Jesus that made him deserving of such a death—traitor to his own people—a people he had cared for, healed, and offered hope and life in abundance.  And now—because of their intimate connection to him—the disciples, these friends of Jesus’, very own lives are threatened.  Certainly Jesus’ followers must have felt like they were in a dead zone—a place with no life, no hope, no future.

And yet here in the midst of what must have felt like the most hopeless of situations, the Gospel of John makes the most curious comment—a little fact that could be easily overlooked.  Just before our Easter gospel that we heard read a moment ago, John writes, “Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had been laid…And so…they laid Jesus there.”  A garden—the place where Jesus was crucified and buried was a garden. 

If you or I were to visit Chernobyl today we would discover something profoundly different than the image I described that looms so large in popular imagination.  In fact, what we would discover is an enormous garden that is teeming with life.  Radiation levels remain too high for human habitation, but the abandoned towns are filled with birdsong and the gurgling of streams forged by melting snow.  Nobody, even the best scientific minds, thought this resurrection could be possible at the time of the meltdown, but 20 years later Chernobyl’s radiation-soaked “dead zone” is not looking so dead after all.  The area's flora and fauna has radically flourished.  The area is full of wildlife including elk, wild horses, boars, wolves, beavers, foxes, lynxes, and bunny rabbits.  The area is estimated to be home to 280 species of birds, many of them rare and endangered.  One local says, “The sight of wild horses here is moving.  I saw a wolf in broad daylight once, and the bird-watching is excellent.”  Life has resurrected from the ashes of an unimaginable zone of death and destruction.

Three days after Jesus was crucified and buried Mary Magdalene, a dear friend of Jesus’, once again enters the garden.  There she discovers two things.  The first is incredibly upsetting.  After all the indignities that Jesus suffered just days before, perhaps the worst has now occurred.  Jesus’ body has apparently been stolen and Mary is frantic.  It must have seemed that there was to be no end to their suffering.  Why has the body been taken?  To be desecrated?  To be sure that Jesus’ followers would have nowhere to go to morn their loss?  Imagine if you went to a funeral home to pay respects to a deceased loved one only to discover that the body has been lost or stolen—imagine it.  

Now what she stumbles upon next is actually quite expected in a garden.  Mary runs into a gardener—makes sense.  Mary, in tears after her upsetting discovery, cries out to the gardener, “Sir, if you have carried him away tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”  She is hoping against hope.  Perhaps the gardener has moved the body to clean the tomb or something like that.  And then Mary hears what must have been the sweetest sound, her name, flowing not from the lips of a gardener but Jesus.  He is not dead.  He is alive.  He is risen.  She knows that voice just as certainly as we would know the voice of our own mother or father calling out our name.  Life has resurrected from the ashes of an unimaginable zone of death and destruction. 

What in your life feels like a dead zone—a place with no life, no hope, no future?  What mistake have you made that you feel you can’t undo?  What abuse have you suffered that you believe can never be healed?  What or who have you lost that you believe you can’t live without?  The promise of Easter is that life is always resurrected from the ashes of human sin, disease, and death.  We see this lived out in God’s creation in places like Chernobyl.  We see this in human beings when people whose lives look much like a wasteland are transformed into a vibrant garden that bears the fruit of love and service in the world.  We are in a garden right now literally.  And if you can just look around with the eyes of your heart you will see that God has placed and planted each of us in a spiritual garden—one in which new life is always budding—one in which dead zones are being resurrected into living sanctuaries full of birdsong and gurgling streams and human life, our life, full of hope for a future that is unimaginably beautiful and forever.  Amen.

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