St. Peter’s gardens
From "God’s Garden" by Dorothy Frances Blomfield Gurney (1858-1932)
We asked people to submit pictures of their gardens recently. The truth is that people love to share the products of their gardens with others – flowers and fruit. What do these gardens look like ? Why are people so passionate about them ?
Gardens
1. Combined gardens from Catherine, Elizabeth, Eunice and Terri
2. Garden from Alex and Nancy Long
4. Garden from Cookie and Johnny.
Gardens are another example of our community together. They bring people together over the produce, flowers and beauty they create. They bring people together in the process it takes to bring them into fulfillment. They bring people together even talking about the critters that take from our gardens. Beyond that it is a sense of wonder and amazement how seeds you can put in your hand grow to be fruits and flowers.
Gardens figure prominently in the Bible. Gardens were prevalent during Bible History, when they were often enclosed within a wall of earth or stone, or a hedge, and guarded by a watchman as protection against animals and thieves.
Frequently used as places of worship and prayer (by the righteous, and by pagans), gardens were also used as a spiritual analogy for God’s blessings upon believers, or for the unbeliever’s fruitlessness. Gardens were sometimes used as burial places, a somewhat appropriate irony, since the dead are like sown seeds with the potential of new life e.g. "Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!"
They can be sorted out in four functions and related to a Bible verse:
1. Symbolic of Paradise – Genesis
"And The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground The Lord God made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." (Genesis 2:8-9)
2. Producers of Fruits and Vegetables
"Now Naboth the Jezreelite had a vineyard in Jezreel, beside the palace of Ahab king of Samaria. And after this Ahab said to Naboth, "Give me your vineyard, that I may have it for a vegetable garden, because it is near my house; and I will give you a better vineyard for it; or, if it seems good to you, I will give you its value in money." (1 Kings 21:1-2 RSV)
More than 125 plants, trees and herbs are noted in scriptures. Here is a Biblical garden planted at St. John the Divine in NY
3. Spiritual. Use of gardens as a metaphor
"Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the Law of The Lord, and on His Law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water, that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers." (Psalm 1:1-3)
One of the famous metaphor is the use of the vines. The parable of the wicked tenants, found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is based on the Song of the Vineyard in Isa 5:1-7. Isaiah vineyard is about the grace of God. His people are unresponsive, selfindulgent, reckless, perverted. The owner has been gracious.
An extended use of gardens is throughout the Gospel of John. John recreates the Garden of Eden. The garden is symbolic of the new faith spreading through the Mediterranean. The garden welcomes people rather than casting them out. John wants to emphasize that the Christ’s power and authority originate from a divinity based in wisdom and love—a difference that must have startled his readers
Gardens represent places of perpetual death and resurrection. Living things die, or appear to, just as living things are reborn, or seem to be. The future of its dying is held by the living plant, and the fallow ground holds the seeds and power of rebirth.
John moves from one garden to another. Jesus is arrested in a garden ( no reference to the Mount of Olives, or to Gethsemane). John’s Passion account next moves to the courtyard of Annas, a former high priest and the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the current high priest. "A courtyard" is a garden metaphor
4. Burial
"After this Joseph Of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him leave. So he came and took away His body. Nicodemus also, who had at first come to Him by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pounds’ weight. They took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb where no one had ever been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, as the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there." (John 19:38-42)
Finally, Jesus appears to Mary in a garden near the tomb She begged him to tell her where Jesus’s body had been taken. The gardener then called out, "Mary!" Recognizing him as Jesus, Mary responded, "Rabbouni! ("My teacher").
The other three gospels make no mention of a garden at the burial site, the two angels, nor the actual appearance of Jesus at the tomb itself. Grief-stricken Mary, in a fresh, living garden (symbolic of Eden) looked into the opened tomb where she beheld two angels centered over empty space.
Centuries prior, the Great Temple of Jerusalem was specifically constructed and sited so that everyone who entered it would have an inner and symbolic reentry into the Garden of Eden. Its main gate faced east to the rising sun—the same direction as the entrance to the ancient garden of Hebrew scripture. By continuing into the heart of the Temple, one reached the Holy of Holies, the Inner Sanctuary, where images of palm trees and flowers covered the walls
Two immense sculptures of cherubim (angels)—a reminder of the two angels who guarded the entrance to Paradise—arched over the heart of the room, protecting the Ark of the Covenant, the most sacred relic of the faith, containing Moses’s tablets and pieces of manna from the arid desert where the Jews had suffered for so long.
John’s Jewish readers are now offered a consummate vision of a new garden. Here at Golgotha, exquisitely timed just before the sun rose in the east, John has matched each gospel image with all the historical Jewish symbols. Grief-stricken Mary, in a fresh, living garden, symbolic of Eden looked into the opened tomb where she beheld two angels centered over empty space. John has constructed a metaphorical Holy of Holies.