Consolation and Rupture – Nick Utphall reflects on the Easter Gospels
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for Resurrection of Our Lord / Easter Day, Year A (2026)
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10 / John 20:1-18
If Easter and Jesus’ resurrection show us much of anything, it must at least include that God cares about this world, about life here, about what God has made. After all, the “afterlife” for Jesus didn’t involve some disembodied soul flying away to another spiritual realm, abandoning what we physically know and experience. Certainly God could’ve done it that way. But God didn’t! Instead Jesus showed back up among us in his body, in a (mostly) recognizable form. That tells us something about God, and therefore also about us. What we do with or expect from it might be a good thing to ponder.
Although the lectionary reading from Colossians tries to give an instruction not to set our minds on “things that are on the earth,” the fact that we actually should be considering the resurrection precludes us from letting flights of fancy flit us away to some unearthly realm. Rather, it must mean we’re reconsidering what heaven’s engagement with our earth means now. (And earlier in the letter, Colossians 1:15-20 is one of the key sources for understanding the Cosmic Christ who redeems and reconciles “all things, whether on earth or in heaven”.)
If you were seeking a small example of Easter’s meaning interacting with our earthly existence, there’s Peter’s connection with creatures. In the vision just before the lectionary passage in Acts 10 that prompted Peter’s cross-cultural exchange with Cornelius and his household, Peter was told three times that no animals were unclean. Granted, this was about eating the animals. But, still, it’s a confirmation that God doesn’t disregard any animals or any of the created order as worth less or precluded from human interactions. It’s all good, in God’s vision!
More to the fuller meaning of this festival of the resurrection, in many of our congregations, with the ancient ecumenical creeds, we weekly confess that we believe in the resurrection of the body (along with proclaiming belief in the Creator). We don’t just say immortal soul or eternal spirit. We join the congregation of those who believe Jesus was raised in the flesh, and that we will be, too. These bodies and this existence matter for what God is ultimately doing.
Given that background, a first task for the Caring for Creation preacher (or reflector) might be choosing which version of the Gospel matters this year. In the lectionary, there is an option for the Easter story from the Gospel of Matthew and an alternate from the Gospel of John. What is important to know and consider about these accounts of Jesus’ resurrection for us right now?
John may be the more serene, comforting version, if that’s what you prefer or need. In John, Jesus is thought to be a gardener. Of course, what seemed like mistaken identity is actually an ironic actual identification for the Word, through whom all things came into being (John 1:2)! God in Jesus wasn’t just tending the landscape in one local graveyard or memorial garden, but was continuing to be the Gardener of all lands, seas, and skies and was responsible for all things that exist.
As this Gardener Jesus appears in the Gospel of John, his most notable actions are comforting and sending. He eases Mary Magdalene’s weeping, and then commissions her to share good news.
This season, you may be feeling the need for comfort in the midst of catastrophe, for assurance that wipes away tears. That may relate to wars and violence and injustice among humans, to cancelled regulations of environmental safeguards, to legal impediments, to renewable energy, and to weird weather that has become too normal. Those real tears need to be consoled, for ourselves or as we are sent with compassion to others who are stuck in grief and lament.
With the identification of Jesus the Gardener, John also emphasizes the tomb located in the garden. It seems designed to recollect the Garden of Eden early in Genesis. In that case, there may be something idyllic in Easter and resurrection, indicating a return not only to our original relationship with God, but also connected to the goodness and beneficence of our surroundings.
Although Scripture never suggests simply a return to something primordial, as if intervening history were irrelevant, you might still ponder what a re-connection to the garden goodness looks like. If life begins again in a garden, where is it that we strive not just to cultivate, but also where we can notice the harmony and goodness around us from which we’d gotten separated? In some colder northern climates, returning to relationship after separation is an easy practice to engage as spring arrives and some people aren’t shut up indoors quite as much. Some will, indeed, be cultivating their gardens.
This noticing could also involve phenology. If you don’t know the term, phenology is a word that basically means the study of phenomena. It’s a record of what happens at certain times or seasons in your area. It’s when plants begin to sprout or bloom, when migrating birds return, when animals are mating.
In a first way, phenological records are a very attuned attention to the rhythms that exist around you, the life of the garden in which you are dwelling. That could be a celebration simply by noticing what is happening around you right now. (Journey North originated around the migration of monarch butterflies and has expanded to include citizen scientists marking various details of seasons, and you can share your own observations.)
In another way, attention to historical patterns in your environment may also serve as an alarm about what is out of whack, where a changing climate is altering patterns that have long-existed: the ticks and mosquitoes arrive earlier. The insects swarm before the baby birds or fish hatch to eat them. A sweep of cold or heat may knock out plants that aren’t resilient enough yet. Precipitation swings may affect gardens and fields.
In either of these cases—ongoing seasonal characteristics to be observed, or the disruptions—there’s room for Jesus’ commission of Mary in John 20:17 to go and tell the others. You could share about the life of the garden around you and what is happening to delight in, or what is failing and is disconnecting us from the garden and the Gardener. And then you may find comfort in the one who has a bigger promise that asks why we are weeping. Proclaiming Easter life from the Gospel of John this year may be about wiping tears, comforting, returning to what has not apparently been our current reality.
But if you are feeling more of the disruptions and longing for something different, the alternative lectionary reading from the Gospel of Matthew seems not at all connected to our normal rhythms, but a profound disconnect and reorientation. There it is not a placid garden and Gardener, not a consolation of crying, but jarring newness. The account for Good Friday already included a destabilizing, strange detail about the dead coming out of their graves (27:52-53). It saw already something radically unlike what we’ve known.
For this Easter Day, it may be that Matthew’s most unique detail is the earthquake, causing the stone at the tomb to be rolled aside. Even now with modern seismographic equipment and computer modeling, earthquakes and the movement of tectonic plates may be anticipated and yet remain practically unpredictable. And this tumultuous landscape can raise for our Easter moment the question of where seismic shifts are happening and the whole tectonic landscape that seemed solid may suddenly move under our feet.
Perhaps you see in this moment not the comforting continuity or disquieting deformity of our relation to the natural world, but instead sense a break that contributes to the emerging possibilities. Maybe it’s the unexpected resistance to data centers and their massive energy usage—themselves unforeseen a short while ago, then predicted to be inevitable. It might be in the efforts that prevented another creature of God’s from being added to that extinction list, by regional efforts like dam removal turned to preservation when all had seemed lost. Or it could be some response to a local environmental catastrophe—a storm or disaster—that showed your community had new life emerging where only death, destruction, and despair would’ve been expected.
Though through human instinct and the nature of the news we often get subsumed into the bleak version of what is going wrong, we should attend to the earthquakes and ruptures that alter our pre-existing landscape and give a hopeful perspective on what may be. There is life that is surprisingly appearing where we’d anticipated only death. Indeed, the earthquake in Matthew’s Gospel wasn’t at all about calamity, but the sort of action that rolled away impossible stones to release new life into our world, and hope for what may come to be.
For an even more unimaginable promise of the radical newness that holds our hope in resurrection, we could look where things seem not just at risk but actually expired. My own congregation on Easter annually names several species that have become extinct. Since Easter 2025, that list of extinct creatures was updated to include the slender-billed curlew, the south-eastern striped bandicoot, a cone snail, a plant indigenous to a habitat in Hawaii, and more. It’s a reminder that the promise of the resurrection must be big enough for all of God’s garden, especially when there’s nothing like the meager hope of a next generation persisting through a few genetic specimens.
Reflecting what we already know, the ancestors of any animals who have gone before, and the hope of what may grow again forever, here is a meditation:
I have an appeal to make, Great Spirit, On behalf of all who will join me: Please let heaven be somewhere wild and wonderful, Not tame, not easy But a place without fences, A land with mysteries to discover.
Once we pass the threshold of time, please, Spirit Do not let us find a reality padded by comfort, But an open space, a free space Stretching out in prairies and sky, Desert mesas and ancient forests Wide blue seas and strong winds To chase the clouds around.
Let us share this wild world with creatures as alive as us The flyers and swimmers and runners and climbers, Our spirit siblings, Our teachers and guides.
Let us join our ancestors In a place of earth and rain, of dawn and dusk Of waterfall and canyon, So we may live where things can be planted Take root, and grow again, forever.
(Steven Charleston, Spirit Wheel: Meditations of an Indigenous Elder. Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p194)
In all of this, how in “fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8) can we cling to the assurance of the Easter promise that repeatedly invites us to “be not afraid”? That is the congruent message, regardless which Gospel reading is your focus. We can engage our world fearlessly! For all the dread that seems apparent and weighty—particularly for those focused on caring for creation—perhaps the renewal of hope rather than despair is already enough and means Easter shows us much.
Resurrection of Our Lord in Year A (Utphall26)
Consolation and Rupture – Nick Utphall reflects on the Easter Gospels
Care for Creation Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary
Readings for Resurrection of Our Lord / Easter Day, Year A (2026)
Acts 10:34-43
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
Colossians 3:1-4
Matthew 28:1-10 / John 20:1-18
If Easter and Jesus’ resurrection show us much of anything, it must at least include that God cares about this world, about life here, about what God has made. After all, the “afterlife” for Jesus didn’t involve some disembodied soul flying away to another spiritual realm, abandoning what we physically know and experience. Certainly God could’ve done it that way. But God didn’t! Instead Jesus showed back up among us in his body, in a (mostly) recognizable form. That tells us something about God, and therefore also about us. What we do with or expect from it might be a good thing to ponder.
Although the lectionary reading from Colossians tries to give an instruction not to set our minds on “things that are on the earth,” the fact that we actually should be considering the resurrection precludes us from letting flights of fancy flit us away to some unearthly realm. Rather, it must mean we’re reconsidering what heaven’s engagement with our earth means now. (And earlier in the letter, Colossians 1:15-20 is one of the key sources for understanding the Cosmic Christ who redeems and reconciles “all things, whether on earth or in heaven”.)
If you were seeking a small example of Easter’s meaning interacting with our earthly existence, there’s Peter’s connection with creatures. In the vision just before the lectionary passage in Acts 10 that prompted Peter’s cross-cultural exchange with Cornelius and his household, Peter was told three times that no animals were unclean. Granted, this was about eating the animals. But, still, it’s a confirmation that God doesn’t disregard any animals or any of the created order as worth less or precluded from human interactions. It’s all good, in God’s vision!
More to the fuller meaning of this festival of the resurrection, in many of our congregations, with the ancient ecumenical creeds, we weekly confess that we believe in the resurrection of the body (along with proclaiming belief in the Creator). We don’t just say immortal soul or eternal spirit. We join the congregation of those who believe Jesus was raised in the flesh, and that we will be, too. These bodies and this existence matter for what God is ultimately doing.
Given that background, a first task for the Caring for Creation preacher (or reflector) might be choosing which version of the Gospel matters this year. In the lectionary, there is an option for the Easter story from the Gospel of Matthew and an alternate from the Gospel of John. What is important to know and consider about these accounts of Jesus’ resurrection for us right now?
John may be the more serene, comforting version, if that’s what you prefer or need. In John, Jesus is thought to be a gardener. Of course, what seemed like mistaken identity is actually an ironic actual identification for the Word, through whom all things came into being (John 1:2)! God in Jesus wasn’t just tending the landscape in one local graveyard or memorial garden, but was continuing to be the Gardener of all lands, seas, and skies and was responsible for all things that exist.
As this Gardener Jesus appears in the Gospel of John, his most notable actions are comforting and sending. He eases Mary Magdalene’s weeping, and then commissions her to share good news.
This season, you may be feeling the need for comfort in the midst of catastrophe, for assurance that wipes away tears. That may relate to wars and violence and injustice among humans, to cancelled regulations of environmental safeguards, to legal impediments, to renewable energy, and to weird weather that has become too normal. Those real tears need to be consoled, for ourselves or as we are sent with compassion to others who are stuck in grief and lament.
With the identification of Jesus the Gardener, John also emphasizes the tomb located in the garden. It seems designed to recollect the Garden of Eden early in Genesis. In that case, there may be something idyllic in Easter and resurrection, indicating a return not only to our original relationship with God, but also connected to the goodness and beneficence of our surroundings.
Although Scripture never suggests simply a return to something primordial, as if intervening history were irrelevant, you might still ponder what a re-connection to the garden goodness looks like. If life begins again in a garden, where is it that we strive not just to cultivate, but also where we can notice the harmony and goodness around us from which we’d gotten separated? In some colder northern climates, returning to relationship after separation is an easy practice to engage as spring arrives and some people aren’t shut up indoors quite as much. Some will, indeed, be cultivating their gardens.
This noticing could also involve phenology. If you don’t know the term, phenology is a word that basically means the study of phenomena. It’s a record of what happens at certain times or seasons in your area. It’s when plants begin to sprout or bloom, when migrating birds return, when animals are mating.
In a first way, phenological records are a very attuned attention to the rhythms that exist around you, the life of the garden in which you are dwelling. That could be a celebration simply by noticing what is happening around you right now. (Journey North originated around the migration of monarch butterflies and has expanded to include citizen scientists marking various details of seasons, and you can share your own observations.)
In another way, attention to historical patterns in your environment may also serve as an alarm about what is out of whack, where a changing climate is altering patterns that have long-existed: the ticks and mosquitoes arrive earlier. The insects swarm before the baby birds or fish hatch to eat them. A sweep of cold or heat may knock out plants that aren’t resilient enough yet. Precipitation swings may affect gardens and fields.
In either of these cases—ongoing seasonal characteristics to be observed, or the disruptions—there’s room for Jesus’ commission of Mary in John 20:17 to go and tell the others. You could share about the life of the garden around you and what is happening to delight in, or what is failing and is disconnecting us from the garden and the Gardener. And then you may find comfort in the one who has a bigger promise that asks why we are weeping. Proclaiming Easter life from the Gospel of John this year may be about wiping tears, comforting, returning to what has not apparently been our current reality.
But if you are feeling more of the disruptions and longing for something different, the alternative lectionary reading from the Gospel of Matthew seems not at all connected to our normal rhythms, but a profound disconnect and reorientation. There it is not a placid garden and Gardener, not a consolation of crying, but jarring newness. The account for Good Friday already included a destabilizing, strange detail about the dead coming out of their graves (27:52-53). It saw already something radically unlike what we’ve known.
For this Easter Day, it may be that Matthew’s most unique detail is the earthquake, causing the stone at the tomb to be rolled aside. Even now with modern seismographic equipment and computer modeling, earthquakes and the movement of tectonic plates may be anticipated and yet remain practically unpredictable. And this tumultuous landscape can raise for our Easter moment the question of where seismic shifts are happening and the whole tectonic landscape that seemed solid may suddenly move under our feet.
Perhaps you see in this moment not the comforting continuity or disquieting deformity of our relation to the natural world, but instead sense a break that contributes to the emerging possibilities. Maybe it’s the unexpected resistance to data centers and their massive energy usage—themselves unforeseen a short while ago, then predicted to be inevitable. It might be in the efforts that prevented another creature of God’s from being added to that extinction list, by regional efforts like dam removal turned to preservation when all had seemed lost. Or it could be some response to a local environmental catastrophe—a storm or disaster—that showed your community had new life emerging where only death, destruction, and despair would’ve been expected.
Though through human instinct and the nature of the news we often get subsumed into the bleak version of what is going wrong, we should attend to the earthquakes and ruptures that alter our pre-existing landscape and give a hopeful perspective on what may be. There is life that is surprisingly appearing where we’d anticipated only death. Indeed, the earthquake in Matthew’s Gospel wasn’t at all about calamity, but the sort of action that rolled away impossible stones to release new life into our world, and hope for what may come to be.
For an even more unimaginable promise of the radical newness that holds our hope in resurrection, we could look where things seem not just at risk but actually expired. My own congregation on Easter annually names several species that have become extinct. Since Easter 2025, that list of extinct creatures was updated to include the slender-billed curlew, the south-eastern striped bandicoot, a cone snail, a plant indigenous to a habitat in Hawaii, and more. It’s a reminder that the promise of the resurrection must be big enough for all of God’s garden, especially when there’s nothing like the meager hope of a next generation persisting through a few genetic specimens.
Reflecting what we already know, the ancestors of any animals who have gone before, and the hope of what may grow again forever, here is a meditation:
I have an appeal to make, Great Spirit,
On behalf of all who will join me:
Please let heaven be somewhere wild and wonderful,
Not tame, not easy
But a place without fences,
A land with mysteries to discover.
Once we pass the threshold of time, please, Spirit
Do not let us find a reality padded by comfort,
But an open space, a free space
Stretching out in prairies and sky,
Desert mesas and ancient forests
Wide blue seas and strong winds
To chase the clouds around.
Let us share this wild world with creatures as alive as us
The flyers and swimmers and runners and climbers,
Our spirit siblings,
Our teachers and guides.
Let us join our ancestors
In a place of earth and rain, of dawn and dusk
Of waterfall and canyon,
So we may live where things can be planted
Take root, and grow again, forever.
(Steven Charleston, Spirit Wheel: Meditations of an Indigenous Elder. Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2023, p194)
In all of this, how in “fear and great joy” (Matthew 28:8) can we cling to the assurance of the Easter promise that repeatedly invites us to “be not afraid”? That is the congruent message, regardless which Gospel reading is your focus. We can engage our world fearlessly! For all the dread that seems apparent and weighty—particularly for those focused on caring for creation—perhaps the renewal of hope rather than despair is already enough and means Easter shows us much.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
Originally written by Nick Utphall in 2026.
nick@theMCC.net
https://utphall.wordpress.com/
The author recommends the following image for use where possible:
Jesus the Good Gardener, Wlodzimierz Kohut (Polish), 2015
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