#303 - Jesus is The Gardener - An Easter Sunday Sermon - 2026

Full sermon notes can be downloaded here -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1btRUz5unWJYOdFd2ztbOrUn0LzIiP-XF/view?usp=share_link

She thought He was the gardener. She was more right than she knew.

In this Easter Sunday message from John 20:1–18, Pastor Brian Overturf traces one of the most overlooked details in the resurrection account — Mary Magdalene mistaking the risen Christ for the gardener — and shows why that moment is not a mistake at all. He IS the gardener. The second Adam, come back to tend what was broken in the first garden.

To understand Easter, you have to go back to Genesis 3. Because John 20 is not the beginning of this story. It is the conclusion of one that started thousands of years before the first Easter morning. The Bible opens in a garden. It closes in a garden. And in the middle, in another garden, the price is paid to bring us back to God.

This message walks through three movements: the garden where we lost everything, the garden where He took our place, and the garden where it is all restored. Along the way we look at John's gospel as a deliberate retelling of Genesis, the cast of characters assembled in both the garden of Genesis 3 and the garden of Gethsemane, the staggering significance of the Feast of Firstfruits and the timing of the resurrection, and the moment Jesus speaks one word, a name, that shatters grief and changes everything.

He called her name. He is calling yours.