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Now there was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
It was all very practical, very straightforward: They needed to bury their friend, and there was a new tomb right there, in the garden, at the foot of the cross.
A garden is a lovely place to lay a friend to rest, even a troubled garden that grows alongside a cross, which is an instrument of execution. And our garden? Our garden is every bit as practical and straightforward as the Easter garden: our garden, the Bolster Garden, is just down here, hugging this building. You can reach it by walking around a lovely rocky hillside covered with lilac and hydrangea and azalea bushes, with day lilies and ferns and rhododendrons. The remains of many dozens of our beloved dead are also resting there.
Now, the Easter garden, the one in Jerusalem, was next to the place where Jesus was crucified, as we just heard. And so our Bolster Garden, in turn, is next to this place, where we gather beneath this carved cross of the Crucified One, this place where we break the fragrant bread in remembrance of the Risen One. And when we break the bread, we recognize the risen Jesus among us, with us, around and between and through us.
Right here, next to this garden.
Today we are laying Tom to rest in our Bolster Garden. And as Lincoln might say, it is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. We are right to lay our beloved friend to rest in this place where death meets life, in this place at once dreadful and beautiful, in this place both heartbreaking and joyful.
For Tom is our friend, and close friends share both joys and sorrows. But also — Tom himself has tended this garden. He would come during dry spells to water the plants. Tom was a regular. And now he will rest beneath the plants he loved, cared for, nurtured. Meanwhile, we will love, care for, and nurture Tom’s remains, and we will care for his happy memory.
We will look for Tom, prayerfully, every time we gather with the Communion of Saints at this table. We will wait for the day when Tom joins us not just at this foretaste, this bite of bread and sip of wine, but at the great mountaintop feast, the feast where we all eat food and drink well-aged wine, and everyone has enough. And while we enjoy that feast together, with Tom in our tangible midst, God will not eat the food or drink the wine: God will swallow up death.
But even then — even at the mountaintop feast on that great gettin’ up morning — even then, I expect Tom will be quiet and kind, modest and receding. In his last days Tom had trouble with crowds of people: they would startle and overwhelm him. But then, don’t we all feel that way, often enough? It makes sense especially now, when the world feels so relentless. A few years ago, on a sitcom that imagined the afterlife, one of the characters described planet Earth in this way: “Earth stinks, y’all. It’s hot and it’s crowded, but also somehow cold and lonely.” Hot and crowded, cold and lonely.
Tom felt that; Tom lived here. Tom knows what it is like here, where our beautiful gardens grow in such a hot and crowded, cold and lonely world. And Tom had an answer for all of that, for all of this. Tom offered a solution to the heat and crowds, a solution to the cold loneliness: Tom taught us to respond to the hard world with the gentle (yet fierce) kindness of a gardener.
“I’m ready,” Tom said to me, with quiet tears, as he sensed he was near the end. “I’m ready.” How could he be ready? I think I know the answer.
Tom the gardener has grappled with life and death, all in the same garden. I am not a gardener but I am married to one: I am more comfortable here in this room where the cross is, while Andrew is more comfortable in God’s garden. But I can readily see, even from here, how gardeners learn the lessons of life and death as they turn the earth in their hands, trim back the lilac, and dead-head the rosebushes.
I can readily understand how Mary Magdalene saw the risen Jesus and mistook him for a gardener: even as the awful wonder of resurrection was confusing and overwhelming her, Mary immediately saw in the risen Jesus a gardener’s wisdom: here is someone who knows about both life and death. Here is someone who bridges life and death. Here is someone through whom life triumphs over death.
Gentle and kind Tom received this gift from God in lavish abundance: Tom knew how to bring life from death, and he knew that because he understood and did not shrink from death. When Tom was lying in great weakness, ailing in that hospital room, and said, “I’m ready,” he was speaking the truth, with authority: This life-dealer whose gardening skill brought so much beauty into the world — this good servant of God knows about gardens… and he knows about the graves that hallow those gardens.
We lay our beloved friend to rest in this garden as the first hints of autumn are quietly appearing. All the dazzling spring blossoms are long gone. The lilac needs trimming. Through the long winter months, for several years now, I have seen Bolster garden descend into death, into sleepy oblivion beneath the grey and drizzle. There is a sad and even holy beauty in our garden during these deathly seasons. And there is always, always the color of forest green. Every November, at All Souls, we all troup down to Bolster Garden to remember all of our beloved dead. This year, on All Soul’s Day, Tom will be fresh in our minds and hearts.
But then, of course, life returns, with dazzling glory. The hydrangeas and rhododendrons throw wild riots of color. The blue spring sky smiles on Bolster Garden again, and we might be tempted to mistake the risen Jesus not for the gardener, but for the whole garden itself.
Tom has taught us to understand this rhythm, these seasons. Tom has trained us to accept the cold drizzle of death alongside the abundant life-giving warmth of the summer sun. Tom is a master of calm acceptance, of creative patience, of quiet observation and skillful caregiving. Tom teaches us what it means when the scriptures tell us that God swallows up death forever.
I want to learn Tom’s ways, our lovely Tom, our good and kind Tom. I want to learn from someone Mary Magdalene would readily see as a master of life and death — she only needs to look into his kind eyes to see that. I want this for us all. I want, for us all, the gift of Thomas Brewer, the gift of a saint of God who looks directly at both death and life and says, with full assurance of God’s promises,
“I’m ready.”
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Preached at the Liturgy of Holy Eucharist with the Rite of Commendation for Thomas Brewer, September 13, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 23
Romans 8:14, 34-35, 37-39
John 19:41-42, 20:11-18