"... Jesus' resurrection is to be seen as the beginning of the new world, the first day of the new week, the unveiling of the prototype of what God is now going to accomplish in the rest of the world. Mary supposes Jesus is the gardener; that's the right mistake to make because, like Adam, he is charged with bringing God's new world to order. He has come to uproot the thorns and thistles and to plant myrtle and cypress instead, as Isaiah promised in his great picture of the new creation that would result from the Word of God coming like rain or snow into the world.
This too has little to do with the resurrection showing that we 'go to heaven when we die' and a great deal to do with the new commission of the disciples to be for the world what Jesus was for Israel: 'As the father sent me,' he says, 'so I send you.' And, as in Luke, the commission is accompanied by the necessary equipment: to be Jesus' agent sin the world, his followers, need, and are given, his own Spirit. Easter and Pentecost belong together. Easter commissions Jesus's followers for a task; Pentecost gives them the necessary equipment to accomplish it" (Surprised by Hope, pp. 238-39)
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