from Sabbath to New Eden

It is Holy Saturday, the seventh day of this long and fraught week. On this day in Genesis 2, after the creation of the world, the Creator rested.

On this day 2,000 years ago he rested again in the sleep of death—yes, once again, after a work of creation. Just not the one anyone was expecting.

After the pattern of Sabbath is marked out in Genesis 2, a second account of the creation of the world begins:

Then Adonai, God, formed a person from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so that he became a living being. Adonai, God, planted a garden toward the east, in Eden, and there he put the person whom he had formed. Out of the ground Adonai, God, caused to grow every tree pleasing in appearance and good for food, including the tree of life in the middle of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

A river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it divided into four streams. The name of the first is Pishon; it winds throughout the land of Havilah, where there is gold. The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx stone are also found there. The name of the second river is Gichon; it winds throughout the land of Kush. The name of the third river is Tigris; it is the one that flows toward the east of Ashur. The fourth river is the Euphrates.

Adonai, God, took the person and put him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and care for it. Adonai, God, gave the person this order: “You may freely eat from every tree in the garden except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You are not to eat from it, because on the day that you eat from it, it will become certain that you will die.”

— Genesis 2:7-17, CJB

I’ve spent a great deal of time in the Garden of Eden over the last six weeks: the garden where God began his kingdom project, where he made sacred space to dwell, where he placed his first self-likeness to represent him and co-rule with him. It was a place of abundance, blessing, and gift; a place of rest, riches, and promise. Even the perfection within the garden’s borders was meant to spread beyond, and we are tantalized with the descriptions of Havilah, Kush, and Ashur, the mysterious lands where life-giving rivers meander and wind. The Kingdom was always intended to expand.

Daily we are reminded how far the image-bearers fell short of their holy vocation. There are sicknesses, deaths, homeless encampments, abused children, wars, autocrats, billionaires, slave laborers, and people who are starving. Instead of growing outward in glorious partnership between God and human as they explored and tamed and cultivated the wild lands of gold and gemstone, the borders of the garden named “Delight” (‘Eden) and the gate leading to the Tree of Life were closed by cherub and flaming sword. The human, having willfully broken communion with the Creator, was not to be allowed back in—banished, instead, to a wilderness now poisoned with death because of his sin.

In Holy Week we are drawn back into garden spaces: First, to the garden named “Olive Press” (Gethesemane) where the Messiah was wrung out in prayer, crushed under the anticipation of his fate, and betrayed. And then, after Jesus drank the cup of death, to an unnamed garden mentioned only by St. John:

Now there was a garden in the place where Jesus was crucified, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. And because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and the tomb was nearby, they placed Jesus there.

— John 19:41-42

Jesus was crucified—hung on a tree of death, to put it plainly—in a garden.

And in a garden like the place Adam was made the first (doomed) image of God, Jesus—the true and perfect Image, the Son of Man—was laid to Sabbath rest, barricaded by stone and guard, and for an instant the cosmic enemy rejoiced that his Genesis 3 plan to overthrow Creation had succeeded.

Adam, and any hope left for Adam’s heirs to return to the Garden of Eden, was destroyed.

Until.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. . . . Mary stood outside the tomb weeping. And as she wept, she bent down to look into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and the other at the feet. “Woman, why are you weeping?” they asked. “Because they have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I do not know where they have put Him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there. But she did not recognize that it was Jesus. “Woman, why are you weeping?” Jesus asked. “Whom are you seeking?” Thinking He was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried Him off, tell me where you have put Him, and I will get Him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). “Do not cling to Me,” Jesus said, “for I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go and tell My brothers, ‘I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God.’”

— John 20:1, 11-17

If Genesis 1-3 is the beginning of Creation, John 20 is the beginning of New Creation. We are not in Eden anymore; it is no longer Sabbath, but rather the “first day of the week” in another kind of garden. Adam is long dead, but the New Adam is alive. The stone is rolled away! The flaming sword that rendered impassable the path back to God’s presence has been utterly removed by the Son of Man, the only Image worthy of walking straight through it. He who hung accursed on the tree of death has become the fruit of the Tree of Life.

And the first person to meet him in New Creation history is Mary of Magdala—who, initially, supposes him to be the gardener.

I love that detail. She’s not wrong. Mary of Magdala may not realize it until she hears him say her name, but she is the new Eve in the new Eden meeting the original Gardener of the original Eden and the New Adam of the New Creation at the same time. She is our very first glimpse of the Church, the Bride.

And she is the first to expand the borders of this new Eden out into the wilds beyond.

Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them what He had said to her.

— John 20:18

If we remember anything this Resurrection Day, let it be that our Bridegroom is alive, and we live in New Creation now. Our life’s work is to push the borders of his Kingdom outward, not by winning battles in the old way—fighting, arguing, going to war, trying to out-gun or out-snark those we see as “God’s enemies”—but by participating in the Grand Reversal of Christ’s example.

He came on a donkey, not a war horse. There is no place for violence in this kingdom.

He was lifted up on a cross, not a throne. There is no place for pride in this kingdom.

He was crowned with thorns, not gold and jewels. There is no place for greed in this kingdom.

He entrusted the Gospel first to a woman. There is no place for sexism in this kingdom.

He expands his borders by cultivating gardens and hosting banquets. There is no place for war in this kingdom.

Tomorrow, we awaken as members of a new family and citizens of a new nation. We awaken as children who share a Father with Jesus, as royal priests in a new kind of temple, bearing God’s image and God’s sacred presence within ourselves. We awaken on the first day of the week to a world entirely remade.

Thanks be to God!

spring will come again

The garden is drifting to sleep.

Sheets of cold dew and coverlets of mist wrap around the still-green foliage. Patches of yellowing and mildew form like age spots on the leaves, reminders of a life-cycle coming to its end, and despite their weakening stems and the disappearing daylight the dahlias keep thrusting forth buds. It is a silent form of “rage against the dying of the light,” but a rage all the same—a refusal to go submissively to winter’s sleep.

First frost looms in the shadows like the Angel of Death. His cold touch will instantly and irrevocably turn the green of life to the black of mourning.

But even the Angel of Death can only kill the body. The soul—the nephesh, the life-conduit—is cradled safely in the hidden place, waiting for resurrection. The roots and seeds lay at peace in the earth, waiting for spring.

We might think of death-and-resurrection as a pattern started by Jesus, but it has been with us since God first divided light from darkness and set the times and seasons into motion. Day gives way to night and then dawns again. A full moon wanes until it disappears in shadow, and then waxes again. Growing-time becomes harvest-time becomes dormant-time before everything wakes up to grow anew.

The ceaseless liturgy of the created order mirrors the life, death, and life-again cycle—a cycle that first-fruits in Jesus, yes, but is sketched and hinted from Genesis 2, when the First Adam falls into a “deep sleep” to be awakened into a new Adam-and-Eve humanity, and is brought to fullness in Revelation 21 when the Last Eve—the Church, including all the saints and martyrs who have died from her inception—descends from heaven as the glorified Bride, the New Jerusalem.

In that day, death will be such a forgotten enemy from our long-ago past that we’ll no longer need reminders in the form of daily, monthly, or yearly “little deaths.” There will be no night there, no daily sleep of unconsciousness to remind us that our bodies will soon enough sleep with our fathers. We will have no need of sun or moon, for God’s light will shine perpetually, everlasting as our lives. The tree of life will yield its fruit every month; there is no winter, no season of dormancy, no Angel of Death to bring frost, only a better-than-Eden flourishing that is both endlessly productive and endlessly restful, somehow.

This is the hope I find in the garden drifting to sleep: not that I relish in small deaths, not that I won’t profoundly miss my flowers, but that for now it’s an irrefutable reminder that God is trustworthy and faithful. As I have no doubt that the sun will rise after tonight’s small death of night, or that the spring will come after this year’s small death of winter, or that the plants destroyed by frost will grow again next spring, I need have no doubt that my own mortal body is safe in the hands of the One who wove death-and-resurrection into every thread of Creation.

Paul wrote that “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (1 Corinthians 15:26), but the destruction of death is one of the very first things written into the ordering of the universe. It has not yet come, but it is coming. From even before death was a threat to the Garden-dwellers its destiny was defeat.

There is a beautiful service on All Souls’ Day at my church in which we commend those who have died into the hands of God. We take down a list so we can commend each by name. I love this practice of opening our hearts to give our departed loved ones into the divine care of God, trusting that He—the first Gardener—knows how to tend them safely through the winter. Following the pattern of all Creation since before time began, spring will come again, and soon—when the last enemy is destroyed under Christ’s feet—we’ll get to worship Him together, in everlasting summer.

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So will it be with the resurrection of the dead: What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.

1 Corinthians 15:42-43

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Alleluia!

the good news

Rider on the White Horse by Robert Wright

It’s dark. I can only see my fellow humans as dim, shadowy shapes in a sick reddish light. I hate them, and at the same time I cower among them, using them as a fleshly shield against the pain that never lets up. I’m so used to it now that I have almost grown numb: the moment-by-moment stings of my master’s cruel prod, which I can’t stop running into even though it hurts every time. It’s like a drug, destroying me even as it wraps me tighter in its grip, and I know there is no hope. This is my existence. This was yesterday, this is today, this will be tomorrow. Darkness. Pain. The haunting, but somehow also stupid, moans of the bodies around me as they, too, endlessly run back into the stinging prod.

Every once in a while, I’ll watch blankly as one of these human shapes strikes down another in a cold rage. Death is a near and familiar companion. Sometimes it almost seems like a friend. 

What’s that? Something breaks up the endless chaos of red and shadow. It’s white, even brilliant–it hurts my unaccustomed eyes, piercing straight through me like a knife-beam of light, a thing I have never seen. I blink, but it’s still there, getting closer and bigger and spilling radiant white light over this shadowy valley of death. The bodies around me crush in and scatter like rats, desperate to avoid revelation, desperate to hide from whatever it means to be seen. I instinctively cower back, too, even though I can feel the prod sink into my spine. It’s too bright. It’s too much. I can’t see. I cover my face with my hands and fall facedown on the ground, stumbling over the bodies of the dead, thinking that if only I can be dead, too, I will be spared this probing, blinding light–whatever it is.

Then there’s a voice.

It’s no voice I have ever heard. It doesn’t hiss or snarl, like my masters. It doesn’t moan, like my fellow humans. This voice thunders.

“Get up! You, follow Me!”

I am shaking uncontrollably, but this is a command that overpowers every instinct of self-preservation in my body. I instantly rise to my feet. Still shielding my face from the light, I look up, seeking the Source of this voice.

And in that moment the light shifts from blinding to brilliant. I can see. I can see Him. He is a King, a Conqueror, riding astride a white horse. He wields a sword, but the blade is clean; only his robes are dripping with blood–blood that seems to have come from a wound in His own side, from scars in His own hands.

There are words written into His robe. “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

He rides forward until I can feel His horse’s breath on my neck. I am still shaking, but I can’t move–can’t so much as bow my head. It’s as if, by seeing Him, I can suddenly see myself clearly.

And I am dead. Dead in my trespasses and sins. I cannot escape this hell that I live in or this master of sin and death that I serve. The pain that I was numb to moments ago is now excruciating, and it’s only sheer terror that keeps me from writhing in agony in His presence.

As if separated from my own body, I am vaguely aware that He has leaned down and taken my hand in His, and somewhere in the recesses of my mind I become conscious of the bloody hole in the middle of His palm.

He speaks again at last, but this time, His voice is as gentle as a rippling brook. “Little girl, I say to you, get up.”

And there falls away from my eyes something like scales. My vision becomes clear for the first time in my existence. I can see the massive army behind the King, a cavalry all clothed in white. And I realize why He is here: to win this dead hellscape for His kingdom. I can either surrender or die.

And I have already been dead once. Whatever this King might do to me, I would rather be on His side than return to the reign of death.

“I surrender.”

Instead of binding my wrists and banishing me from His presence, wretch that I am, I hear Him give orders that I be clothed in white and given a mount. The whole army breaks into cheers of celebration, and I feel tears of what must be joy stream hot down my face as the embrace of what must be love wraps around my soul. I am alive, and I am at peace. I am His.

I fall into the ranks of the rest of the army. We are forward-bound behind our King, spilling the light into more dead and dark places, gathering up everyone who will surrender on our way and welcoming them into what must be a family.

My King has come, and He is taking back all Creation from the power of sin and death. My allegiance is to Him now—Him alone. Hallelujah.