Dec. 1: Before the Fall: Living in a Sacred Sanctuary

Paradise with the Creation of Eve, Jan Brueghel the Younger, c.1636–1640, 37 x 49 cm. Staedel Museum Frankfurt, Germany. Public domain.

The Garden of Eden, Unknown British craftsman, Sixteenth century. Velvet worked with silk and metal thread; long-and-short, split, stem, satin, chain, knots, and couching stitches; applied canvas worked with silk thread in tent stitch, 22.5 x 80 in. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.

By Thee with Bliss (Adam & Eve Duet) from Franz Joseph Haydn’s Oratorio The Creation. Southwell Festival Voices and Southwell Festival Sinfonia conducted by Marcus Farnsworth with Sophie Bevan (soprano), Andrew Staples (tenor), and Ashley Riches (bass).

Week One Introduction:

The Garden: Dwelling Place of God

God, the great Creator, begins his story by planting a garden and putting the man whom he had fashioned out of earth in it, to tend it. The garden of Eden was a holy sanctuary where God regularly communed with Adam and Eve. Scholars suggest that the descriptions of Solomon’s garden in the Song of Songs hearken back to the garden of Eden: a fruitful, intimate, inviting place where vulnerability, goodness, and rest produced an atmosphere of peaceful bliss. Throughout Scripture, the garden is pictured as the dwelling place of God. Yet the garden of Eden was not completely secure. Somehow the serpent entered, bringing death into this idyllic place.

When Adam and Eve sinned and were forced out of the heaven on earth made especially for them, God cursed the ground. Eventually their descendants ended up in the wilderness, the antithesis of the garden. Yet God was faithful to his chosen people, Israel, ordaining the construction of the tabernacle—a new, moveable garden of Eden and dwelling place for God. Later, King Solomon built a more permanent sacred space when he erected the temple. It became in a certain sense a way back to Paradise, again replete with numerous motifs from nature. In John 1:14, the gospel writer declares that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

The literal translation reads, “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” Christ’s incarnation brought new hope to the world: “We will live again in freedom, in the Garden of the Lord” (Les Misérables, the musical). Rev. Andrew Gass writes, “The ultimate purpose of man is to dwell with God in His creation, and it is through Immanuel (God with us) that we can achieve this purpose. The Tabernacle served as a portable Eden for Israel through their journeys, the Temple served as a sign of God’s covenant promise of a new Eden land, and Jesus Christ serves us today as our guide and example of God dwelling with us.”

Poetry:

“Adam and Eve”
by Marjorie Pickthall

When the first dark had fallen around them
And the leaves were weary of praise,
In the clear silence Beauty found them
And shewed them all her ways.

In the high noon of the heavenly garden
Where the angels sunned with the birds,
Beauty, before their hearts could harden,
Had taught them heavenly words.

When they fled in the burning weather
And nothing dawned but a dream,
Beauty fasted their hands together
And cooled them at her stream.

And when day wearied and night grew stronger,
And they slept as the beautiful must,
Then she bided a little longer,
And blossomed from their dust.

GOD'S GARDEN

Easing north on Highway 141 through Wausaukee, Wisconsin (pop. 594), I never fail to notice Eden Restored. Unlike the 16th-century embroidered textile pictured above, this single-story shop clad in tan vinyl siding hardly signals Paradise. Its health market offers bulk tea, natural oils and supplements; and its lifestyle center a hyperbaric chamber, near infrared light panel, and sauna. Despite these offerings, in summer months, it’s the Ice Cream Station on the west side of the highway that boasts long lines and crowded outdoor tables.

It may seem odd to start an Advent meditation this way. With an opening scene headed north one could rather imagine a cold winter’s night, the first dusting of snow, and a stall in some empty barn (there are plenty) where the Christ Child might be born. But we begin our Advent watch with the proprietor of Eden Restored. For do we not share her sense that, in some primeval age, there was a Paradise? Do we not also long for Eden restored?

I know that ache each spring with the early burst of crocuses in our lawn. I sense it mid-summer when the fireflies blink about our backyard. That longing returns in autumn as spirited sparrows cavort in our privet hedge. Even in bleak mid-winter, notions of Paradise hold fast. For me, the most poignant anthem of this longing resides in the lyrics Joni Mitchell’s lyrics: “We are stardust, we are golden. We are billion-year-old carbon, and we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

The opening chapters of Genesis remind us that, “The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it.” But beguiled by the cunning serpent, the Garden’s first gardeners elected to eat of the fruit forbidden them. God could not abide their rebellion and Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden. To prevent their return, winged Cherubim brandishing a flaming sword keep watch at its gate.

Revisiting this familiar story yields several surprises. Consider, for instance, the possibility that only four beings have ever known the Garden’s verdance and communion firsthand: God, its maker; Adam and Eve, its residents; and the interloping serpent. To all others and across all time it remains a secret garden.

And consider this: although Adam and Eve were sent away from the Garden, neither Testament mentions God’s departure. An omnipresent God is not bound to any particular place, of course, no less one of his own making. But Genesis confirms that Adam and Eve, “heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze.” Again and again, Scripture reports that God visits his created order, that he tabernacled with his people in Eden, Sinai, and Bethlehem. Do we long for Eden because its Divine Creator is eternally present there?

There is more. The biblical story begins in God’s Garden and concludes in God’s City; the New Jerusalem. John’s revelation describes that city as a perfect cube measuring 12,000 stadia on every side. Unlike Babel, the divine metropolis need not reach toward heaven since the very glory of God is already contained within. God’s throne rests at the center of God’s City and a river flows from it. Trees of Life line the banks of that river and the leaves they bear are for the healing of the nations. Could it be that God erected his City to feature his Garden?

Finally: if the reality of God’s Garden transcends all time and space and if he remains present there, perhaps God’s Gardener—the one whom Mary Magdalene met as the first to witness the resurrected Christ—can lead us back?

This Advent, watch for him, the Son of Man who has and will come, the one who will greet us at the Garden’s gate, the only one who can lead us in.

Cameron J. Anderson
Artist and Writer
Distinguished Fellow, Art and Literature
The Lumen Center
SL Brown Foundation

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website via the link in our bio.