The world begins in Eden. This is its essence. And the world ends there. All earthly journeys begin and end at the gates of Paradise.
Eden is the first Advent of God: God becomes present to His human creatures in an amiable and intelligible form .... perceptible even to fallen men and women:
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And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking
in the garden in the cool of the day .... (Gen 3:8) |
You recall Adam and Eve have already eaten of the fruit by this time.
Eden sets the ideal: men and women in harmony with each other and in communion with God.
Life in Paradise is essence of Jesus teachings and His signature message: —
| "Metanoeite, Turn back!" (Mt 4:17) |
He commands us to return to this harmony and this union with the Father.
As the early Church Fathers taught, the Son was sent into the world for this reason. St. Irenaeus wrote that the life of Jesus was to complete the work that Adam and Eve had failed in. Jesus' message is this abundant life:
| I have come that they may have life, and that .... abundantly. (Jn 10:10) |
East of Eden lies the broken world. In all human history the culture of death has never loomed so large: diminishing resources, a poisoned food chain, a broken planet, rapaciousness growing ever worse, and general alienation from God.
The image of God fades. The portrait of mankind drawn in Eden is defaced. And human creatures no longer know their purpose or even their own name .... in God's sight. A distrust of even our genes has taken hold, hobbling identity.
Losing and regaining Paradise is the story of salvation. God begins again with the generation of Noah, yet this pristine world is contaminated right away with father drunkenness and mother incest. God calls Abraham away from great Babylon into a purifying wilderness. God calls Moses away from glittering Luxor to meet with Him in the Midian wilderness. The people Israel depart from the fleshpots of Egypt to be cleansed in the Red Sea and purified in the Sinai wilderness. The Son of God models this, departing from Jerusalem into a wilderness, prefiguring the last things, encountering all evil, pointing to the Kingdom of God.
The ancient Hebrews understood this golden circle. Eden was the antechamber of the First Temple, the threshold to One-ness with God, enacted in the Holy of Holies, approached only on the Day of Atonement (at-one-ment) in an annual cycle.
We also tread this circle. Each of us is a little Eden. We begin seeking harmony with everyone we meet. We desire God. Some of us stay right there in that innocence and amity. Meantime, others (sadly, most others) become fascinated with evil. Nonetheless, all must return to Eden's gate. There are no exceptions. There is no other way. Those who have strayed must also face all evil: the evils they have done, the evils they have said, and the evil with which they have polluted others.
In Holy Orthodoxy we follow this Hebrew tradition of a yearly return to the Holy of Holies. The High Priest (representing humanity) stands in Eden, then ascends the steps into the place where we are at-One with God (in Hebrew, Yom Kippur). This day marks the annual examination of conscience for all people — the day when we face the variance between our actual lives and the life God ordained for us. For most it is a day of mourning, and we contemplate the Judgment that lies just ahead. We see that we are not ready. (How often I heard this plaintive sentence as a chaplain serving an oncology ward.)
In Holy Orthodoxy we call this annual day Forgiveness Sunday.
The idea of Judgment suggests a courtroom. The words just and righteous, so important in the Jewish tradition, are juridical terms. To be just is to be trued like a spoked wheel gliding through life with minimum friction. If our lives are trued to the Law, having very little variance from God's standard, then very little "wobble" is detected. To be righteous is to be found blameless before the Law: "Not guilty."
The idea of arguing one's case before the bar naturally follows. I believe it was Aristotle who said that a lawyer's first obligation is to show that his client is not guilty. Failing that, he must show that it wasn't a crime.
We know this principle. When one is tempted to violate God's laws, many ask "Who says this is a crime?" .... or, worse, "What if there is no God?" Now, here is extreme wobble.
What does wobble actually look like? It is disfigurement — true variance from our nobility: for example, miserliness arising from an obsession for money or the sloppy drunk seen in those who love cocktails or obesity among those making food a cult or the learing and incurably diseased woman or man who is obsessed with sex. Disfigurement\f1 .... varying far from the noble image within us.
Often, these people do not believe they have committed crimes or have affronted Heaven. After all, doesn't everyone do it? And here is the lawyer's second duty: Wobble, you see, is argued to be normal. No crime. And God? For those truly lost to Him, Well, God was the invention of an earlier, superstitious age. No God.
The banishment of God is the preoccupation of the modern period. In Europe Christianity has virtually vanished. The motives for being rid of God are instructive. Let us take a case study.
Charles Darwin was too busy with his grandchildren and his research to bother with interviews. (Darwin scholars have found crayon marks all over his scientific papers!) He directed journalists to his "bulldog," Thomas Huxley. Huxley was asked a shrewd question that, oddly, has disappeared in the dustbin of history. "Why," a reporter asked, "did the dry technical journal publishing Darwin's 'Origin of Species' sell out when no previous run of that journal had ever sold out before?" After all, wouldn't a long interval be necessary before the implications of this technical paper be generally appreciated? Certainly that was the case. Queen Victorian commented to her niece that most people would not understand it.
The wily Huxley sat back in his chair and teased the question. "Don’t you know?!" he asked in mock surprise. "Why, the word went round that Darwin had gotten rid of God!."
The implications of this did not take long to appreciate. For if there were no God to answer the question, "Why can't I?!" then the way ahead is clear for every kind of depravity. Familiar to us today?
The popular conception of the Victorian era as being prudish is a fairy tale. In fact, London was so profligate, involving all classes, that the streets at night were crowded with prostitutes performing services nearly in public. Sexual diseases were rampant. And muggings and murders became common .... all of which forced an issue: the establishment of a police constabulary. Before this time there had been none. These men would be called "Bobbies" after the man who championed the cause: Sir Robert Peel, a devout Christian and Member of Parliament, and eventually a Prime Minister.
Yes, constables began to appear throughout London, but these men could be dealt with. The more daunting constabulary, you see, is always God and His morality. If only God could be gotten rid of, then the last obstacle would fall.
It is worth noting that the American Colonies had followed precisely this same trajectory. Until the era of established police and clergy, the Colonies had lapsed into a widespread orgy of libertinism. The norm, you see.
But let us propose nineteenth-century London to be a kind of Gestas and Dismas writ large. To one sort of man, God is of little interest. He demands, "If there is a God, then let him prove it!" Besides he has his own preoccupations, and these, assuredly, have nothing to do with God or God's morality.
The other man beholds God, knows Him to be God, and his heart breaks as he sees how far he has fallen beneath Heaven's standard. He begs for pardon. His heart is tender. He asks forgiveness from all men and women.
I have known men lying in hospital beds whose hearts have become so tender as their bodies diminish and so acutely aware of how low they have fallen in life, that everyone who walks through a door becomes someone whose forgiveness they desire. This is no rarity.
Both sorts of men stand near the gates of Paradise. Their journeys have come full circle as they near the God from Whom they had proceeded. Their names, in fact, play on the allegory of a circle: of the sun's circular path through the Heavens. Gestas means "things I have done" signifying the sunset of life. The meaning of Dismas is more direct: "to the west." That they stand on the threshold of Paradise Jesus states plainly (Lu 23:43).
Their story is our story. For everyone, this circle cannot be eluded. The sun will set. We all must come to the end. We all must face the things we have done and the words we have said. If we do not believe in God, then we say, "So what! I did no worse than other men!"
If we believe in God, then our hearts must break. All must face Him. Whether we believe in Him or not is of no consequence to Him. Even the demons believe (Jas 2:19).
To those who have mocked Him, whether outright or by faking godly life, His answer reply is the same:
| "Get out of my sight! I never knew you!" (Mt 7:23) |
In a mystery, it is our love that He seeks. This is the mystery of every Father-Mother. To those who seek His love who own their neglect .... these hearts will break. Tears will start. And their souls will be awed before His Divine Majesty.
In this radiance and blinding clarity, we see ourselves as we never had before. We see ourselves as God sees us. Yes, He is merciful. But His vision is faultless and, in that sense, unsparing. We must re-live our many unkindnesses, our many cruelties, our many callous words and acts, our indiscretions, our treachery, our general neglect of others in a world of aching need and suffering. and, yes, our many depravities. We will re-live our neglect of our children, who yearned for us, our indifference to our parents or siblings who needed us, our ruthless selfishness of careerism, and the general betrayal of those we loved .... a life whose only aim was oneselves and the countless self-indulgences and indisretions that follow in ego's endless train.
Such a heart now is filled with remorse. Like Dismas, we seek pardon. Indeed, looking at the travesty of our lives, we are humiliated and beg forgiveness of everyone. These scenes from our lives are a consuming fire. These are the purging flames that follow death. This is the moment when all odds must be evened, as our lives are laid bare before the perfect geometry of Heaven's God. And we cry out
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Lord Jesus Christ, Only-begotten Son of God,
Have mercy upon me, a sinner! |
This is the spirit of Forgiveness Sunday. We look ahead and see the gates of Paradise awaiting us. We examine our lives in this Heavenly light.
I say to all of you,
"Forgive me, a sinner."
For in my brokenness of heart,
I forgive you.
This is our human state.
This is our common journey.
And together we approach the One God, Who has taught us,
"Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who have trespassed against me."
In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.