Seeing our Bodies
Part 4 – Fig Leaves shame and separation
- The Torn Veil
I’ve been struggling to write about
this portion of the story of Adam and Eve when Adam and Eve envisioned their
bodies after they had partaken of the forbidden fruit. I do not believe that I communicated well
what I hoped to communicate through the blog I did on Adam and Eve seeing their
bodies naked and yet being unashamed in the beginning. Perhaps I should have written with greater
bluntness. What if the whole of creation
was the original intended temple, a temple where everything in it was a display
of the honor and glory and attributes of the invisible God? What if we were originally created especially
and specifically to be physical expressions of the image of God in this
specially created physical universe?
What if when we were naked and ashamed it meant that we by nature
communed with God in our communion with one another and with creation? What if when we transgressed that one command
we defiled chiefly ourselves but desecrated the temple and created
separation? Would the clothing we made
for ourselves be an unconscious veil describing how now we were separated from
creation, from one another, from God, from the holy of holies? Could it be that garments made by human
hands, sewn from fig leaves in desperation after seeing your nakedness only
serve to reveal the separation between you and everything in the original
created temple of the universe? Would
all future temples merely be symbolic copies of how creation had been intended
to be celebrated in the worship of God?
Would future temples be provisions of God to show us the way back to
where it will be in the end as it was in the beginning when heaven is brought into
union with earth and no man will say this is the mountain of the Lord, but
every place will be the place where those who worship in spirit and truth
worship the Lord? I didn’t convey that
very well. So maybe it doesn’t seem to
some that when a child takes the reins of a horse in hand and gallops across a
field enjoying the power of the horse and the partnership with a horse there is
a sense that one enjoys God for one can realize that God is the author and sculpture
and painter who brought life to all.
I’ve been delayed writing this
blog. I’ve been delayed wanting to write
something not having to be changed after posted. I’ve wanted to make sure not to serve the
wine before its time. But also I have
been feeling miserable from a cold and the patent medicines I take for my
cold. I am reminded of what a Russian
once told me about colds. The Russian
said “In my country we have a saying, if you take no medicine for your cold you
will have a cold for seven days, but if you take medicine you will get rid of
it after only a week.” Sometimes with
colds I feel the Russian was right. I
wonder if that is why Adam and Eve decided to make fig leaves when they saw
they were naked, when they knew they had transgressed, and knew something was
not right in their universe. They were
ashamed, and like me with a cold they wanted to feel like they were doing
something to solve the problem. So they
made garments from fig leaves. There was
at least another thing going on with Adam and Eve after they ate of the fruit
of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
I will save the second part for another blog to follow this one. But they felt naked, felt the need for
clothing, for a veil to separate themselves from the creation, from each other,
between them and God, between them and the holy of holies. When they heard the voice of the Lord they
hid. They hid not to separate themselves
from God, but because in their transgression they had already separated
themselves from God.
These garments made of fig leaves
magnify our separation. Let us consider
how we were separated:
We were separated from the liturgy
of creation. This is what much of modern
man misses about the creation story. So
much emphasis is placed upon the power of the fiat word of God, when God says “Let
there be” that so few realize that these are words of a creative liturgy to
which the creation sleeping full of potential energy awakens and responds. God said let the earth bring forth
vegetation, and the earth responds and brings it forth. In the evening of each day of creation God
looks at the response of the universe and he declares what he sees as
good. There is a liturgical relationship
through which the universe at first a void shapeless darkness is brought to
light, life, beauty, and order. It is
the work of liturgy through which the creation takes shape. But we who were created to especially show
the image of God and must be most free are given a single command to follow and
to not do. It is a part of the
liturgy. We transgress and separate
ourselves from the liturgy of God speaking to his creation.
If you have looked very often at
what the Bible describes as hell, it is most similar to the created existence
prior to God’s liturgical formation of the creation in those six days of
creation. Jesus described the place of
eternal punishment as the outer darkness.
It is the place where everything with shape and order is broken
down. One passage either a part of Mark
in the original that was lost or a portion inserted at a later time describes
how the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. There are problems with this verse from a
textual consideration, but they present a similar perspective to the nature of
punishment described by Jesus in being cast into the place of outer
darkness. {see note at end} If we persist in refusing to
hear the words of grace then we shall be granted our desire to have a life separated
from the liturgy of God’s creation and we shall gradually retreat into the
darkness of the chaos that was before God began to speak to the creation. It is a frightening scene that is described
when given the chance to repent men and women call for the rocks and mountains
to fall upon them. While this is not the
main story set before us in the Gospels it is part of the story told in the
Gospels.
But for those of us who have begun
to hear the liturgy of Christ we live in a world recovering from the tragedy of
those days. We understand the separation
by what we feel needs to be overcome in ourselves. We feel the sense of separation with the
world in which we live. This present
earth is as much a display of the bloody red claw of survival as it is of the
beauty and glory of the attributes of the invisible God. This creation is a temple defiled. We struggle to find common ground with men
and women in varied relationships, whether formal, of informal, familial living
under the same roof or strangers meeting in a narrow aisle in the store; or
husband and wife trying to make a connection when they have each experienced
days putting them out of joint. Then
there is God, and how many are the times when he would call to us, that we hide
from him in a thousand pursuits? I
suspect after they had transgressed Adam and Eve saw they were naked and felt
the separation from everything and so put on clothes hoping as an old song may
have put it to hide from others the emptiness felt inside.
“We
drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach behind the emptiness
But neither one knew how.”
Dan Fogelberg, 1980. “Same Old Lang
Syne”
{Denise, a well-informed reader pointed out the disputed text is a quote of the final verse of Isaiah, so Biblical for all concerned}
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