Ash Wednesday reminds us that we all will die. While this feels morbid, the beginning of the Bible tells us is that we should have taken death more seriously, and that I'm very likely hide the fact of my death from myself. It isn't pathological to attend to death in this way. In fact, it's one of the healthiest things we can do!
When God first created the universe, he made a garden where he placed the man and the woman he had created. However, there is a rich symbolism that underlies the garden. When God creates the world, he creates skies, land, and seas to be a type of three-story house. He divides things on the first three days to create these spaces, and then on the second three days, he fills these places with other things - stars, birds, animals. To be precise, the sky has two parts - the highest heavens and the firmament. He divides up the land and makes a garden within the larger land of Eden. The garden serves in the role of a sanctuary where God would meet with Adam. Adam's priestly work was in the garden, protecting it, while his kingly work was in Eden, working. The garden, the land of Eden, and the outside lands all correspond to a picture of the world and of heaven, in which there is no division between the religious sphere of our lives and the secular sphere of our lives.
When we read Genesis 1 and 2 and ponder an existence before the fall, we wonder what that would be like. Given that our lives are so often driven by the worry that something could go wrong, its hard to imagine a flawless world and not think it would be a little boring. It would not have been. Adam and Eve, as with all of us, were created in God's image. God says on the sixth day: "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals." (Gen. 1:26) We see that humanity are made in God's image. First, this means that all of creation is in some way a sign or symbol of God. Second, this means that humanity are the ones who recognize this and participate in this process. James B. Jordan writes: "God has been presented as one who determines, creates, evaluates, names, takes counsel among Himself, etc. These things are what man uniquely images." (Through New Eyes, 31) This also suggests something extraordinary about this world that we often forget. Just because things change doesn't mean things get worse. Adam and Eve were commissioned to have dominion in the world. They were to garden and cultivate, to bring latent potentialities and possibilities out of the creation. Peter Leithart writes: "Even before Adam sins, it is not easy to rule creation. Animals need training, trees are tough to cut, the earth is hard to dig, and rocks are hard to break." This work is to make the world useful for Adam, but not only for Adam. It should become more pleasing to God. More Leithart: "God does not want Adam simply to have children; He wants Adam to have faithful, godly children who worship and serve Him. God does not want Adam to use iron to hurt other people; He wants Adam to use iron to make useful tools and musical instruments. Adam is the king of the world, but he is always a servant to a higher King. If Adam subdues the world as God commands, he will be building a house for God within the house that God has built for him." (Leithart, A House for My Name, 51-52)
All this shows us that Adam and Eve were to grow and change. They were to have experiences. They were to sweat and toil. They were to have children. They were to mature and grow ever-more into the dignity and image in which they were created. Part of this has to do with freedom, with learning to say yes, and also learning to say no. God wasn't going to force feed them the Tree of Life. And he wasn't going to fence off the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It wouldn't always be off limits. What role it played, it played within the economy of God's equipping. Leithart writes that Adam was a "child" who was destined to be elevated to kingship. The tree of judgment would signify "his eventual entrance into mature kingly wisdom." (Delivered, 76) Much as we would perhaps learn the lesson of gravity, Adam is placed under a curriculum. Adam, taste not. Touch not.
Humanity in their original, created dignity were not superheroes. They weren't sinners, but they were still vulnerable. Leithart writes: "Adam and Eve were created as flesh - limited, weak, vulnerable, touchable, woundable. That was good, very good. They might have accepted their vulnerability and the precariousness of their fleshly life, trusting the Father to care for them. Adam might have been content to wait for the Lord to open his hand to satisfy his desires, might have trusted his Father to give him his full inheritance when the Father saw that he was ready. Eve might have rejoiced in fleshly weakness and trusted her Father to supply whatever strength she needed." (Delivered, 76)
We'll treat the judgment for eating of the forbidden fruit tomorrow. For now, we emphasize Adam and Eve's impatience with their own flesh. They wanted to transcend the vulnerability, weakness, and limitations they knew in their humanity. The vulnerability they wanted to escape now becomes cursed, a type of prison. They leave the created dignity of vulnerability. They leave the Garden and the Tree of Life. But we already know from the end of the Bible that the redeemed in Christ will find the Tree of Life again. (Rev. 22:2) Eden must stay before our eyes throughout the Bible. The yearning for Eden is there on every mountain top, in every sacrificial encounter with God mediated through priest and tabernacle, in every wedding, in every scene of flourishing in the broken world. Whatever Christ will do must have to do with breaking the curse of Eden and gaining re-entry for those cast out. And the restored humanity will be like that which Adam and Eve cast off - a vulnerable, touchable, weak humanity with emotions and senses, images of God, yet part of the world.
What we find today on Ash Wednesday, and what we'll explore tomorrow is how much death defines so much of the broken reality of this life. Death is the quintessential mark of the Enemy-occupied world. It is the devil's greatest tool to gather all of us up, to shape all of our decision-making so that we are complicit, bound up together in corruption. Christ's victory over the devil allows Ash Wednesday to sober us, to extinguish our fear of death with the cool baptismal water which tells us that we belong to Christ, that he will usher us through death to eternal life, that he alone is the one who can lead us back to Eden.
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