THE TREES OF PARADISE, a prologue for the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross
"Meaning" is so often the missing dimension in religious teaching and deliberations. When religious people debate about the creation narrative in Genesis, they leave a certain emptiness. In discussing the Covenant and the Old Testament in general, they so often lapse into moralism without meaning. Their discourses about the creation narrative are almost always concerned with arguing that the story is literally and scientifically accurate. Seldom, if ever, does one hear an exposition of meaning in such discussions. One does not expect to hear much about meaning from atheists who argue about it, but those who profess to be believers have a responsibility to offer it, and they hardly ever do. Nevertheless, this "meaning" speaks of an existential freedom and an existential responsibility on the part of each human person.
The story of the trees of Paradise presents us with a profound existential metaphor — or, if you prefer, a revelation. Let me present this mystery in the form of an excerpt from one of my own Paschal sermons:
"....I would like to call upon you to reflect on the trees of Paradise. By grace, God bestowed life upon mankind, but the life He gave to our ancestors was not the life of puppets or robots. He bestowed upon mankind an authentic life. Authenticity of life requires freedom. God created mankind from pure love, but love without freedom is mere fiction. Love entails trust and respect. This is the awesome mystery of God's love. The all-powerful author of the universe actually respects the freedom of His creatures. He asks in return for our love, our trust, and our respect.
"Just as there can be no love without freedom, there can be no freedom without choice. When God placed Adam and Eve in Paradise, He placed before them the image of two trees. The first tree is referred to as "the knowledge of good and evil," and the second as the "tree of life." The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was withheld from mankind until such time as God knew that Adam and Eve were mature enough to cope with such knowledge. Why was the tree visibly placed before them if they were not to partake of it? Our forebears had the free choice of choosing to respect and trust God, or to mistrust Him and partake of the tree.
"It is obvious that the Tree of Life was also intended for humanity in that this, too, would be given to them in the fullness of time.
"What precisely is the knowledge of good and evil? We know that evil does not have any actual being, that it is not a thing or a substance, and that it really does not have any kind of existence. In a certain sense, evil is inauthenticity of life. It is the loss of authentic being. Faith and the struggle for virtue require freedom of will and grant liberty to the faithful struggler. Evil is a form of bondage to fear and hopelessness. It is the vision of non-being or annihilation; it is the fear of death, and this is why Apostle Paul says that fallen humanity is held in bondage to the fear of death (Hb.12:15). This fear is the source of human passions.
"Let us look at what happened to Adam and Eve in Paradise, and we will be able to better understand our own lives and our own bondage. Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God. They were subjective individuals, not mere objects, and they had that freedom of will which is necessary for an authentic life, and a natural, unselfish love. Satan deceived them by means of an illusion. He convinced them with a fantasy that they could become something which they were not. Satan convinced them that by betraying God's love and trust, they could become like Him. `If you gain the knowledge of the mystery of good and evil, you will become as God.' `Don't trust God! He has withheld this knowledge from you only from envy because He does not want you to be like Him.'
"Adam and Eve lost authenticity of life first of all by exchanging reality for an illusion, by accepting a counterfeit of what they already had. They abandoned what they actually were and accepted a delusion about themselves. One cannot have genuine freedom while living an illusion that deprives one of one's own reality. Satan had `objectified' Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve lost this authenticity of life, they actually lost a part of their freedom of will. A sea of necessity swept down upon them, forcing them to yield their freedom to the necessities of life and survival. Their choice to heed the temptation of Satan separated them from their intimate communion with God and thus separated them from their union with the source of life. Now, death became a sharp reality for them. Death itself became a source of fear, and Satan would increase this fear by tempting humanity to think of death as a complete annihilation. This fear is the source of almost all human passions: it makes us greedy, full of envy, anxious to `have it all now' no matter how destructive that might be. It causes us to ruin the environment and even leads us to our sexual excesses. This fear of death and non-being is the force that breaks the bonds of unselfish love and makes us egocentric. It robs us of freedom, leads us into delusion, and causes us to live in an illusion instead of in an authentic life.
"In Paradise, the Tree of Life was set in the midst of the garden as a symbol of hope and aspiration. It is not the knowledge of good and evil that deifies a human being; it is complete union with the source of life and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that deifies mankind. Departing from Paradise, humanity lost the vision of the Tree of Life. Man became objectified into an existence filled with delusion, and each of us falls constantly into illusions about ourselves. If evil is a loss of authenticity and alienation from the good, a kind of non-being, then all the wickedness and evil into which mankind may fall arises from our own loss of authenticity and our own fear of death as annihilation and non-being.
"And now we approach holy Pascha, and once more we see the Tree of Life set up in our midst, once more we stand in Paradise, that is, in the Paradise of God's love and our faith. And beholding before us the Tree of Life, we are renewed in hope, delivered from the fear of non-being, and once more offered union with the source of life. Now, mankind who was "all his lifetime held in bondage to the fear of death" (Hb.12: 15), is set free once more.
"Yet, without the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Cross would not be the Tree of Life, for it is not the tree that bestows life, but the fruit of the Tree of Life that imparts to us everlasting life.
"Still, the question remains: if God is all-powerful, why was the Incarnation and the suffering of Christ necessary to conquer the power of death? We reply that God did not need to conquer the power of death for His own sake but for ours. But, if God intended to restore us to authenticity of life, it could not be by depriving us of our freedom. The power of death must be conquered within each one of us, not without our own consent. We still must freely choose between life and death, between freedom and bondage, between hope and fear. The gates of Hades must be trampled down in the heart of each one of us as free individuals with responsibility for our own lives.
"God the Word entered into our humanity in the Incarnation, and though being God, also became the first human being to live a fully authentic human life, to resist every temptation of Satan, to live free from the fear of death, to love, trust and respect God fully, and to conquer completely the power of death. He was the first to manifest the "glorious freedom of God's children" (Rm.8:21). He did so visibly before our eyes and, in so doing, bestowed upon us real knowledge.
"The Cross of Christ, you see, became not only the Tree of Life, but also the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and this is precisely why the two criminals who were crucified together with Christ were not there by coincidence, but were given as a revelation to us. It was there, on Golgotha, that a choice was made between bondage to death and a return to Paradise. The thief whose heart was open, beholding Christ upon the Cross, somehow in his heart came to the knowledge of the meaning of good and evil. He beheld in Christ the essence of the good and understood that separation from the good was the essence of evil. At the very moment when it appeared to the world that the death of Christ was evil, the thief freely beheld and chose the good. By such an exercise of freedom, he cast off his delusions and returned to authenticity of life: At that very moment, Paradise itself appeared in his heart, even before he heard the promise of Christ: `Thou shalt be with Me in Paradise.' The Cross of Christ was, for him, first of all, the knowledge of good and evil, and his free choice between the two made the Cross the Tree of Life for him.
"God has the power over life and death, but even this He does not force upon us against our will, for that would be neither respect nor love. Rather, through His own suffering, His own humiliation, His own meekness, His own ineffable love, He came into our midst and unveiled before us, there on Golgotha, the mystery of the trees of Paradise. As He walked with Adam and Eve in Eden, so He walked amongst us once more and called upon each one of us to make for ourselves the choice which had been offered to our ancestors. It is surely no accident that it was a condemned criminal approaching death on the cross who was the first to make this choice.
"Brothers and sisters, let us, beholding the Cross on Great and Holy Friday, as we stand before the tomb of Christ, see it first of all as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. With understanding, let us abandon and lay down before the Cross our delusions about life and our illusions about ourselves, and let us conquer the power of evil by choosing the good — and the good is our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The moment we firmly make such a choice, the Cross becomes for us the Tree of Life, and on Holy Pascha, as we partake of the Fruit of the Tree of Life, Paradise will fill our hearts, and we ourselves will be already with Christ in Paradise. We will have, once more, authenticity of life and not mere life."
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