Shuffling off this mortal coil
Imagining the restoration of the heavens and earth coming in the next age
Imagine that the Paradise God carved out of the universe, as it was blockaded from all of creation, now unhinged and out of order, as a kind of cornerstone in the restoration of the heavens and earth coming in the next age. Our imaginations are a playground for God, if we accept his boundaries, that is.
Tuesday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
Romans 5:12, 15, 17-19, 20-21
Luke 12:35-38
For just as through the disobedience of one man
the many were made sinners,
so, through the obedience of the one
the many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:19)
Angst over an original Adam and Eve, bouncing between myth and reality, metaphor and literal truth, distracts us from the relationship between man and God so essential in the theology of Paul’s verse above. Not that our angst is unfounded. In fact, consternation and confusion are the very marks of our existence. The angst is our veil. We see through a glass darkly, as Paul put it in 1 Corinthians 13:12.
The issue for Paul is God and us, not the pain of the murky window through which we attempt to peer into Heaven.
Paul had already set the stage earlier in this chapter for a different frame for us than our confusion. “But death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who did not sin after the pattern of the trespass of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come.” (Romans 5:13)
Granted, Paul can sound more confusing than the truth he struggles to explain.
Let’s fit a placeholder right up front. The word “Adam” in Hebrew is both singular and plural, allowing the word to mean “mankind.” We have a similar use in the word “man.” So, for those who consider Adam purely mythical, go with mankind. For those who insist upon a literal Adam as the first in creation, you and I and Paul will get along just fine.
The framework for Paul’s theology of Jesus rests on Adam’s entrance into sin. That sin was disobedience in his relationship to God. It wasn’t a traffic infraction or a social blunder. Adam’s was a sin of high command.
“The LORD God gave the man this order: You are free to eat from any of the trees of the garden except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it, you shall die.” (Genesis 2:16-17)
Since we’re a procreative bunch, the progeny of Adam and Eve were subject to this disastrous sin. “The many were made sinners.”
How to fix this? Frankly, there is no fixing it. We can, however, be repaired. “… so, through the obedience of the one, the many will be made righteous.”
The relationship of God with Adam and Eve was personal and likely a physical reality. They abode, lived together in Paradise. That wasn’t heaven. It was, and likely still is, a created segment of the universe, with God already there with them. “When they heard the sound of the LORD God walking about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the LORD God among the trees of the garden.”
Imagine that the Paradise God carved out of the universe, as it was blockaded from all of creation, now unhinged and out of order, as a kind of cornerstone in the restoration of the heavens and earth coming in the next age. Our imaginations are a playground for God, if we accept his boundaries, that is.
In that horrific breaking of the goodness of Paradise where both man and God lived, Adam and Eve, in their sinfulness, could no longer be physically with God. They hid from him. The repair to this detachment, Paul insists, was for God to enter the world as one of us and reattach, as it were, creation to him. We needed to be made righteous by a righteous man’s sacrifice and conquering of death—a new Adam.
The story, true inasmuch as we can place the intention of the scriptures, places God back into creation and us back into God’s presence. It’s a relationship bundle, not a court-ordered visitation. We’re physically re-aligned with God if we both desire it and are willing to accept it.
Even in that exercise of our will, though, God assists us. Paul explains. “Where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through justification for eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
We still die, but we are not dead. We will shuffle off this mortal coil, as Shakespeare coined it in Hamlet, clearly identifying a life eternal afterward. Our exit shuffle, which I envision more as a dance than a doggerel march, includes several elements of the grace Paul points out. We are filled with the Holy Spirit, fed by the body and blood of Christ, and formed in the Word placed upon our hearts by the Father.
The glass darkly and the shuffling off this mortal coil aptly reveal to us the path we’re on. We, in exquisite transformation, have a truly good news ending, or rather, beginning. “In conclusion, just as through one transgression condemnation came upon all, so, through one righteous act, acquittal and life came to all.”