Eden And the Temple Part III

The Hebrew word Sheba is roughly translated as seven. Seven is a holy number and in Hebrew tradition it means to swear an oath. God revealed the entire cosmos and particularly Himself to Adam and Eve and on the seventh day He offered the promise of His life to them. The Sabbath was meant to be a sign of that promise or covenant. It is on the Sabbath that God calls us to enter into His glory and to be made whole through the gift of His divine life. From the very beginning God makes it clear that we are made to worship Him. The Sabbath was made the sign of the covenantal promise between God and men and it was made while Adam was still in a state of grace and worthy of His presence. God reiterates and clarifies his intention for the sabbath when He says to Moses “You shall keep the sabbath, because it is holy for you; every one who profanes it shall be put to death (Ex 31: 14).” Jesus will later say that “the Sabbath was made for man not man for the sabbath.” Adam fails in His priestly duties and after the fall He and Eve are removed from Eden. They are escorted from the Sacred Garden and a Cheribum is placed at the entrance which is in the East to protect the sanctuary. Specifically the tree of life. Salvation history is a constant effort to return to the indwelling presence of God through right worship in the proper sacred space. Initially Israel itself can be understood as an expansion of the Garden of Eden. All men are called to communion with the Holy Trinity as they are descendants of Adam. Yet, God limits initially limits the possibilities to one group of people in one place, the Israelites. God offers to sustain this relationship intimate relationship with Abraham’s descendants when He promises the land to Abraham’s offspring and says “I will be their God (Gn. 17: 7-8). He says that this will be accomplished in a specific place, Israel. In Exodus 25 and following, Moses receives instruction from God on the institution of a centralized place of worship for that His presence might be encountered. Moses in given instruction on the institution of the levitical priesthood as well. In Gn. 3: 8, the Hebrew word mithalekh is used to describe God’s moving about, His presence in the Garden. The very same word is used in Leviticus 26: 11-12, to describe God presence in the sanctuary. The activities of the Levitcal priests in the sanctuary are also described using the same words which describe Adam’s duties. It is very clear that the Israelites viewed Eden as the template for temple worship. All of these attempts by the Israelites were attempts to encounter God through faithful temple worship. However, we must come back to the gospel of John in order to recover what was lost as a result of Adam’s failure. We know that Jesus is the Word Made Flesh. He is God Incarnate. His presence in time is the sign of God’s desire to be present to us and for us to dwell with and in Him. John expresses in the first chapter of His gospel that Jesus is truly God. In His body Jesus makes present the sacrificial “cult of the temple.” Jesus Himself claims that He is the temple of God, when He proclaims that He is the place, “Bethel which means house of God,” which Jacob describes in his dream. Jacob says “this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven (Gn. 28: 17). In chapter two of John’s gospel, Jesus makes the claim that the temple will be destroyed and He will raise it up again in three days (Jn. 2: 19). John says directly that Jesus “spoke of the temple of His body.” (Jn. 2:21) Christ is the new tree of life. The Cheribum were set at the East of Eden to protect against re-entry into the sanctuary. Their job was to guard the tree of life. Jesus the new temple, says that “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up.” (Jn. 3:14). Jesus will be lifted up on the tree or the cross. It will become the fulfillment of the tree of life. Through His sacrificial death, His body becomes the means by which the damage done by Adam’s rejection of true temple worship is repaired. For this reason St. Paul refers to Christ as the “new Adam,” when he says “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” (Rom. 5: 19). It is union with Christ, His literal body, worship of Him that brings about the fullest communion with God (Jn. 6). God ordained from the very beginning of time that all things are ordered to Him. He created a universe in which the worship of God required for union with Him is not arbitrary, nor is it optional. In creating the universe He gave us a template and a model, so that at the proper time, we would recognize His Son as the true fulfillment of the temple of Eden.

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