Calvary and Paradise

A number of years ago, I spent Holy Week in Jerusalem. It was a most moving and powerful experience to share in Holy Week, standing in the very place where many of these events which we have been thinking about this week took place.

One of the things that sticks in my mind was visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Good Friday. I remember feeling quite disorientated by it. There was no formal liturgy as such at that time in the day. Climbing to the chapel at the top of Golgotha, there were a couple of Greek Orthodox monks saying some psalms quietly, and the inevitable tourists taking photographs. 

But I felt completely disorientated. Looking back I think this sense of disorientation was fed by a kind of disappointment. I had expected some kind of spectacle, something that would move me to a kind of pious reflection about the events of Good Friday. And yet, there was nothing here to fulfil the expectations of tourist or pilgrim, only the overwhelming silence and the raw sense of grief and absence which attends the brutality of death. 

Now in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the hill of Calvary is covered by a platform, on which stands a chapel, and that’s where the monks were standing saying their psalms. But underneath the platform, there is a small oratory, where there is a glass window through which you can see the bare rock of Calvary illuminated for all to see. There is a great crack down the middle of it, the place where according to tradition, the cross of Jesus was erected. But tradition has another interesting insight to offer as well. According to tradition, this was also the place where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil also stood. The tree which had brought sin and shame to Adam, was now replaced with the tree which brings life through Jesus.

Of course, there can be no historical evidence for this. There is good evidence to suggest that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is indeed the site where Jesus was crucified and the place where his body was laid in the tomb. But the idea that the cross of Jesus stood in the same place as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil draws our attention to the more literary parallels, which make this connection. This figural connection between Adam and Christ has a very good pedigree in Christian tradition. We find the comparison between Adam and Christ in the writings of St. Paul, of St. Irenaeus, St. Augustine, in the hymns of St John Henry Newman. We find the tradition reflected, for instance, in the poetry of John Donne:

We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s Cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place:
Look Lord, and find both Adams met in me;
As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face,
May the last Adam’s blood my soul embrace.

In the story from Genesis, God created a garden for Adam to tend, the garden of Eden. And he placed in that garden, two trees, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, even though he was not supposed to. And this event is a symbol of the Fall. The Fall describes human disobedience, our reckless rebellion against God, our sin and shame and everything which alienates us from God and from one another.

In Genesis, the story ends with the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden. “Then the Lord God said, “See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever – therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden.”

Like John Donne, the Book of Genesis uses the language of metaphor and poetry to describe our human condition. Adam is every human being – in fact, his name, the word Adam, simply means “a human being”. And the story of the fall underlines our estrangement from God, and so as to labour the point, when we continue to read the book of Genesis, we cannot fail to be struck by the nature of human sinfulness and wickedness, our violence and cruelty, our selfishness, our jealousy and our brokenness.

And this story finds a particular resonance in the story of the cross. Jesus is the victim of human violence and cruelty, our desire for revenge and our capacity for hatred. There is a sense in which Jesus dies simply for being human. As one theologian puts it: “The very humanity of Jesus meant that he put up no barriers, no defences against those he loved who hated him. He refused to evade the consequences of being human in our inhuman world. So the cross shows up our world for what it really is, what we have made it. It is a world in which it is dangerous, even fatal, to be human.”

While the cross may be the place of cruelty and degradation, the one who is crucified on it shows us how to be human, to live a life marked by compassion, generosity and kindness, and to show that ultimately and paradoxically mercy, goodness and love are stronger than hatred, injustice and evil. Our humanity, disfigured in Adam, is restored in Jesus Christ. And I suppose it’s for that reason that poets and theologians through the centuries have called the cross “the tree of life”. 

The cross offers to us the hope and the promise of redemption. Through the cross, we receive the promise of new life because the cross points forward to the resurrection. We gather in silence today, to pray at the foot of the cross, to contemplate the pain and suffering of Jesus Christ. But we also come here to remember that this sign of the cross, has become for us a symbol of eternal life. This is the paradox of faith – that it is precisely when everything seems to have turned to dust and ashes, that God offers to us the hope and the promise of new life. So when you look on the bare wood of the cross today, remember that you are looking at the place where the glory of God is revealed, and where the promise of eternal life is given to you. Remember that you are gazing at the tree of life.