Readings: Genesis 3:21-24 and John 14:15-21

Thursday this week saw a world first, a space vehicle opened its hatch to the vacuum of space for the first spacewalk by a commercial crew, exposing all four of its members simultaneously to the vast emptiness of space. With a shining pale blue earth as a backdrop, it is a perspective that only a few human beings have seen for themselves – the earth, so beautiful, yet so glaringly fragile hanging in the vast darkness of space.

In the poetic account of creation, the living waters were separated, being given to heaven and to earth, with a breath of God given to humankind. The waters below became earth’s rivers and seas, giving life to the plants, and human bodies – made of more than fifty percent water – are like these living waters shut up behind doors made of the dust, (Job 38:8) and while life is with us, streams flow within, coming out of the heart giving life to the body. (John 7:38)

The breath of God given to Adam, is like the first movement that set all else in motion that was the beginning of life. St. Aquinas says ‘Now that which is the principle in any genus, is the rule and measure of that genus.’ (ST I II 90). Therefore he must have thought as life comes from life, and today as we know all cells come from pre-existing cells – it would follow that the foundational principle of all things would be life, however, there is another principle that life requires for itself, and this is cooperation – a principle of all things working together with and for each other – which in its essence is love, therefore we can say that from love, came life.

God is love (1 John 4:16), and from His love, came life.

The Spirit of God hovered over the waters, like the winds hover over the seas. Both the Spirit and wind, like the breath of life given to us, can shape the world around us, the rocks, and the sands – the buildings, and the cities – all existing as a movement, for good or for evil, so that everything that moves, every person, has a sphere of influence and of effect. Each of us is a pivot about which things happen, are shaped and/or changed.

Adam and Eve had the certain knowledge of God. Before the fall heaven and earth met together, and God walked with them in the Garden, (Genesis 3:8). Yet, after the fall, a veil covered us until the Word rolled back the divide by resolving the transcendence of God and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ, fully God, fully man. Jesus Christ whom we now believe in and depend on by faith.

It was an act of love that God showed us how to use the resources of the earth for good when garments of skin were made, yet in covering us in the flesh of animals, we were robed with original sin in a spiritual darkness (Job 38:9) rather than a robe of righteousness, no longer walking as children of the light and clothed in the beautiful golden light of the Lord. (Revelation 21:23).   

Eve, as she came out of Adam while he was asleep, is like human consciousness from where we know not it comes, yet as a visible manifestation or personification of this she is the one who listens to the snake, she ‘reasons in error’ – something we can say is certainly not specifically female in itself -whereas, had Eve resisted, she would have been an image of divine wisdom, like Esther or Mary.

As humanity is made in the image of God, man and woman together being homoousias, or the same substance (Genesis 2:22), woman is that visible manifestation of the divine wisdom which remains hidden beneath appearances and must be sought. (Song of Songs 1:5-6). 

So, the question asked throughout the ages of man – what does it mean to be made in the image of God? Well, can we see God? No, yet St. Paul writes, ‘For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.’ (Romans 1:20). If God is invisible yet manifest in His creation – then the image of God lay within us – hidden in the depths of every man, woman, and child and is made manifest by our acts, by the spirit at work. 

Eve, as a great villain in this poetic story, has often been used as an excuse of the powerful to tarnish the name of females through the ages. And yet, every human is born through a woman so that all are blessed through womankind. Women are not objects with ‘organs in the right places’ but are the precious jewels of humanity – a gift of life – for it is women who put the flesh upon our bones when we were in the womb. When women are treated like objects by those who have sight yet do not see – they miss that though we are not what we do in a moment, we become what we are within us. So, if woman came out of man – what then is within them that abuse and dishonour the gift that is the privilege of life given to us? Let us then all see – that woman is the soul of man.

Hearts are the centre of our being from which either the spirit of life, like a river of light, or the spirit of evil and death flow. Thought and emotion are similar in that they are internal movements – therefore, as St. Aquinas says, practical ‘reason’ is directed to action, and by reason I mean the things we come to know by our thinking things through, as well as our senses and experiences, as opposed to the knowledge given to us by ‘our faith seeking understanding’ (St. Anselm), which comes through the divine revelation of God who speaks to us through our attention and prayer.

Feelings and emotions are rather like embodied simulations, imaginations that can change like the weather whilst distorting the world as we experience it. They’re a weird biological prompt to inspire us to act, yet we derive wholeness and meaning from these passing clouds when none was intended beyond the moment they are. Feelings are real but the meaning we give them is so often false – feelings must be worked out in relationship, not alone – yet it is this meaning that persists in the mind as a memory, and that memory becomes the simulation, a fairy tale woven into the fabric of the mind – the story we tell ourselves imprinted, habituated, and therefore so often believed.

Yet just as God journeyed with His people from freedom to the promised land, so now has Jesus made a promise to his disciples and all who love Him, ‘I will not leave you as orphans’ – a helper will come, an advocate to help us sail upon the waters of life through the times of suffering when the winds do not blow and we feel stuck as if the times will never end, or when they blow into a storm. Turning our attention to Him, the One who walked on and hovered over the waters – He comes to us when we call, when we ask, search for and knock on the door of truth. For the flaming sword guarding the way to the tree of life is this same Spirit of truth. A sword of truth and of liberty that has every human bear the responsibility for his or her acts before God on judgement day – when Jesus will greet us, and we hope and strive for these words – ‘welcome friend’. That moment when His touch of love reaches beyond our faith into the certainty of our joy and wonder. It is the fruits of love that remain the best part of us which will live forever in heaven – and perhaps imprinted in the memory of the universe within which we have for a short while the gift of living, breathing and having our being.

Thomas asks, ‘how can we know the way?’ (John 14:5), to which Jesus replies, ‘I am the way and the truth, and the life.’ Jesus is the flaming sword and the way to the tree of life, He is the door we knock on, and He is also a tree of life to us – through His life, death and resurrection He is also the first fruit – so that we may imitate Him, becoming healers, or doctors of souls.

Perhaps you may have noticed that trees are fractals, that they are repeating patterns at different scales – each part has the same nature as the whole, so as Isaiah declared, ‘a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. (Isaiah 11:1), so he prophesied that God will become man, and for us as Christians, when we have to answer who is Jesus – Jesus is that Branch, an exact copy of the Father and, ‘at that day you will know that I am in My Father,’ – to the disciples, He says, ‘and you in Me, and I in you.’