Leaving the Garden

Monologue

I received this question, “Fr Ian, how do we live rightly? Like how do you enjoy someone without abusing the relationship or falling into lust? Like how do I love well?”

James 1:21-23 “Therefore, put away all filth and evil excess and humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you and is able to save your souls. Be doers of the word and not hearers only, deluding yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his own face in a mirror.”

forgetting who you are, not living in your identity. That’s when we get in trouble. So, if I were to forget I was a priest…bad news, because I golf as a priest. But you, baptized, confirmed maybe, soldiers of Christ, when we forget who we are and our rooted identity, we are just guessing at life, we fall easily then into sin. (Pray without ceasing).

And we forget, we act not in accord with who we are. We go to a wedding, we drink too much, we eat too much, we dance too much, we stay up too late, etc...

Spring - Wake

https://youtu.be/JZdRnjzjyIw (show lyrics)

Before Song - “I mean, God, if you knew we were just going to sin, why did you create us in the first place?!” Because we don’t like being disappointed, but disappointment/suffering, tempts us to not love. but precisely because God is love, and we are created in love to be love, we too will share in his disappointment and in His redemption.

After Song -

“Wake up sleepy head” - Consciousness. What were we doing before creation? Nothing. The Mormons and others have held a type of pre-soul-existence thing. Not us. All of a sudden we have consciousness

I pulled you out from the flowerbed

The idea of making mud and forming man like a potter, like Christ does when he heals the blind man. A flowerbed is moist and soddy.

My breath fills your lungs

We are created in the image and likeness

New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 1

27 God created mankind in his image;

in the image of God he created them;

male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. 29 n God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; 30 and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. 31 God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good.

I’ll give this garden to my favorite son

I have trouble with this line because Jesus is the eternally begotten Son, and Adam their creation.

Last note, You are prince of all you see, I’d like us to care for it together

Something of the dominion principle here as well as the goodness of work. Dominion was given before the fall, toil and sweat came as a result of the fall. Work is the gift (Think about when someone can’t find a way to support themselves), it is the curse, but it is also the cure. (https://youtu.be/c54hTgH-Oog, Fr. Mike finding purpose in work).

We’ll give names to all creatures wild

Today, I am your father, our story’s just begun...

Summer - Walk

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksqB67Vmy2Q (lyric video)

Before: Why do I golf? Because its as close to Eden as I’ll get. Walking in the garden with God

New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 3

8 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. 9 The LORD God then called to the man and asked him: Where are you?

After: Into forever, arm in arm, Feel the peace within the breeze, breathe in, you’re my work of art....

This garden ardently guards your every want

But I sense a lonesome life’s a burdened one

Take your slumber, you’ll awake to eyes like your eyes

Hands that fit in your hands, bone of your bone

Adam and Eve exist at this point, first creation story, uses the plural for them. 2nd Creation Account delves more into this.

New American Bible: Revised Edition (Chapter 2)

20 The man gave names to all the tame animals, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be a helper suited to the man.21 So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. He brought her to the man

The beauty of this line is that man was complete and good and whole. He was with the animals and content. Cigar and beer, man that’s awesome, with his pet bear.

And then God decides, no, my image and likeness, a multiple unity, triune, trinity. He takes the one, and makes two, and then weds them to each other.

especially visible in sex, creative love (eros), bodies fit. not compatible but complementary, what God created the universe out of.

New American Bible: Revised Edition (Chapter 2)

24 That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.

New American Bible: Revised Edition (Chapter 20)

17 Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me, (Clinging?) for I have not yet ascended to the Father?

And why not keep them in the garden? well, it was a good start, but the goal is to become love, not to be happy and peaceful.

We walk, we walk, you and I, We walk, we walk, me and my masterpiece

Now this is what Adam says to Eve, what God says to Eve, still to Adam, and what Adam and Eve can say with their children, and God can say with their children

https://youtu.be/9FtwUPSB4p8 on Sts. Adam and Eve Dec. 24.

The demons can mesmerize…keep your eyes on me...

Peter and the Water

And so we’ll walk! - So much of this life is just keepin onward.

Every morning you appear to be more and more like me

If we just don’t sin, we’ll do what we’re supposed to do, but yet we can’t sit still, we must move, so even in this, we will keep struggling forward.

Fall - War

https://youtu.be/0WtGNX7I4C8 (lyric video)

Beforehand - You couldn’t just leave good enough alone

New American Bible: Revised Edition Chapter 3

8 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. 9 The LORD God then called to the man and asked him: Where are you? 10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.”

“Lucy, I’m home”

After: I heard a second voice - Who’s voice do you hear?

I lost my innocence (came before the eating, entered into the heart before the will.)

We sank our teeth into a lie

How could we count the cost?…You came back down to earth to find that I had cursed the world you made

You gave me all you love, but I love making war...

Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body Corruption of the Consciousness of the Unitive Meaning of the Body

And because shame was born in their hearts together with the concupiscence of the body, the analysis of original shame allows us at the same time to examine in what relation this concupiscence stands to the communion of persons that has from the beginning been granted and assigned as a task to man and woman by their being created “in the image of God.”

We sinned together, we’re in this together, and yet, we’re not on the same page, the sin doesn’t bring us closer together.

https://youtu.be/_4QLszdiBVM (Michael Fassbender, My mind is full of scorpions)

Winter - Will

Before: Its just so sad, but there’s hope. My favorite song of the bunch.

I felt the cold, it burned like a furnace

Life is upside down, but somehow, we still look like him, and he still walks with us, its just not the same…until Christ comes.

I felt my soul pulled in every direction, what once was whole has chosen defection…long live your volition

Hope

Hosea - I will draw you out into the desert and speak kindly to you.

Isaiah 54:13 “All your children shall be taught by the Lord; great shall be the peace of your children.”

Colossians 2:6 “So, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him,”

1 John 1:7 “But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin.”

Luke 24:13-35 - Emmaus - and they walked with Jesus. A couple walking on the road away from Jerusalem. Nopes, whoopsie daisy, let’s turn back around.

Ends in death, as it all began, lay down sleepyhead…

I’ll wake you when it’s time, we’ll walk in the warmth of an endless light - Resurrection

Sermon for holy Saturday

The Lord's descent into hell

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam's son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: 'My Lord be with you all.' And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.Â’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

'See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

"The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages."

A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

Prayer

Almighty, ever-living God, whose Only-begotten Son descended to the realm of the dead, and rose from there to glory, grant that your faithful people, who were buried with him in baptism, may, by his resurrection, obtain eternal life. (We make our prayer) through our Lord. (Through Christ our Lord.)