I love fresh figs. Not the dried ones that come crammed into a bag that you can buy at the grocery store, but the fresh ones that are moist and full of flavor. They are especially good when you can take them right off the tree. And hence the problem with me eating them now. A sense of guilt I think.
You see, when I was a youngster, my grandparents lived in a two flat house (a house with two living spaces) and there was a similar house across the alley from them. Another Italian family lived there. That is kind of redundant to say because everyone in our neighborhood was Italian. I thought the world was Italian back then. Anyway, the grandfather of that family loved to garden and his prize possession in his little garden carved out of the concrete yard was his fig tree. It was surrounded by fencing to keep the animals, including the human animals, away from the tree. Ah, but little boys are resourceful!! I managed to find a way over that fence and snack on the figs to my heart’s content. Now I am not sure if the old man knew I was doing it or not. All I know is that he never confronted or yelled at me…at least as far as my memory tells me. But I still remember, after some 50 years later that it was not right for me to take those figs. Heck, I knew it at the time too. But I have lived with that memory all these years later.
I am sure we all have memories of things we did back in the day that we wished we never would have done and actions which we cannot go back in time to apologize to those we injured. We, in a sense, live with this guilt for all our days. Yes, we should ask forgiveness in Reconciliation but the memory still remains.
Adam and Eve began their lives with God in the garden by deciding that they knew best about what was good for them. They were convinced by the serpent that they did not need God and so went against his command and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Essentially saying to God, “we heard you, but we are not interested in what you are selling. We can do it our way”. And because of this disobedience, this sin, man distanced himself from his creator.
But then God did something interesting. He sent Adam and Eve out of the garden. And the reason He gave is this:
And the LORD God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” So the LORD God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken.
(Genesis 3:22-23)
God did not want them eating from a tree that he had not forbidden them to eat from before they sinned and ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. If it was OK before they had sinned, why was it not OK after they had sinned. Could it be God’s compassion? The ability to live forever in a world without sin would have been something I think God would have wanted for his creations. After all, he made them to be with him and love him. But, after Adam and Eve brought sin into the world? God saw the world that would result from sin and I think He did not want His children to have to live forever in a place so dominated by evil.
But even beyond that, God had a plan. That planned involved sending His Son into the world and dying for the sin that the first couple brought among us. In today’s first reading from Revelations we are told that a river of life giving water sprung from the throne of God. That the Lamb was down the middle of the street where that water flowed. And on either side of that river was a Tree of Life. Whose leaves brought healing. Later in the chapter we are told that he who washes their robes in the blood of the Lamb will have the right to the Tree of Life. A right which Adam and Eve’s sinfulness caused them to lose.
We have been given the gift of eternal life with God only if we choose to follow the Lamb and have His blood wash us clean. To remove the sin that would otherwise make eternal life unbearable. We are given that choice. To drink the water of eternal life like that which Jesus offered the Samaritan woman at the well. Or turn it down. To follow the Lamb and accept His sacrifice on the cross for us and thus inherit access to the Tree of Life. Or to deny Christ, deny the Spirit and deny the Father. To go it alone as our first parents did. To say to God, “that’s OK. I got this”. John is imploring us to recognize that through Christ we get to have life eternal. We CAN eat this fruit from this tree if we turn from the many evil serpents of this life confronts us with and accept the gift of eternal life won for us by the blood of the lamb.
