The First Thin Place – The Garden of Eden

The First Thin Place – The Garden of Eden.

“The thin place is where the veil between this world and the next is so sheer that it is easy to step through.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home By Another Way).

This term from an ancient Celtic tradition has stood the test of time. The idea of a thin place between heaven and earth has captured our imaginations, and yet is not just a metaphor.  Thin places are literal as well.

The traditional thin place as the Irish understood it has been described in many ways:  where the veil between heaven and earth is so thin as to be porous, permeable, practically transparent; where the space between the divine and the human has narrowed; where the boundary between heaven and earth has collapsed; where the wall between heaven and earth have become indistinguishable; where the doors between heaven and earth have cracked open enough to walk through, if only temporarily; the place where eternity and time seem to join together.

Those descriptions of thin places have recently been expanded to include… wherever God has chosen to reveal Himself and make Himself known with unusual intimacy; wherever the sacred interaction with God’s presence is more pronounced and accessible; wherever the Holy Spirit is released in a particularly powerful way; a physical space where one can more directly and intensely experience God’s presence. I like to think of a thin place as when the Spirit of God opens the skylight of the earth’s roof and helps us climb through it into the cellar of heaven.

“And God saw all that He had made, savoring its beauty, and indeed it was very good. ‘Excellent!’ He pronounced, and he completely approved all the work that He had done… Yahweh God shaped a person (adam) from the dust of the ground (adamah), and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life so that the person became a living being. Yahweh God planted a lush garden in Eden, which is in the east, and there put the person whom He had formed. Out of the soil, God caused to grow every tree that was pleasing in appearance and good for food…Yahweh God took this person and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and care for it…And Yahweh God said, ‘It isn’t good that the person should be alone. I will make for him a companion, a helper suitable for coming alongside him… And from Adam’s side, God made a woman…They both heard the voice of Yahweh God as He strolled through the Garden in the cool of the day when there was the soft evening breeze. The man and the woman hid from the presence of Yahweh God among the trees in the garden…” (refer to Genesis, chapters 1-3).     

In the beginning, God created one vast, spacious thin place, in which the boundary between heaven and earth seemed non-existent. This heavenly space on earth was created to be a dwelling place for God and mankind, a place for their intimate fellowship. The Godhead of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is a community of love, and God created mankind in His image, so it seemed right and good to create a place to enjoy their communion together. This is the Garden of Eden, Paradise, where there was no veil between God and mankind, between heaven and earth, the world’s first thin place.

Paradise: (Greek, paradeiso; Hebrew, Gan-Eden); the Greek word is taken from an old Persian term meaning park, garden, paradise, a pleasure-ground; the Hebrew understanding of the word came from its root ‘dn,’ which means enjoyment, and was considered to be the ‘Garden of Yahweh’). The early church Fathers believed that Paradise, the Garden of Eden, still exists far removed from the heavens and the earth, and is awaiting its renewal and recovery in the ‘new heaven and new earth.’ Christians believe this will occur at the coming of the Lord Jesus to establish the New Jerusalem. Believers now think of Paradise as a synonym of heaven, the place of rest for those who have departed in Christ, where fellowship will once again take place in perfect unity between God and mankind, just as it did in the original Garden of Eden.

Jesus in the Garden of Eden. We believe that Jesus was a Co-Creator of the world, and so He certainly was evident in the original creation. Jesus was actively in the thick of creation. “By Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth… All things were created through Him and for Him.” (Colossians 1:16). “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.” (John 1:3).  But after the initial creation, God demonstrated another astounding act of love. He descended into His creation and sought to have fellowship with Adam and Eve. This would be like a master painter, after having finished his work of art, jumping into the painting and interacting with the characters in the painting. Out of love, God created mankind. Then out of love, God became involved with mankind. God extended Himself into a personal relationship with Adam and Eve in the Garden.

In Genesis 3, God is pictured strolling in the Garden in the cool of the day, the evening breeze making everything comfortable for His regular interactions with His people. Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the Garden, and they hid themselves among the trees. God seemed to miss their expected meeting and looked for them. Adam and Eve finally revealed to God that they heard His voice and fearfully hid from Him. They were naked and ashamed of themselves for the entrance of sin into the universe. So who was Adam and Eve talking with in the Garden? God, in the form of a man? They certainly weren’t walking and talking with a formless spirit, or a pillar of cloud. They weren’t interacting with the fiery flame of a consuming fire. They were instead having personal fellowship in the flesh, with another person, friend to friend. There was an audible sound of God walking, and His presence was found among the trees. They enjoyed human interaction with actual words, a primordial language of some sort. Adam and Eve had a friend in the Garden, and that friend was God in the flesh. This is the first time Jesus made an appearance, a Christophany, in the Hebrew Bible. God in the form of a man, having fellowship with Adam and Eve, in a profoundly thin place if ever there was one.

Paradise Lost. But then tragically the thin veil thickened, the curtain between God and man grew pronounced. The Tree of Life in Eden was planted by God in the middle of the garden. It was put there to fulfill man’s destiny of eternal life, bearing the fruit of immortality. Those who ate of this tree “live forever.” (Gen 3:22). After Adam and Eve fell into a state of sin, God would not allow anyone to eat of the Tree of Life. This would have given sinners a hopeless life of eternal sin, a sinner’s life that would never end. A sinner who ate of this Tree would never achieve God’s eventual plan of immortality for mankind. This would be God’s worst nightmare, a humanity that would be wicked forever, a spiritual catastrophe. God needed to protect the Tree of Life at all costs, so He positioned cherubim at the Tree. Cherubim were and are the angel servants of God who accompany God’s glory around the Throne. Cherubim are those mighty and fearsome winged creatures created by God before the world began. We don’t know how many of these angels were stationed at the Tree of Life, but we do know that each angel wielded an awesome weapon, a revolving sword of fire, a flaming blade forged in heaven. These swords of fire turned in every direction, flashing back and forth to protect the Tree. We can imagine that the fires that forged these heavenly swords came from the celestial consuming fires of the glory of God.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The second tree planted by God in the Garden was also front and center, for a good reason. Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of its fruit as a test of obedience, an opportunity God gave them to obey or disobey. God gave them the freedom to choose disobedience, to choose to become their own gods, to figure out for themselves what is good and evil, what is truly true. Satan succeeded in whispering words of insurrection, in convincing Eve and Adam to doubt God’s pure motives. Before Satan, they trusted in God’s goodness, they assumed that God wanted what was best for them. But what happened? Eve was beguiled into doubting God’s intentions when God laid down the law about the tree of knowledge and the fruit of that one particular tree. First, Eve was led to question God’s thinking. She was brought to the point of contradicting God, thinking that maybe God didn’t have their best interests in mind. She started thinking that maybe God doesn’t know what He’s doing. Then Eve elevated herself by going beyond His word of warning, desiring to see for herself why she should be limited by God in this way. Her prideful ambition at this point helped her to make that final step in disobeying God’s Word. She allowed Satan to fool her into thinking she could become independent from God. She chose to desire forbidden knowledge instead of trusting in God’s knowledge. She wanted that knowledge for herself. She fell for the oldest trick in the book… “You can become your own god! Don’t trust God’s motives, just defy His authority and become separate from Him and from all those rules. Don’t worry, you won’t die! God lied to you when He said that!” Hapless Adam, observing this interaction between Eve and the snake, could have intervened with a word of caution, but he didn’t. He simply took the forbidden fruit for himself, duplicating Eve’s sin. Adam and Eve, partners in crime. The first parents left us all something in their spiritual DNA, a genetic death wish, the tendency to repeat their monumental mistake of displacing God at the center. We humans in Adam and Eve’s extended family still have an essence of goodness, since we remain created in God’s image. But we are tainted and destined for separation from God. Adam and Eve broke their trust in God’s character, and they died a horrific spiritual death. And that’s what we have inherited from our first parents.

Paradise Recovered: The Tree of Heaven. “To those who overcome, I will give to eat from the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God… I’m about to call each conqueror to dinner! I’m spreading a banquet of Tree of Life fruit, a supper plucked from God’s orchard.” (Rev. 2:7; NKJ and MSG).  What a picture St. John paints for us in Revelation 22. There in Paradise, a pure river of crystal-clear water is flowing freely from the Throne of the Father and the Lamb. The water is John’s way of talking about the Holy Spirit. So there we can see the Trinity’s presence in the center of heaven, with the Father on the Throne, the Son on the Throne, and the Holy Spirit flowing right from their presence into heaven. And then he sees that the River is somehow flowing right through the Tree of Life, the Tree on both sides of the River as it travels through Paradise. A pure River of Life flowing right through the roots and bottom trunk of the Tree of Life! Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the restored Tree of Life is now ready to fulfill mankind’s destiny, the believer’s assurance of eternal life. This Tree, once planted in God’s first Paradise, is now planted in eternal Paradise. God desires to restore the Garden of Eden in the new heaven and the new earth, and so God has placed the restored Tree of Life in the middle of the new Kingdom. This Tree reverses the hostility and woundedness of the first rebellion, and is ready to be productive and useful, bearing a fruit that is ripe for each of the twelve months. Its leaves are intended for the permanent healing of the nations, the nurture and care of all people, Jew and Gentile. This restored Tree of Life in the New Jerusalem reverses the curse of the Garden of Eden. Jesus promises that all the overcomers, believers in Christ, will eat the fruit of this Tree in heaven, this Tree that heals our deadly wounds and gives us wholeness and everlasting life. The Tree of Life will be enjoyed by all those who participate in Christ’s victory and salvation.

The Tree of Jesus. The Cross of Christ was understood to be a tree since the earliest days of the Faith… a tree of wood without its roots, leaves or branches. In those early days after Christ’s ascension, believers would refer to two interchangeable terms for the Cross: the “Wood” and the “Tree.” In the book of Acts, both Peter and Paul were reported to use the Greek word “xulon“, which could be translated either wood or tree. (Acts 5:30, 10:39, 13:29). Peter once again used the world “xulon” in his epistle, 1 Peter 2:24, translated as wood, tree, or cross, all interchangeable. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the (tree), that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.” In the New Testament, the term tree was used in a general sense of anything constructed of wood, but in the case of the Cross it was not just any tree, it was “the Tree.” Some things made of wood could be used as a reference to the Cross. The prime example would be the wooden doorposts in Egypt covered in lamb’s blood. The Cross was seen as the wooden doorway to salvation and deliverance covered in the Lamb’s blood, a type of Cross, the Passover event of Jesus.

The Orthodox Church have a hymn that celebrates “The Tree that Heals the Tree.” Those startling words refer to the fact that the Cross healed the Tree of Knowledge. The effects of our fall from grace are healed. The Cross has healed the Tree of Knowledge’s infusion of evil into the good. The Tree of the Cross has healed the Tree of our fall. The old Adam ate from the fruit of the Tree and spiritually died, and now we can eat from the fruit of the Tree of Christ and live forever. The Tree of man’s downfall has been transformed into the Tree of our Resurrection, reversing the curse. The final Adam, Jesus, ate of the fruit of the Tree on the Cross, and has healed us of the sin of the first Adam. Another Orthodox hymn declares, “The blessed Wood, through which the eternal justice has been brought to pass. For he who by a Tree deceived our forefather Adam, is by the Cross himself deceived.” Through Jesus, the original thin place, the Garden of Eden, has been restored and renewed into our eternal Paradise.

Come Thou Fount (Official Music Video) | Celtic Worship (youtube.com)