I am also aware that the desire to link Eden to Gethsemane is bound to produce many false--if perhaps engaging--parallels. Of course, none of that will keep me or other commentators from embracing the prospect. So now I will tell you about my latest notion.
Jesus' earthly ministry comes to an end. In Matthew, it culminates in what has been dubbed "The Great Commission." The first couple's (though perhaps they had not yet "coupled") time in Eden had come to an end. I think the episodes share an important quality, though I am afraid that quality is essentially negative; the episodes are most important in what prospects they deny to mankind.
Responding to the so-called Fall, God visits upon the snake the first curse:
"Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel" (3:14-15, KJV).
As I have noted before, it would seem odd to equate the snake to Satan, particularly since it would then seem superfluous for God to put enmity between Satan and "the woman." Also, if the snake had been possessed by the devil, there would seem to be no warrant for singling out the poor creature--with its progeny--for a particularly nasty curse. Curiously, "the woman" and her progeny--Adam does not even get equal billing--might seem to give a hint that there is something particularly female about the progenitor of the snake's nemesis (Think: "Mary"), but then there is the ensuing part about lusting for one's husband--perhaps we'd better not go there.
(Still--there might well be something to the emphasis on the woman and "her seed.")
"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee" (3:16).
So Eve will suffer greatly in childbirth, and she will possess a physical attraction to a man for whom she might or might not possess an affinity otherwise. And in a world of hardship and danger, she will be subject to the dominion of a man whose outstanding feature as a caretaker has been as the last domino to fall in that world's collapse.
"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (3:17-19).
So now Adam is bracketed, on the one hand, by an animal world--personified most acutely by the snake--arrayed against him, and on the other hand, by a plant world hostile to his husbandry. Adam's sad-sack role, however, it just beginning.
"And Adam called his wife's name Eve; because she was the mother of all living" (3:20). "The mother of all living"--and to think, as the ancient punsters would have it, Adam's name was mud. The act of naming Eve is Adam's last mention in the narrative of Genesis, unless we count his passing mention as a sperm donor. Otherwise--though no one will think child-rearing easy--out of three named sons, he brings up one to be a murderer, and another unable to realize when his fallen-countenanced elder brother is up to no good.
Eve, it should be noted, must have named the three sons, though earlier in Genesis it appears that Adam gave names as a sign of his dominion. ". . .she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. . . .she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel. . ." It would be difficult to imagine a scenario in which Adam was more disempowered. As a family head, Adam would appear to have been effectively decommissioned--and that, not merely as touching him, but in part due to the curses that fell upon him and upon his male progeny.
And should we be surprised (blessed as we are to have Jesus' testimony about the virtues of typically "unmanly" behavior) that what might be called feminine principles are often the most wholesome? A quite pertinent example would be the types of thought processes necessary for the stereotypically-male analytic professions, whether we talk about biblical criticism or nuclear physics or what-have-you. I have offered the notion of "roused, readied, reaped" as a proper approach to understanding Jesus' teachings, and I will suggest as well that the same approach can apply to life generally.
Scientists, for example, can postulate about theories encompassing much of the universe, though it is the imprudent scientist who forgets about the limitations he brings based on his reality as an organic being. Timeless and sweeping though some theory might be, it must always be wondered if generalizations about existence can exceed--even if only momentarily or in a particular application--the limited, halting perspective of the observer. We are roused-readied-reaped to any daunting question, and we must always wonder if the solution we propose is reflective of the matter's true end-point, or reflects simply what we have arrived at as exhaustion sets in.
How often might it be that the hard-edged pronouncements of great thought advances--the ground-breaking discoveries of the "great men" of science--are the result of soul-piercing, visceral convulsions of all-too-human men and women who will admit to their weaknesses and misunderstandings? After the fact, unfortunately, we humans are inclined to forget our discomfiture--and the same applies by extension to biblical commentators, who want to look at moments in the Bible and simultaneously cram into such moments volumes of doctrine that could scarcely have been borne by the participants.
I contend that the sad reality of Adam's effectual decommissioning can help us understand Jesus' parting message to the eleven at the end of Matthew. The denominations, especially those claiming to be "evangelical," make much of The Great Commission, but it must be wondered if there really is all that much there. That is, has the understandable pathos of the end of this and the other Gospels been allowed to cloud and clutter the actual language?
"And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28: 18-20).
Jesus said, "All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth"; there is no mention here of the power of the Church, of the believer, or most importantly, of the senior of believers. Simply--all has been set right in the cosmos. "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations"; you know, as we believers would be inclined to do at any rate. ". . . baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. . . "--all Three of which aspects of the Godhead were represented at Jesus' baptism, and all Three of which perfused Jesus' ministry, though the particulars of "baptism" were not emphasized. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you"--you know, the importance of teaching, again. ". . . and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. . . "--so we don't have to get worked up about all that "End Time" chronology.
To hear evangelical radio rantings, one would think that The Great Commission included Jesus spouting about congregations empowered to root out heresy; about missions bent on rooting out the disgusting practices of the heathen; about which hideous dictatorships to be supported on the basis of their receptivity to missions; about baptism of this or that sort, here or there, once or again or not at all; about believers pronouncing on which headlines presage the Anti-Christ as the curtain begins to fall on missionary efforts.
I propose what I think to be a more apt digestion of The Great Commission. Picture Jesus in the stereotypical I'm-losing-my-patience gesture: slightly bowed forward, slightly shrugging, arms half-raised, elbows half-bent, palms spread wide--and a look on his face that says, "Well. . ???" Jesus, at the end of Matthew, is not saying anything that he hasn't said all along.
Jesus at the end of Matthew is just telling his disciples to get on with it. To get on with living; to get on with what a person would do who was lucky enough to be exposed to the teaching of Jesus' ministry; to get on with what has been taught always by the Creation created through Jesus.
To get on with it. Jesus was sending his disciples away stripped down. Jesus wasn't giving them anything to do that--in a different era--hadn't been demanded of Adam. The disciples had no reason to expect some special commission. So Jesus De-Commissioned them.
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