In his letters, the Apostle Paul speaks of the two Adams – the first Adam of the beginning and the second Adam, Jesus, of the new beginning, the man of earth and the Man of heaven, as today’s Opening Prayer has it. The first Adam fell because of disobedience, the second Adam rises because of obedience. In the first Adam, all humanity fell, in the second Adam all humanity rises.
In the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem there stands a Chapel over the rocky outcrop of Calvary on which the Cross of Christ stood. Beneath that Chapel there lies the Chapel of Adam, so-called because it was thought that the skull of Adam was buried here, directly beneath where Jesus died, awaiting a drop of Christ’s blood to lead him home to Paradise. Adam died because he sinned in eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. He lies beneath the other tree, the tree of the Cross; and we live because we eat the fruit of that tree, the fruit which is Jesus himself, on whom we feast today.
In his poem “Hymn to God, My God in My Sickness”, John Donne writes this:
We think that Paradise and Calvary,
Christ’s cross and Adam’s tree, stood in one place.
Not only has it been thought that Adam’s skull lies beneath Christ’s Cross, but also that Paradise and Calvary, the tree of Adam and the tree of Christ, the tree of death and the tree of life, stood in the one place. Now this may not be literally true, but it is symbolically true – which means that if we wish to find our way to Paradise we need to find our way to Calvary, as we do this afternoon. We enter the morning light of Easter only if we pass through the darkness of Calvary. That’s why we don’t lament Christ’s death but proclaim it.
On this Good Friday we recognise that Paradise and Calvary are strangely intermingled, and in the one place we stand with one foot on Calvary and the other in Paradise, the two Adams finally embracing in Eden.