On the first Sunday in Lent, which seems so long ago now, we heard the story of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that stood in the center of the Garden of Eden. God had forbidden them to eat that fruit, because they weren’t yet ready. They weren’t yet able to metabolize the fruit properly. So the fruit, when they ate it, made them sick with sin.
The fruit, imperfectly metabolized, suppressed their appetite for God, while leaving them hungry with all sorts of other selfish desires which could never be satisfied. And this fruit turned out to be highly addictive.
Irenaeus, one of our early church fathers, writing in the second century, explains that Adam and Eve weren’t yet spiritually mature. He says that, “Therefore, the ‘wood’ of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil proved to be death dealing, not because God made it such in the beginning, but because it was partaken of in a forbidden manner and not at the proper time. Nothing created by God is evil by nature; rather, all is very good.”
So on this Good Friday, we give thanks for the goodness of the cross.
And in this service, as we’ll hear a little later, “we glory in the cross, and praise and glorify the resurrection of Jesus. For by the virtue of his cross, joy has come to the whole world.”
How like God to provide us with a tree hung with the fruit that will correct the sin sickness that eating that first fruit triggered in us.
The fruit of the tree of the cross, our Lord and Savior, is the fruit that we need for our very lives, for healing, for nourishment, for new life and for growth. No wonder Jesus said to his disciples at the Last Supper, “This is my body given for you. This is my blood, poured out for you.”
No wonder that in the resurrection stories that we will soon be hearing, Jesus is so often eating and drinking with the disciples, breaking bread in a wayside inn, cooking breakfast beside the Sea of Galilee.
His resurrected presence with us is the sweet fruit that feeds us and gives us health and makes us well. The Risen One is the one who redeems the world.
Tonight’s last hymn, “Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle,” written by Venantius Honorius Fortunatus in the fourth century, refers to the cross as a noble tree—“sweetest wood and sweetest iron! Sweetest weight is hung on thee.”
My favorite verse is the fifth one—“Bend thou boughs, O tree of glory! Thy relaxing sinews bend; for a while the ancient rigor that thy birth bestowed suspend; and the King of heavenly beauty gently on thine arms extend.”
So on this night, with sorrow, but also with great joy, we behold the cross.
We give thanks for this tree that gently and securely held our Lord and Savior.
For it is on this tree of life that Jesus stretches out his arms of love, and provides us and all of creation with every satisfaction in this life and in the life to come.