March 27: Adam and Christ
♫ Music:
Wednesday, March 27
Adam and Christ
Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 15:21-23, 47
For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, after that those who are Christ's at His coming, The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven.
Poetry:
The Peaceable Kingdom
by Samuel French Morse
He looked up, like a savage: nothing there,
No starlight: not a star to help him now,
And nowhere else to turn. He held his ground
For some sure sign or word, and tried to see.
He caught a flicker, as of fireflies
High up, then farther off; the summer air
Stirred once, still warm around him. Then the night
Was all there was between him and the past.
But what he saw out there was more than light:
A hand as broad as heaven reaching down
To touch eternity gave something shape
And being and first form; the moving deep,
Then mountains, rivers, waterfalls, and plains,
And afterward the hazy grasses, trees,
Birds, beasts, and fishes; and at last a child.
And he became the very child he saw.
He watched. The child sat down beside a stream.
The lion came, the lion and the lamb
Lay down together, dozing in the sun.
The flowering trees were full of singing birds
He called by name, and apples red as blood.
But when he touched the leopard with his hand,
To prophesy before Isaiah’s law,
He drew back, frightened; and the lion roared.
He stood in darkness, like the man he was.
ADAM AND CHRIST: ON CONTEMPLATION AND TIME
God sees all of human history outside the confines of time. He observes the creation, fall, and redemption of man as a stunning all-at-once tapestry, in which we’re paradoxically both in Adam and in Christ—though our eternal fate is sealed in the latter. Ambrogio Flecchia, a medieval character in Eugene Vodolazkin’s marvelous novel Laurus, speculates why unlike God, we live in time for now: “Time is given to us by the grace of God so we will not get mixed up, because a person’s consciousness cannot take in all events at once. We’re locked up in time because of our weakness” (228). In our time-bound earthly existence, we struggle in our double nature: In Christ, we’re completely loved, accepted, and whole; we’re a glorious new creation. But how can we experience this newness day to day, as Adam’s vexing ancient brokenness persists within us?
Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann tells us that in the Garden of Eden, Adam chose…
only the appearance of life. God showed him that he himself had decided to eat bread in a way that would simply return him to the ground from which both he and the bread had been taken: “For dust thou art and into dust shalt thou return.” Man lost the eucharistic life, he lost the life of life itself… He ceased to be the priest of the world and became its slave… Adam led the whole world, as it were, into darkness. In one of the beautiful pieces of Byzantine hymnology Adam is pictured sitting outside, facing Paradise, weeping. (18)
As we progress toward Easter—not a mere marking of an event but the sacramental “fulfillment of time itself” (Schmemann 57)—we’re reminded of God’s loving redemption of the children of the first Adam through the sacrifice of the last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ. In him and through him, we avoid certain death and ascend into a redeemed time that leads to a cosmic telos: the resurrection and redemption of the world.
In his Creation of Man, a colorful stained glass-like painting, Marc Chagall gives us a glimpse into God’s view of this cosmic story outside of time. The prominent figure of the Angel of the Lord in the foreground (perhaps the divine Son himself?) carries a newly created Adam from dark blue shadows into the gold and white light emanating from the crucified and glorified Christ—a stunning, vibrant kaleidoscope of mystical imagery composing climactic biblical scenes, immersed in “hazy grasses, trees, / Birds, beasts and fishes” (French Morse). A twisted, fractured chaos reordered into a dazzling, harmonious mosaic. Thus God reorders the Adamian discord of our lives, molding us into the true self he intended, through our walk with him, through cultivating a life of contemplation and prayer. We learn to live in a story of growth and ascension toward the glorious resurrection in him, allowing him to shape the whole of our lives—“A hand as broad as heaven reaching down / To touch eternity” (French Morse).
The spiritual discipline of prayer, and the ancient Christian tradition of contemplative prayer specifically, can help us grow into our “last Adam” identity. One helpful way to do this is by making a habit of inwardly repeating the Jesus Prayer in quiet solitude: [Slowly inhale] “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, [slowly exhale] have mercy on me, a sinner.” When we habitually pray in silent contemplation, we allow for the temporal anxieties, feelings, and distractions to dissolve, and we focus on the inner self, the new creature, that part of us that communes with God in Christ through the Holy Spirit (Eph. 3:16; 2 Cor. 4:16, 5:17; Col. 3:3). Let us pray.
Prayer:
We beseech thee, Almighty God, look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen. (128)
Collect for the Third Week in Lent, according to the Book of Common Prayer
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
The Jesus Prayer
Book Recommendations:
The Book of Common Prayer (1928 ed.)
For the Life of the World by Alexander Schmemann (on sacramental theology)
Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin (historical fiction / magical realism novel)
Into the Silent Land by Martin Laird (a guide to contemplative prayer and practices)
Elmar Hashimov, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of English
Director, Rhetoric & Writing Center
Co-Director, English Writing Program
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Artwork:
The Creation Of Man, 1956-1958
Marc Chagall
Oil on canvas
299cm x 200.5 cm
Marc Chagall National Museum, Nice, France
Marc Chagall was one of the foremost visual interpreters of the Bible in the 20th century. The bottom section of this painting depicts a scene from the Book of Genesis, while the top section features several different biblical episodes. The lower section is painted in a vibrant blue embellished with depictions of vegetation and animals. A winged creature moves to the foreground, holding Adam’s body, and in the lower right-hand section Eve holds an apple as a reference to original sin. In the upper section, Chagall has painted a turning sun. Its colorful rays house a crowd of different characters: biblical protagonists, the Jewish people, hybrid creatures, and more. Christ on the cross is also shown here. His hips are encircled by the prayer shawl that Jewish men wear in the synagogue. Chagall meant this figure to represent the martyrdom of the Jewish people in World War II. Above and beyond The Creation of Man, Chagall infuses this painting with a broader vision of the history of humanity.
About the Artist:
Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was a French-Russian artist whose work anticipated the dream-like imagery of Surrealism. Born to a Hasidic Jewish family, Chagall was raised immersed in Jewish culture, folklore, and iconography. After studying art in St. Petersburg, the artist moved to Paris in 1910, where he quickly befriended members of the French avant-garde. Over the course of Chagall's career, his poetic figurative style and deeply personal visual language made him one of the most popular modern artists. While many of his peers pursued ambitious experiments that often led to abstraction, Chagall's distinction lies in his steady faith in the power of figurative art, one that he maintained while absorbing ideas from Fauvism and Cubism. In addition to his paintings, Chagall was noted for his vibrant works in stained glass, theatre design, and lithography. Forced to flee Paris during World War II, Chagall lived in the United States and traveled to Israel before returning to France in 1948. Today, his works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Tate Gallery in London; the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel; and the Albertina Museum in Vienna, among many others.
About the Music:
“String Quartet No. 2: III - Live at the Ancienne Belgique” from the album Erased Tapes Collection V
About the Composer and the Performers:
A Winged Victory for the Sullen is the name of an ambient music duo consisting of Dustin O'Halloran and Adam Wiltzie. The duo became known for a unique combination of Adam’s ambient guitar drone and Dustin’s sparse piano with their self-titled debut album in 2011. During the summer of 2013, they recorded over sixty minutes of music while working on the score for a new oeuvre by the Royal Ballet choreographer Wayne McGregor. While recording, they were inspired to expand their sound into more electronic territory. The result became their second full-length album, Atomos, a unique record that stays true to their signature chamber sound while adding flurries of electronics, harp and modular synthesizers. This album was released on Erased Tapes in 2014.
About the Poet:
Samuel French Morse (1916-1985) was an American poet and Stevens scholar. He earned a BA at Dartmouth College, an MA at Harvard University, and a PhD at Boston University. Morse’s formal poetry offers richly observed detail and explores questions of nature, responsibility, and freedom. He published five poetry collections during his lifetime, including Time of Year (1943). Ninety previously unpublished poems are included in the posthumous The Collected Poems (1995). Morse was also the author of Wallace Stevens: Poetry as Life (1970) and the editor of Opus Posthumous: Poems, Prose, Plays by Wallace Stevens (1957). His honors included the Emily Clark Balch Poetry Prize and the Arthur Davison Ficke Poetry Prize. Morse taught for 23 years at Northeastern University and also taught at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. From 1983 to 2009, Northeastern University Press awarded the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize in his honor.
About the Devotional Writer:
Dr. Elmar Hashimov
Associate Professor of English
Biola University
Elmar is an associate professor of English at Biola, where he teaches and researches rhetoric, writing, and philology. He also directs the university writing center and coordinates writing in various disciplines. Elmar has written for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic and Technical Communication Quarterly. He currently serves as the president of the Southern California Writing Centers Association.