“Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and I hid myself’” (Genesis 3:9)
Guilt, shame, fear, and flight: Every parent knows the sequence of misbehavior. Eyes lowered, head down, hiding from exposure. In most of the art displaying the expulsion of our ancestors from Eden, they are being chased out by the angel with a flaming sword, running in terror, looking backward over their shoulders. But from the Bible record we find that Adam realized he was not worthy to remain there any longer. He understood that it was no longer the place for him—rather, not the same relationship with the Lord God which he had before he betrayed the Lord’s trust.
The next question the Lord God puts to him is: “Who told you that you were naked?” As a human blessed with God’s image, he had a conscience. He realized that he had broken the bond between the Lord and himself. He was running from the God that he had in his soul. Where would he go to escape that Presence? How do you flee from His love?
And so the God of love explores ways to return the prodigal to Himself. In the beautiful anaphora prayer from the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil the Great:
“Thou didst visit him in various ways: Thou didst send prophets; Thou didst perform mighty works by Thy saints, who in every generation were well-pleasing to Thee; Thou didst speak to us by the mouth of Thy servants the prophets, foretelling to us the salvation which was to come; Thou didst give us the law as a help; Thou didst appoint angels as guardians.”
That wasn’t enough. Something more, an action involving the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity had to happen. “And when the fullness of time had come, Thou didst speak to us through Thy Son Himself, by Whom Thou didst make the ages—”
Meditate on the archetypal icon of St. Andrei Rublev: Hospitality of Abraham, the Holy Trinity contemplating humanity’s salvation, and notice the cup, sometimes containing a lamb, on the table. That is the cup that the Son of God was contemplating in Gethsemane—“Not My will, but Thy will” i.e., the Father’s will be done—and which He accepted, the cup of our salvation, being both Lamb of God and Shepherd in search of Adam, the lost sheep. The phrase from the Good Friday prayer asking another profound question, why He had to be crucified, is answered: I came to earth seeking Adam and when I didn’t find him, I went into Hades to search for him.”
Now is the time to look into the icon of the Resurrection. We find Christ descending into the nethermost regions beyond life, and we discover the same One Who posed the question to Adam: “Where are you?” asking it again, there in the bowels of Hades. Of course He knew all along, from Eden through the history of the world where Adam, Eve and their children were gathered. He comes to find and rescue the children of the primeval disobedient couple. The God-man swoops into the place where Adam’s offspring fear to go, sensing death as a foreboding place of total darkness, dressed in the color of ethereal lightness, His vestment billowing with the wind of the Holy Spirit, His glorious feet wounded by the spikes of the cross breaking down the entry, “trampling down death by death” seizing Adam with the same hand that was nailed helplessly to the beam, now filled with divine strength, then whisking him, his spouse and all their children away from that place which is no place, but a condition, so that in the beautiful phrase from the Chrysostom Paschal homily: ”—the Lord, jealous of His honor, will accept the last even as the first—let everyone enter into the joy of your Lord.” Indeed, honor and glory are His; for finding us, Adam’s offspring, and returning us to Him.