We see from the scriptures that the preeminent symbol of the interplay of divine and human creativity is in agriculture. For example, Genesis 2 introduces the creation of Adam by observing that there was no “shrubs” and the “small plants” had not yet “sprouted.” In other words, certain kinds of plants did not exist and the grains made on the third creation day had not burst above the ground. This was because it “had not rained” and there was “no man” to cultivate the ground. God then brings forth a spring and sends its river into the garden of Eden, where He places the man He created. In other words, the fate of the world is in human hands- it is mankind who will take the divine waters and sprinkle the world with them- bringing forth its grains as a harvest and beautifying the cosmos with shrubbery. That this is genuinely embedded in the text can be seen in the way Genesis 2:5-6 corresponds to the curse pronounced in relation to Adam. We are told that the ground will now sprout “thorns and thistles” and that man will bring forth “bread” by the “sweat of your nose” (literally). The shrubbery is answered by “thorns and thistles” and the “small plants” (i.e. grains) which had not yet sprouted will be worked into bread by backbreaking labor. Israel’s liturgical year is likewise ordered in relation to this divine and human task. Throughout the Bible, the commission to creatively mold the world is signified in the language of agricultural harvest- for it is in agriculture that human beings take the energy present in creation and work it into forms accessible to human beings- energy which then can be utilized to produce other kinds of work and beauty. A person can only paint something beautiful if they have energy. They can only get energy from food. And they can only get that food- ultimately- from the ground. Thus, all creative work is signifiable in food.
This is why Bread must be set before God every Sabbath (Leviticus 24:8). The human week is a mirror of God’s week. During six days, God worked creatively. If the human week echoes God’s week, then human work is conceived in the same terms. On the Sabbath, God rested from His creative work. Likewise, Israel rests from its creative work every Sabbath. This is signified by the placing of Bread before God on that Day- the Bread symbolizes the totality of Israel’s expended energy in molding the world. And this is why from the beginning of Christian history the offering of the Holy Eucharist to God with the taking of a collection for the benefit of the Church. In the Eucharist, Jesus Christ, the Word who is the principle of the existence of the world, plants Himself in the earth and grows into the Tree of the Cross:
(Isaiah 55:10-11) "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
(Isaiah 53:2) For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.
(Isaiah 11:1) There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit.
The death and resurrection of Christ is thus the growth of the Tree of Life and the rising of Eucharist Bread- leavened by the air of the Holy Spirit, suffusing the human body with divine life. Human beings are co-creators with God in their role as workers of the ground. Using the operation of the mind- illumined by the indwelling of the Spirit who imprints upon it the Divine Word who is the paradigm for all natures- in conjunction with the motion of the body, the human race shapes the world from glory to glory. This increased glory is symbolized in agriculture because agriculture is, when we consider the chain of events which allows us to continue to breathe and move, the foundation of all our creative work. When God creates man, He gives man access to the foods made on the third creation day: those foods are the root of the sacramental foods of Bread, Wine, and Oil. As the rising of the land signifies the rising of an altar, so man will place these foods upon the altar of God in the tabernacle (Leviticus 2:1-3, among other texts) as a sign of thanksgiving. And here we begin to recognize the importance of the purpose of the rising of the land. Literally, the text says that the land (understood as an altar) rises so that the dry land can be seen. If sight is the precondition for creative speech, and if man is to creatively speak, then man must be placed where his sight intersects with God’s sight- so that he can look on the cosmos, as it were, with divine eyes. This language continues to pervade the Bible in texts pertaining to the temple, and it is to these texts that we will look in future posts.