Last Adam

Adam was created naked.  And he lived naked.  Then he sinned, and sin requires covering.  So he lived the rest of his life, covered.  And he died covered.  Covering is a kind of forgiveness. 

I expect he was hardly ever naked, after his experiment with fig leaves. A fig leaf, I expect, because it would cover pubic hair as well.  For some reason, knowledge of good and evil called attention to the generative organs in their maturity.  They weren't guilty of being naked -- they were ashamed of it.  Shame is a social emotion, and stems from fear of what someone else might think.  No, not fear -- not of judgment or disappointment.  Some sort of weight, a very heavy burden.  It makes us shrink.  

Foolishness aside, that's why Adam could cover himself with a fig leaf.  

Testicles retract -- the fear response of the cremasteric reflex.  The penis shrinks because stress inhibits blood-flow, or, here, -volume.  

Afterwards Adam was covered in leather, the skin of animal sacrifices.  Naked leather, preferred perhaps because it looked like human skin.  Not so much not-quite-naked, as naked without shame -- almost, innocent again.  

This is why Jesus was crucified naked.  Stripped, and beaten all the way to Golgotha, then lifted and on display.  Love of cruelty aside -- it was after all Satan's best chance at satisfaction -- crucifixion was the most public Roman method of crime prevention.  Obey, or this will happen to you.  Some punishment is about justice, and some is about prevention.  No one being crucified was allowed the petty mercy of modesty.  Dehumanization was the whole point.  

It has bothered me, that it's taking 2000 years for Jesus to return.  What, 100 generations?  80?  Talk about tarrying.  Then I realized.  It's only one generation.  Ours.  Yours, mine, theirs, everyone's, from early AD to Century Twenty-one.  Everyone dies, and then the judgment.  We think we have authority because we can count the decades.  But our memory doesn't even extend the length of our own lifespan.  

It has bothered me, really, what Abraham said on the climb up Mount Mariah.  "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Isaac asked.  "My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering."  But it wasn't a lamb -- it was a ram, caught by the horns in a snarl of thorns.  A ram is not a lamb.  Then I was reminded, John the Baptist, seeing Jesus walking past, points and says, "Behold, the Lamb of God, that takes away the sin of the world."  Both the ram, and the Lamb, trapped in thorns.  It's just that it took two thousand years for God to provide himself, a lamb for a burnt offering, on a mountaintop. 

So when was sin, finally, uncovered?  We're only told of Adam's shame, covered almost from the moment it was conceived.  But when was guilt stripped, paraded, staked out, lifted up -- mocked, scorned, hated?  Adam, the first Adam, was spared this.  It was reserved for Jesus.  

J