Who Am I?

A Reflection on the Second Reading for February 24th, 2019:
​Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

​1 Corinthians 15

Brothers and sisters: “The first man, Adam, became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the physical, and then the spiritual.

The first man was from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the one of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the one of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the one of dust, we will also bear the image of the one of heaven.

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​I made an unexpected discovery lately, in a slightly unexpected place. The Deuterocanonical Books. I’ve spent years reading the Bible like a Roomba, randomly rolling over patches of it often enough that I figured I’d suck it all in eventually. And then last year I fell in with a gang of people from different walks of life who were reading through the Bible in One Year using the YouVersion app. I decided to read it aloud. The shape of the words in my mouth changed what I heard. When I reached the end in December, rather than feeling triumphant, I felt a little disappointed. I’d run out. Then it dawned on me, I hadn’t! I started reading the books in-between the Old and the New Testaments. It was like I’d picked up my Roomba and taken it to a room in my house I never knew was there. A couple of weeks ago, as I was reading out loud in Sirach, Adam’s name came up, and I wrote a note to God about what I heard as the shape of the words left my mouth…
 
“Shem and Seth are also honoured, but of all God's creatures, Adam was the greatest.”  (Sirach 49:16 CEVDC)
 
After a long list of heroes. Adam. I never thought of him that way. Never really thought of him as a person, more of an idea. But he walked with You, in perfection, for a while. Greatness. Let me walk with You.
 
People and ideas seem to come in clusters. I don’t think or hear of them for ages, and then all of a sudden, they keep showing up in my mind or my life. I find Adam again in today’s reading.  I approach the reading as my breath moves through my mouth, and I can taste the words. And I write a note to God about an unexpected flavour I find there:
 
First Adam… a man of dust
It was in the relationship with You that he had life. Breath.
When he left You he became less.

"First Adam… a man of dust. It was in the relationship with You that he had life--Breath. 
​When he left You he became less."

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Second Adam… became life-giving Spirit
You were always Spirit.
In being man, taking on death, You became life giving. 
You brought back our Breath.
 
I really don’t know who I am without You. I tend to become something like 
whoever I’m with. Enough so that I sometimes wonder just what’s really me and 
not a reflection of someone else, or a mask I hope they’ll like. Am I really 
anything all by myself? 
 
But with You, I reflect You, and desire to be someone who pleases You, who 
makes You smile. And somehow this doesn’t subsume me. This creates me. 

In Greek, ζῳοποιέω is the root word for "life-giving". From ζωή... life: spiritual and physical existence, and ποιέω... make; cause; create.

​Noreen Smith

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