The Legend of the Grape Tree

When Adam kept the Garden at the world’s dawning, there stood all manner of trees from which he was invited freely to eat. The apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum; and the juniper, the cacao, the apricot, the chestnut, the pecan, the mulberry, and the hazelnut, and of course, the fig. And countless others of an enormous variety available to man. Eden was the most delightful of all groves the earth had ever known; rightly was it called paradise.

But there was also one tree, one kind, standing in the midst of the garden, at the heart of the grove, of which man was commanded not to eat. And alas, it was that tree, a tree whose fruit was most delightful but forbidden, that that caused man to fall.

For the fruit of the grape tree was irresistible.

Though strictly forbidden to Adam, and so also to his wife with him, the grape was his undoing. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat, choosing thus, in succumbing to temptation, to set aside the strict divine command and warning, “Thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

And so man fell, and so the earth also fell, and with Adam’s fall the earth began to yield thistles and thorns, and all manner of evil things. For God in his mercy did not curse the man himself, but instead the curse meant for him was deflected to the ground, and so the ground bore Adam’s curse, and began to yield evil things.

And the grape tree, that most magnificent of all the trees that were in the wood, fell down under the weight of that curse, and could no longer stand. Rather, like the cursed serpent that was doomed to go on his belly, so that tree was cursed to become a vine.

But God was merciful, yea, a thousand times merciful, and made a great promise to bruise the head of the cursed serpent, even as in order to do so the Seed of the woman by whose heel the serpent was crushed would itself be bruised in that act. The Seed of the woman must finally bear the curse to redeem fallen man and to nullify and bring to naught the curse of the ground. And the curse deflected to the earth caused thorns to grow, and those cursed thorns became the crown upon His head, as He bore that curse.

And the curse by which the grape tree fell was undone as well, for now it would become the emblem not of the curse but of the Crucified. For the grape tree was no longer a tree but a vine, and as a vine would require a lattice on which to grow, in order that its delectable fruit may come forth well, of its seeds. And as the Seed of the woman had to die, that vine was affixed to a lattice, a fence, a cross! —that it might produce that fruit.

And so too that fruit had to be crushed as well by man’s heels, in order to produce its very best, its wine. And so, as it were, it would be trodden in the press of God’s wrath. And by its sacrifice that cursed tree would become the tree of blessing.

And thus, by the sweat of man’s brow would fine Wine be produced, alleluia! And by that Wine we, drinking, are saved. For the Seed of the woman Himself declared, I am the Vine. And so too, He was like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; His leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. And so the cursed tree was turned at last into a tree of life, for the healing of the nations.

And we are saved by the fruit of the Vine.