2022-12-27 A Meditation on Effective Ideas

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” (1 Co 15:3 ESV)

Sacramental theology is concerned with ways God intervenes, enters in, becomes real and tangible in a physical world. Sacraments are an “outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace”.

Ideas have literal effect on us. They can pick us up, or relegate us to the doldrums. So too when we fight. When we fight, we make efforts of a material variety in the interest of adhering to a spiritual Truth. Somehow, our fighting spirit becomes eternal. Our dedication to the cause becomes notable on a perfect level. Our swords and shields brandished do make more than an analogy to what is eternal: they become God’s perfect, eternal solution in a world gone crazily off track.

So we dismiss the plaintive explanations; we do not say any longer, “Do some good deeds”; “I see humility as the pathway to success”. These are a pleading effort to explain how Man can become “Saved”. And they deny the fundamental tenet: that Man requires complete mercy, already—not after some deeds of humility—now—not after some good thoughts take the place of sinful ones—presently—not in a better tomorrow.

Much is gleaned from the pastor who is endeavoring to be “holy” on behalf of her or his sinful congregation, but all that holiness is moot if it is forgotten that without Grace none of us would be saved. Without Grace, our swords and spears become just so much grandstanding and personal aggression. It is an idea that saves us, but an idea felt and lived into on a sacramental level: the idea that Peace is won via a Cross, via an attack from sin and a concomitant fight, because we are fighting souls, via putting all on display on that rugged Cross, via a life of service and sacrifice for others. We warm to ideas, because they are sacramental: they touch us and they form us, they give us this day our daily bread; they adhere us to a God who cares and who asks us to live fully into our role in life as Creatures made and shaped, who abides near us, abiding with His faithful approval of everything about us. For sin has been turned up and turned outward, and sins no longer have dominion over us; they are desiccated, dried out, no longer embarrassing and no longer damning.

With Grace we believe in a sacramental “intrusion” or “intervention”. We believe we are fighting on an eternal stage. We believe God is using material outlays to hint at eternal ones. So our swords parrying become parable of Jesus’ parry going to His Cross. Jesus allowed defeats, because those preached verity, honesty about the situation, keeping on our toes: we get to turn all defeat to Victory, because it pattern-matches what each of us does experience in life: no, we weren’t ever the “most popular” or the “right man or woman for the job”. We had to prove ourselves. We had deep despair leading to deeper friendships, just not friendships with quite everyone out there. Some were too “cool” for us. Some left us feeling judged and unpopular. It is astonishing how true-to-life junior high and high school can be. And it is equally true that these stigmas carry forward into later life: we now have coped, we have accepted our place in the world, we stay away from the urgency and demand of that time period. But still we can pinch ourselves and wake up. Still we can catalog anxieties and depressions, joy and defeat. And still we can turn to a Lord who was defeated, in order that He might announce His victory over death.