2023-04-08 A Meditation on An Event
“So that you also may know how I am and what I am doing, Tychicus the beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will tell you everything. I have sent him to you for this very purpose, that you may know how we are, and that he may encourage your hearts. Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with love incorruptible.” (Eph 6:21–24 ESV)
When an event comes our way, as witnesses, it is a bit like waking up divested of all former duties. Our caged thoughts and patterned routines suddenly awakened, and we bearing in our hearts an impossible possibility: something that we saw or experienced that just broke all the molds. Something that affected us with a little inspiration. Something that changed the very LP of our speech, so that the quiet ones would blabber with excitement and the loud ones would stammar about what-all God is up to.
Spirit-wise, what-all God is up to regarding something apropos for this day in Holy Week: to hold lightly a Man going to His death. Not to be a heavy church body, not to weigh down with the competition as to who is contrite in the pews, the glances askance at our “impenitent” neighbors. Rather, this Man who spoke right to us, is now giving us an Event and a Fact that someway or day will mean everything to us. That is the lightness: not all are penitent on the turn of a dial or drop of a dime. But there is no guilt-trip. Today we celebrate His death on a “Good” day like Good Friday, and know Him safe and rested in the tomb on Holy Saturday. Today we store up that utterance regarding a Savior who was all for “us”, who dared to love us and push our envelope in regards to that love. Loved us more than we love ourselves. Loved us to teach us simply of the Father’s will for us, of His experience He wants us to have.
We so royally and expensively outfitted, will do our duty if only it is to react and be affected by the Event. We go to our confessional easy, not down for the count any longer, but finding a friend in a location and locus we knew only in a nightmarish awakening as to a no-go zone. A place frightful and misshapen. Affections disordered or at last honest. Workings coming together according to a grander plan than any we dare to aspire unto. A grand plan where God continues to lift, without regret, our frame up unto the heights of nearly the angels (Ps 8:5; Heb 2:7,9). So to see the Event is to emerge joyous, with happy greetings on the street corners and in the churches, no dour or heavy guilt but a knowledge He did what had to be done, without asking permission; he Died on His own recognisance, His own plea carried all the way unto His death and amazing final words. In this we regale our fellow celebrators, for the hymns carried heavenward and the reminders of wisdom that we are but dust. In this we can go easy into the night, because we saw an Event promising already of Resurrection strength, the strength to see no limits to Man’s capacity to love his or her fellow or gal.