2023-07-04 A Meditation on Steadiness

“14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” (Ro 6:14 ESV)

We ricochet here and there, challenged by an inner voice always to rediscover, to remount, to reassign, heart and inclination unto a daring raid: we raid in the Name of Christ. We steal from all the blase circumstances that are merged with death. We have overcome death, and yet to live is constantly to make the daring leap, to embrace what to others is empty winds and invisible movements… something Spiritual. To live, for us, is to become composed even amidst war and wild surroundings.

For in those wildernesses, is the age-old dynamic key to our calling as pastors and lay leaders, as healers: that it is precisely the home base, amidst the arbiters of so-called “Law” and “True Religion” where temptations infect and fester. Intervention is needed, and such intervention is inspired by our Lord on His Cross, to be done with a genuine foundation of love. More than love, of Grace. It is the approach unto the unthinkable, that is place and circumstance for a no-time-to-delay, let’s get you showered up, let’s get you some clean clothes; all this with proof in past expeditions: it will spell widespread healing. Simply to see one bound sinner released, will subconsciously help all of us to face those demonic hidden fears. We fear to become what in earlier faith never much threatened us, because we were under Grace not Law. The Church is, as evidenced by the pained efforts to heal, a place confused and so broken. Male-female relations. Parents and children. Two neighbors at odds. Two brothers, two sisters. Pastor oppressed and hounded. For, genuine Grace is a brand of beauty that immediately causes guard to be dropped, and covetousness, aggression, moments of verite, telling moments, to surface. Fancy that, we were doing well, until utterly cared for; when shown beauty or invite, we immediately blabbered and said who knows what. We immediately decided without any higher reasoning or caution, on a line of action. And when we so catch ourselves doing, we turn to our friends who just may have weathered a similar personal storm. The automata of the uncircumcised heart, now joined to the simple, inexperienced to some blessed extent, warrior of prayer and of thoughtfulness.

For sin will have no dominion over you! Ultimately, it isn’t the particular sins we are characterized by in God’s eyes, but the spiritual sins of reliance on the “Law”. That Law immediately creates a crisis situation: the appearance of law-abidingness, and the forgetfulness of a time before we had “Law” when we were in some miraculous way simply observant of a parent’s or teacher’s wishes made in love, or the distant oversight as we made the same parent or teacher cringe. Growing pains. Outright rebellion. Yet all this in a time precursor to the damnable Law of the faith community. So we have no perfect oasis in this life. We rewind, and fight new battles today not unlike older battles yesterday.

The appearance of law-abidingness causes us to forget it is always with some penitence that we approach such holy relationships of parent or teacher. And the uptight efforts to make the grade, to wear the right hat to church on Sunday, the right tie, is in deadly denial of a dynamo internal that becomes what it fears, becomes what it can not believe there is any room left for grace to address, because we’ve forgotten the genuine article.

“Get there!” “Get to church!” “Preach to yourself if need be!” “Make your approach with simple reverence, and you will be healed!” Such are many in our midst, already post-sin, already experienced with the dynamic of penitence met with immediate restoration. For, our cruise and auto-pilot is towards holy mirth and more innocent sins, trusting as we do the Bible to make a hierarchy and bless us with simpler faults, safer boasts, less costly selfishness around others. And then, back to square one: the joyous release as such minor sins are even themselves forgiven. So we do not ever forget what Church is about. And we never stop pointing to that simple bedrock because we are never in this life immune, wild sins attacking us precisely in our innocent new digs, so: get you presentable; get you respectable; get you cleaned up! It is a franchise that will propagate, a pattern that will cover us in new life, a tale well done to tell.