2023-07-11 A Meditation on Obedience

“27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, 28 saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.” 29 But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men. 30 The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. 31 God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. 32 And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”” (Ac 5:27–32 ESV)

Command. Control. Structure. Obedience. As rising to the challenge, as hearing and falling into line, as saying “I will”; the Lord’s intention is to have an expansive conception of self and of environment. We reckon with the soul “out there” to whom we share flesh and are one body with: our church community, God’s “Body” on earth. We see Jesus in others, moving beyond our own sense of sovereignty. We marvel that such-and-so, this one or that one, made their camp together with us, rising together, falling together.

Something irreverent does burrow: free society shows disdain and disrespect, pretending all is done in humor: “Tell us more!”; “How can I serve this God of yours?”; “If you are thus situated, well it’s only fair that I should also be thus situated!” Yet the venus fly trap, the certainty of the soldier, is that no irreverence or mockery is done in waste: we treat the jokester as one signing on the dotted line of service, if that is what they are bandying about, that is what they are wishing upon themself. Good man. Good woman. We’ll take their enlistment seriously, for we are serious. We are real. Our mission is real. Our faith is real. And we have faith that they, too, shall mature and reckon eventually with the call of duty. We are thus magnanimous, expansive, inviting, and unafraid.

Yet to heal our own thoughts, is to remember ways we are rich: in friendship, in healthy self-confidence regarding our own likability and ability to stay in fellowship with a new brother or sister, to make timely apologies where needed and all the more timely bold claims of deliverance, praise notes and ecstatic utterances. Some know themselves only through that timeless one experience of being loved by another, and to unbury this, to reacquaint ourselves in cautious dance, is to rediscover and unearth where our self-identity came from.

So to fight is to accumulate and collect sovereign Call and perspicacious Warmth. We are warm, for the journey, by this one or that one. We do not fast ourselves to such an utmost as to forget to make the sigh and sign on the dotted marriage certificate of Service. That is, we are messy and communal, dating or fellowshipping without that church’s fright that any single “date” would be gossipped about and turned to some premature vows. Yet vow we do, in an instant, with a new partner, who somehow let us free, let us go, at precisely the right moment: just as more was offered, “No, that was just a test; I would never ask you to do that”. A bit like Isaac and the sacrifice of Jacob, we once upon a time felt we had to introduce some level of hurt and brokenness, but now we know all things are eternal: that hurt was already there, and was ultra, was mellifluous and saddening; now, in fright of our own slowness, we honor the disowned ones in our Body. For the pain goes all the way down, and the healthsome backdrop is eternal, immovable, undeniable; Peter’s denial of His God on the night of the sentencing, was forgiven. We, too, hide from our errors in a lifetime of labors and work, but we need not: we are forgiven and blessed, communal in finding Heaven amidst Earth, joint in reckoning that another has their own peculiar, distinctive, brand of Jesus-walk. They do unthanked-for deeds for us. They accept a cross in life. Singleness. Duty to a faltering, disowned brother or sister. Unattractive digs accepted. Modest ambitions undertaken. So the command, the control, the structure, the obedience, is held up and high, despite free society’s burrowing: we have an Attorney in the sky, and many sons and daughters are being brought to the light of day via our service. We are used by such Father to bring sons and daughters to obedience. We are sacrificed even, put into action, and if we personally are inoffensive, the One we work for is not. He is hated. She is maligned. God on High is plotted against and discredited.