2023-10-28 A Meditation on Judgment

“28 But turning to them Jesus said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. 29 For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’ 30 Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us,’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ 31 For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?”” (Lk 23:28–31 ESV)

We discover a level of conscious thought that lies near to mountains falling and judgment brought to place. The Christian comes to terms with their waking thought met with their sleeping wonder. The soldier liminally marches, liminal because near to a selfhood unfamiliar, strange, alien, to the status quo. The liminal march has understood a Body “out there”, of souls and minds and bodies consigned unto deep religious expression. That is, we need not make it on our own effort: we believe in a wakeful encounter, a prognosis of duty, a clarion call of service.

This Call tantalizes the hidden language of right religious expression, terms like “Law”, like “Gospel” bring to us the reality of many souls caught up in bondage and trials; our pew neighbor as much as the unbelieving outsider. If today we have an epiphany, be assured it will be scoffed at and its simple prescription—stand in awe, pray without ceasing, wonder at the Promise—will meet with all manner of temptation, temptation to make grander plans.

That is, each of us is called this hour and this day to Awaken. Something wearied us. Something respected us enough to do battle. Something loved on us in those ways we don’t boast, those hidden reasons sometimes people do like us, or in other circumstances the hidden qualities never appreciated by others. We were called to Awaken because we were that strange provenance of “Christian” by name, yet overly misunderstood, our trials not fully appreciated, hastily prayed for, respected as our call of duty.

The soldier, therefore, has a snarl, a cusp-of-reality sense that all mankind is in veins and patterns of mutual expression, and we… we believe our strain is the right one. We believe ours is quality and to be shared with our similarly-called neighbor. We do not demure, nor put on faux humility as a litany or a sequence of prayers and confessions is read: we sin if we mock up a religiosity feigned.

Instead we understand that liminal vision, the mountains called upon to fall on us, the judgment winnowing, as needful of souls built up in Courage. We need souls who can emerge from the playtime of ignominy, of birth-pains living, partly there, not yet there, all there. We are suddenly called—as Christians—to envision that future state when we are respectable and members once more of corporate projects and buzzing along as those called and consecrated, to team living, to corporate citizenship, to project-wide gaze and inspiration. This team living is found as we live into the Gospel, recognizing in each other a strange reason to forgive: we forgive this friend or that, because they are reaching out plaintively, to loving things, to beauteous things, to scarcely understood things, yet to things that show life burgeoning forth. A photo of color and of life. A mutual excitement and perhaps silence at the name of “Grace”. It became worthy of our time to investigate this “Grace” and to re-convert the curmudgeonly pew-sitter.

It was no claim to have solved the problem of sin, but rather a hastening leap ahead of all the litanies and confessions, to belong Today, to serve at the Altar, to be consecrated unto Service. We serve, by-and-by losing all cynicism about the other half, the ruined-by-temptation facts of life speaking this plainly: that Man, Woman, is divided in their outlay, some unto wicked deeds, some unto untold meek service, bold service, an infused and attributed Righteousness that leaps hurdles and detonates bombs of Peace and of Inspired Living.