2023-12-06 A Meditation on Two Worlds

“6 Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. 4 But let each one test his own work, and then his reason to boast will be in himself alone and not in his neighbor. 5 For each will have to bear his own load. 6 Let the one who is taught the word share all good things with the one who teaches. 7 Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. 8 For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life. 9 And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. 10 So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.” (Ga 6:1–10 ESV)

Bearing the wounds of the crowd, the sage soldier does not cease to appeal in the Name of the One who suffered on our behalf. This is no litmus-test religion, but a concrete appeal, as the soldier of the Christian faith once again finds sanctuary and welcome precisely where the Works of Jesus are not forgotten. Precisely where His infamy and rejection by so many, is not forgotten. Precisely where His lamp is lit for a little while longer, that we may find our own cross to bear and enter the gates of the Kingdom with gladsome tidings.

Our own cross to bear: Jesus people do well to surround with sincerity the old fact that Christ died for sins. Christ died because of Man’s sin. Christ died even as another eternal word was on His mind, and as to live would have been to make the whole conversion thing that much easier. Easier because of yet more multitudinous crowds. Easy because of more healed paralytics. Easy because of more convicted officials or parents. Easy, just because He was magnetic and all social life began to do homage to Him, like shards of iron around a magnet.

Therefore He was there to heal the war between the centurion and the rabble, by showing His own class-busting ministry was just as content to minister to a centurion as to the crowds. His own gleaning after an early life lesson, that these too are friends. You just have to look at things a certain way.

Therefore we enter each other’s reality, not with critical bent, but with heart open, indeed, heart aflame, because a purposeful spirit is needed, a winsome joy is called for, only an in-your-face ecstasy shall bust open the shells of timidity, of undue caution, of wizened pain, of bad experience. So too we are “all in”, failing if we go lax even for a moment, in that great crowd who does know Jesus and does make joke after joke about Jesus with us, yet in the end salutes or nods in the general direction of the ones all called, on whirlwind tour, escape velocity reaching, alert to the sleepwalker, unction to the beleaguered, praise to the grateful, friendly to the stranger. One tone of friendship can heal everything. One consideration most thoughtful can endear us to this Gospel. Are we genuine, are we sincere, are we awake and alert?

Two worlds collide; the set-apart parishioner in haste to his or her passing project, nods in the general direction of Church vis-a-vis it being an ideal and a hope, no time to get dragged down in its myopic fantasies and games, but gleaning and agglomerating and coalescing a good many principles, artful speech, sense of parables in what we say, listening with instruction new of how to listen, sympathy for each other’s situation. To say, “I want this from you”, “I want you to learn that”, is perhaps—just perhaps—to overlook our own need to be taught and to come to the table in sincerity. It is to overlook—just maybe—our own proclivity to hide behind a fast and an endless accepted routine, just don’t “rock my boat” for I’m sitting pretty here all free of other people’s sins!

On some level our theology is at loggerheads with that of others, yet No we boldly say to the claim we aren’t friends, here and across a divide—promise you this, they chose the divide not us, we boast. But in truth we, too, need to love what by instinct and early training we abhor or revile from in disgust. We need to find the game and the art and the war in genuine human outreach, sympathies, sincere friendships some and far in between, but there. We only need one or two friends, out of a throng. We only need one Voice Divine, one Cross Borne for our sins, one Invite in that Cross’s Name, to sit at the table. So is it a theological difference, or a difference made up for by loving one another? Love is greater than our theological distinctives and clever dichotomies (1 Co 13:1).

Yet, too, we are like halfway up a creek without a paddle, so potent and divisive and masked is that love for the Law that no longer says “Hello”, but has made its accusation of sin and then sits pretty waiting for the target to reach some fantasized repentance. That is, the soul patronized or too directly flattered, will self-hate and point a pre-planned, harbored, accusatory finger. Lest Grace should rule the day. Lest Rise Up shall be heard. Lest Friend shall be the M. O.

Are we really, then, all that different? Yet sober up, you embedded fighter! They are radically “other” to our gladsome tidings and confident composure! They have saluted the Law for years! They resent some one thing just barely heard, no not our politics nor our mode of dress, but some one thing, the claim to have received mercy, the clamoring after some due process of law to give the accused a chance to know the charges, to speak in her or his defense. Yet likewise this lazy postponement of Encounter and of Assessment of the Charges, allows a silent Movement to get underway! This frigid calculation, the end of the romantic and beginning of the cold bargaining table, means no longer do we look to one another as the image bearers of the Lord, but rather harp on worldly things, who gives what and how much, and so on.

Yes, for to love Jesus is to be romanced. It is to be loved when no one else saw reason to love us. It is to be there for the sad times, and be there for the gladsome times. It is to ride this magic carpet ride together, in unison, missing nothing except the presence of our chief friend and advocate. Who has been enabling us from a distance, but this Incarnational season of Advent is preparing to show up in long anticipated force. Pray, then, that we be not led astray by easy and convenient teachings, but that the Church—the “pan” Church, wide and universal—know both walks of life, the sinners and the saints, both coming together with Intended Peace because the alternative is too great. Too easy simply to abuse then say “thus they did to Jesus”. Too easy to find fault then say “thus they found in Jesus”. Too easy to lazily bless then say “thus they loved lazily on our Lord Jesus”.

The sum and substance, then, is the believer’s hope: a hope that one day their season of hardship and of repentance shall be heard. The soldier is quick to point out the efficacy of the confession of sin, as practiced in church services or in the privacy of one’s room. We are now forgiven, and need no heavy reminder that it is only for a season or that we probably won’t stick to it. We shall indeed remain forgiven. We shall indeed listen, that our sins may be made known, should anyone take the time to love on us and point out our flaws. Yet too the sincere prophecy is not made on the basis of an accounting for sin, that is, we are not better prophets and pundits because of having fewer sins, rather we speak, we prophecy, we lead and we minister, out of that place that knows ignominy and hardship at the hands of our sinful frames, our beleaguered bodies, our strangled presence in the crew of prayer partners: it is difficult there to think clearly and sharply, of what bold words we would like to impart. It is difficult to embrace and uphold the Promise: sin gone, you still here, together something beautiful comes about.

Is the Gospel heard? That your fears may subside. That your peace may be Now. That your reassurance may be presented to you. That indeed we may rest at day’s end wearied by the honest employment in the soldiering profession, sure that our deeds have been evidence of our Walk with the Lord. We walk, because it does call on each of us to convert and to bless those near to us, in hope a simple blessing may be all that is needed to go on. We have a vision of the end of frightened or greedy silence. We have a vision, however, that knows our partner’s ignorant behavior in fact may one day convict us: yes, they were acting all along in love; yes, they were bearing my sins too, in their prayers; yes, they were like a formal lesson in who Jesus is, to my eyes and that of my people.