2024-02-08 A Meditation on Dutiful

“5 I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, 6 and perhaps I will stay with you or even spend the winter, so that you may help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 For I do not want to see you now just in passing. I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits. 8 But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, 9 for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. 10 When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. 11 So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.” (1 Cor 16:5-11 ESV)

Uniquely positioned, it is a perch that affords all so situated with holy duty: the response to abundant need, to copious wondering, wandering so unaddressed; the pastor’s call is the pew sitter’s call, to race to a duty no time to adjudicate with formal structures. Formal address, formal committee or delegation, formal mediating structures, these are goal and means, but also there is that unique perch that does if nothing else inspire the ones so situated to dream big.

To dream big, meaning to hearken to the drumbeat, to the solemn dance with mortality, to see penchant, determination, end-product, as a trance not worried over, because it is too severe, too serious, too mortal. The worry is then already wilting and causing cancerous growth. It is already blocking and obfuscating. It is already trance and circumstance unholy, calling and beckoning forth to the strange soldier who hears her or his unique call, call unique and unregistered, unofficial except in the King’s ledger sheet. Christ the King watching in silent prayer as things unfold no managerial nor employed persona would have the patience to watch unfold. God has patience, God lets the treasonous milieu unfold around these His solemn flock, not as punishment for crimes committed, not as sick fascination, but because of each embedded soldier’s call to Rise Up, confidently to hearken to a Call unique to their strange but for real situation.

This is the solemn prayer that cannot fix things except that it fixes all things. It rewards those doomed to death with moments of peace and an oasis an enemy resents. An enemy balks at the notion these their fellow competitors aren’t miserable or begging. Instead, prayer is voiced confident and child-like, like a child with their mother or father, with brave Request and even braver Observation. To attribute unto God all that has transpired on the good side of the ledger. To show gratitude yet true competence and confrontation with a life unlivable or pained. We no masters of our own attention span yet in that daily defeat and forlorn study, rewarded with fresh takes and a breed of insight we scarcely knew was around the corner. We, given time and circumstance to pray for a breakthrough in the cancer and in the deathly dance. Others sensing in us some composure and letting it all vent in our general direction. Or we ourselves, soldiers of the Crown, of the Nation, of the Community, learning to lean on each other, to be about the business of regrouping and pit stops and major Healings of an hourly or daily variety. We bluster, cold lamping and warm fellowshipping, with a song Determined, Outlandish, Brave, to learn the ropes of the crime of the blight of the mildew and to turn it to Duty and Boast. We are already ready for this task. We are already prepared, to see the Divine in the bedridden warrior’s time of patient prayer. To see the Divine in the loner’s gentle trust fall. To see the Divine in the worry appeased, in the consumption fed and healed, in the Hope against hope for a tomorrow of better song and truer salvation. Our means of salvation are cause for horror in the works-righteous, in the career-allegiant, in the ones denying God’s scandalous Cross. God’s path is direct and focused around our biggest concern, that somehow we earn our keep, that somehow we pay our dues, that somehow we serve on our own terms. His Cross literally asks us to see ourselves Gifted already and in the now, gifted with the most important reality, that of sins forgiven and made mockery of. We mock the guilt-trip. We scathe at the horrific blame game. We rise and serve the dastardly refusal to concede even a moment’s pause unto claims of guilt and of shaming and of sins called persistent.