2024-04-19 A Meditation on Hidden Meaning

“10 I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!— 2 I beg of you that when I am present I may not have to show boldness with such confidence as I count on showing against some who suspect us of walking according to the flesh. 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. 5 We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. 7 Look at what is before your eyes. If anyone is confident that he is Christ’s, let him remind himself that just as he is Christ’s, so also are we. 8 For even if I boast a little too much of our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I will not be ashamed. 9 I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. 10 For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.” 11 Let such a person understand that what we say by letter when absent, we do when present. 12 Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.” (2 Cor 10:1-12 ESV)

Shrouded decision-making processes, the march to event-horizon and to combat is a march of mentalist game, in the final issue submitted, succumbing, to the Spirit who nurtures and leads: we are led, through our difficult hour, through our moment-at-large, to the all-hands-on-deck, to the master plan. Our master plan is informed because of not accumulated fastings alone, but one fast, one Discovery of God’s Cross, one desire to turn our lives around and serve for the Glory of the Lord.

For His Name to be echoing in the rafters, and His Name to be our battle cry, our colors aloft, our flag and justice league, our purpose and sobriety quilt. Somehow, that shrouded decision, in some future historian’s more leisurely perusal, was indeed landing squarely in this corner, in our corner, in God’s Cross and His emphasis. God emphatically teaching us through lesson and caution, through fast and jurisprudence, through familiar and unfamiliar reassessment, awareness, situationally cognisant and copacetic, coping and making do: we are the Lord’s people, not so much drafted, even, as enlisted, as signing up, as aware and dutiful that the emissary is working in our midst, that the recruitment is for real this time around, that our patent colors and flag, is as we protest, Peace. It is that Peace so emphatic it gives reason and cause to all comers, yet too immediately such cruciform Peace calls out War.

For it irks. It tickles. It is not that we were all pristine, immaculate, but that we had this anointing on our heads. We were anointed in order to, almost accidentally, to launch the fleet and say the good Word. Our Word is His tool of His seven-day creation. Our Word is God using each of us to speak things into being. Our Word is winsome, dominant, masterful, even as we acknowledge: a more perfect national Cause or Pride may even be possible, but no matter, we are already in the win column, already in the Elect motive, already hearing and speaking the Winner’s mantra.

Our mantra, then, revolves from the Cross of God, who asks us gently to divest ourselves of all personal guile, and have His guise, His smooth operation, His efficient and matter-of-fact obviousness. He builds, He supplies food for the sower and oil to the gears. He has given us a Cause that emotes no Pride, evokes no self-justifying Hubris. We were indeed humbled, and from this—not once we recovered, but in the thick of it—we spoke forth and launched out and signed to the dotted line name and number. We properly Served. We rightly Observed the hallowed Cross. We certainly Gifted, from meager circumstances, the Master’s winning side. His side wins, because it was pierced. His side wins, because it does not dawdle but also does not indulge nor humor nor placate nor baby-sit the Called and Consecrated emissary. We are treated as grown men and women. We are allowed to fall away. We are allowed, to offend, to speak offense and be mocked, ridiculed—at times rightly so—in order we might be blessed as the ones Emergent and Sanctified: our humiliation is our sanctification’s pose. Posteur, platform, purpose in the stars, is ours because the Cross once humbled us, once became our name-in-the-column of Winner and of a war, future but already ours to claim as Won.

The shrouded decision-making echoes brash militancy and weaponry so regrettable, yet as the world goes belly-up the opportunity for a crystalline Community emerges, Grace becomes our rebellion against the hard steel; we serve and live in dichotomy to the weapons of war. The spiritual war has its weapons just as much as any patent conflict of the flesh: lawsuit and shunning, pressure points and temptations, suggestions evil and encouragements of ill intent. To emerge is to Overcome, to avoid being suggestible and susceptible. We indeed preach a better Word through our spiritual sacrifice, our confidence in God’s Resurrection even as fed to the beasts. Maybe today is our last hour, or maybe it will come in the by-and-by: we wish to be known for simple measures of encouragement to the brethren; this is a calling not to be ashamed of, not to forget, not to categorize as mere sin or see in it a rat race most unfortunate. We were in an idyll of the Spirit when we spoke; we were in truth, more broadly seen, in unfortunate dress, but for this idyllic hour we were able to speak and to convict and to reassure and to make the Grace-over-mechanic instrument of War. The victory is ours to secure.