2024-06-25 A Meditation on Choosing Our Battles

“12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Tim 1:12-17 ESV)

The line drawn in the sand: we do not always get to choose our battles; we also can be swayed into a decision or a stand that is on the wrong terms: people say, “The call is to repent” and we, we respond: “I don’t need, at this moment, to repent of all that much”. When instead we should always lead with the willingness, with the contrition, with the refusal to make that the litmus test.

For, people use the tools they have: if Christian teaching, then the call to Repent can become a sort of panacea for anything we struggle to come to terms with. A person who seems—or whose reputation has preceded them—to come from a dastardly different ecosystem. A person who is just so exasperating. A sense of being harassed and helpless. A sense of being called to stare down a Denial.

It can really be a painful existence, then, to feel silenced and unable to hear at times what we are accused of. But it is also liberating to remember: there is truth in that assertion even if it lies counter to my own sense of Absolution. There is truth that we can Celebrate Together around plain-spoken—your turn? My turn?—revisiting of the more stupid times and what we got up to.

And yet, the lack of humor, the cursing and the hoarding of another man or woman’s sins: this recalls to us what a joy to have these treasures in jars of clay, the treasure of the Gospel: it is indeed a truth worth repeating, that those who seek to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted. And yet: yet we wish not to make that claim at times; we wish simply to “get along”, to have that “hour of fellowship when we might first for once ‘see’ each other”. We are hurting at the wild blasphemies and claims Christ’s mercy isn’t sufficient for “someone around here”.

Someone in these parts: it is likewise the plain attack on the soldier’s call in this vein of conversation: people are offended and unwilling to face the simple fact of having answered a Call, having put one’s career On the Line, literally willing and able to put Life on the Forefront, to live for others and to die even if alone, in service and towards the obedience and the gifting unto our Master and our Peers.

Yet who can this hour forget to worry of losing sight of Sin’s Infamy; that we do well to accept the word of the church’s brethren, or—sadly at times a divided set—its sistren, that we will talk today of Confession unto Absolution; we will acknowledge the patterns of lust asking for its few moments of pleasure, of curated hatred asking for its Resolve to dissipate, of tolerated judgment on others to dispel. We seek this hour to Recall being there for one another; Hey, let me get up a proper doctrine on that simple matter… please do accept most pressing Apologies for losing sight of the Broad Picture… please look at what is on record, too, amidst so much Petrine denials, the Facts Faced. And pay heed with me to the dastardly Comfort Zones so uncontrite or not pained a bit to take on Christ’s wounds for the sake of one another,