2024-09-07 A Meditation on Watchfulness

“32 “But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. 33 Be on guard, keep awake. For you do not know when the time will come. 34 It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his servants in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to stay awake. 35 Therefore stay awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or when the rooster crows, or in the morning— 36 lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. 37 And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake.”” (Mark 13:32-37 ESV)

The trying hour of the night, stay watchful with me saith the Lord; all upon encountering readiness for what spiritual verite is attacked, do ultimately face personal failure or personal responsibility that just eventually we had to go to sleep.

The church person therefore encounters total loss. The church person therefore wakes to a reality that says, at some stage of your manners and manic productivity, at some stage you simply went blotto and could not maintain the war-readiness and the personal intervention, soul interposed in the scene of the attack and of the crime. We tried to interpose ourself, and ebbing and flowing were the awareness that this is indeed Power Hour, Persuasive Hour, Pertinent Hour: it all seemed wondrous and fresh, but then to a distance it removed, that urgency, that heightened glad happy Engagement, Encounter, Entailed fruit of our responsive, reposed, reactive body and mind and soul.

We were curiously affected in positive sense to a Contrition, Confession, Culpability that spelled out newly aware meekness and a curious turn towards those before we had thought were lesser on the societal scale, were to be pitied yes, but were the loserdom amongst the peoples. We turned unto these only to learn they too have a language, and they too have sins. We were therefore called upon to be heroic, to be the elder brother or sister who condescends, to always be in motion towards or away from something, never complacent and yawning through the mannerisms and worship service.

That trying hour, and again, enter stage left: irony. Enter stage right: insincerity. That is, good irony immediately habituates us to ill ironies, the ways we scoff and say “Yeah, right” to the claim Jesus loves us: “Bah!”. If this is Jesus, and this is His love, then count me unaffected. But affected we are, and no more insincere rather counting our selves childlike in sincerity. We count ourselves Ready… until readiness itself is something of total loss, we failed at the watch, we lost sight of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus; we made the idol or saluted the enemy’s flag or simply forgot that life is not so cut-and-dry. Sometimes we are mocked and ridiculed until we finally—feeling solo in this ultimate endeavor—conceded to abnegate on a Principle. We abdicate on a Cause. We adjure on a Bedrock. For, humor saved many souls because it charted a course into the well-trodden yet unknown Experience. It carried with it the Courage of the soldier’s mindset: to take this seriously, after all. To take this as non-negotiable, after all. To take this as tempting but convicting, after all. We were tempted, but this is only terminology for explaining that the very basic Sheep and Shepherd motif is attacked and under duress. The very basic Disciple and Master platform is curved inward to mock its very own sense of duty and appropriate respect. The very basic Yawning Recipient and Crucified Savior hurried-up Now sentiment is forgotten or afforded a lesser standing in our social hierarchy.

Now, we break the native flow toward our own plans and timeframes. Now, we pass the peace because of societal pressure that overcomes personal reclusivity and harping. Now, we harbor the received presents of Grace, which Grace is the assurance that to drop everything and mind the midnight Watch is to enter upon a war that Christ has already charted a victorious course upon, though it shall—it is, or was, sad to know—may cost many lives, may in patience for the later penitents cost many earthly delights and calms and properties and inheritances. It may mock our better inclinations that want to hold down the fort, in terms of cozy perches in the world. It may ask us to repent such that we acknowledge, maybe for a second time, an utter Loss. Only then to reflect that Christ too lost everything when He was defamed and degraded and humbled and humiliated on that naked Cross. And He had watched. He had attested to something way beyond His earthly calling as a carpenter. He had fought a Future War that time has literally postponed some several millennia because of what a good job He and His disciples, Her—when in that equally important incarnation—servants. Time had literally fought and refought around whether we can—can we watch that much longer this time around—wars that came down to Ultimate Sacrifices earning Ultimate acclaimed Goodness and Peace: we have good things, and narrow veins coursing with Progress and Esteem, Courage and Exploration, Intellect and Manliness, Femininity, childlike Hope and Neighborly reflection, recollections, thank God for this holy walk around town I just took. Thank Him, and His People in heaven, for all this and more.