2024-10-02 A Meditation on the King’s Courts

“6 “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:6-8 ESV)

The sense of us being in the King’s Courts is to remind us that He has all-power and He lifts first one up and then another; that the beginning of right prayer is the beginning of ourselves as emaciated, poor, needy.

But what are we needy for? I am not a beggar! I am not decrepit! It is a remark on our tenacity and principles that we long for more than this world provides. We both excite over getting down to business—even, at times, if that business is war—and backpedal in solemn horror, consternation, a sense of “Oh”. Oh, we were running well: what hindered us? Oh, we were in a safe perimeter: what changed? Oh, the skies were clear as day: what jolted us?

We are those spiritualists who begin to wrestle with a dissonance that begins in the “I”, the “Me”, the “Yours truly”. Recognizing that simply to stay alert and focused, not lazy nor overly tired nor compromising, is a gift: a gift, like all gifts, sometimes profuse and abundant, and sometimes rare and sought-out. It isn’t that we are wrong to say, “I have my composure and a nice freedom from certain sins”: that may be the case. But if so, it is a gift, and there are alternate times when the converse is true. In those times, we are beggars. We are horrified at the gaunt food lines or drinking water; we have learned in these times to pray. To speak at first cautiously: is this a trusted audience? Trust no one, the pundits say. But we know in our Creed and Confession, it is a sign fixated on our frames, on our arm or on our chest, on our shield and on our sword. That we follow a simple Jew of twenty centuries ago. That we long for His gift of discernment to awaken and form like on a potter’s wheel a new generation of souls fit for Heaven. With teachings like that the last shall be first. With teachings that are never just checked off like so many dutiful inventory-takings, but that are momentum, advancement versus regression, yardage and push.

Therefore, to the inbox and to the prayer requests: can you but help a little? Prayer availeth much, and the cultures “out there” new to the Christian tradition, are horrifically at times coupled with starvation conditions, or financial need we would have to be there to witness firsthand. Jesus Himself said to give to those who ask (Lk 6:30). He did not only say, give to those who are worthy. Everyone learns in times of poverty of their inability to manage the checkbook balance, due to sin, due to repeated mistakes, due to a giving up. But also that the poor are the more generous, maybe because they recognize the need in themselves, maybe because money has become a bit of a joke to them.

That is, we are all in those same Courts of the King, of a Queen, of a Regnant Ruler, and we are facedown praying that our deeper neuroses and prophetic fears will give way to some Impossible, reform-oriented, lifestyle-changing magic trick, rather Higher Power trick. Because it has become a joke, the notion of us being masters of our sobriety, of our bank account, of our tenacious or level-headed consistent dealings with each other. The angry outburst: question me again, and see if I don’t go ballistic, because it has convicted me all too much, I fuss now over any efforts to convert me. Or something like that. War is no level-headed outcome, but ignites from the passions and inspirations of some, defensive to the core rather than belligerent, who see eye-to-eye, spirit speaks to spirit, the Gospel has so little to do with what the gentler motherly or paternal spirits did guilt us over, or that we invented our own guilt around because we were addicted to and passionate for sin. That is, Faith—Christian Faith—is our kind of thing, it is relevant and up-to-date, it is not pedantic or boring; it does not moralize but rather meets us where our wishes for a more moral culture—for friends who remain friends, for adulteries unacted upon, for honesty and prudence—begin, and meets us with the news that a higher teaching prevails, Grace. Grace to be what unites friends. Grace to be what empties our bank accounts into the coffers of the poor. Grace to be what forgives, for the sake—let’s be honest—we need a little companionship, or rather, we cease to be aloof, and do so because we are no longer hoarding or different from our peers.