2025-02-04 A Meditation on Fools for Christ

“11 Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others. But what we are is known to God, and I hope it is known also to your conscience. 12 We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart. 13 For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. 14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; 15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. 16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor 5:11-21 ESV)

The Substantive Nature of Christ, that we may “taste and feel”, this hearkens to a Mammoth Undertaking called Gospel Mission, and to a people Storm-Tossed and feeling Incomplete. We gorge on His life, we inebriate on His dime, we cease the safe and patient Faith, in its place being Fools for Christ.

To dive in, then, is a no-holds-barred Willingness—if not for ourselves, then for our partners in arms—to acknowledge the ways sin creeps in, to see the hardening of our own hearts around misdeeds so lamentable, yet irreversible. It is joyously to come to the altar, having honored and knelt before its Don, the Cross of Christ, Christ Himself, a time for fools to be held up as Majesty. Majestic as kites, now, floating in those same storm-tossing winds. Sailing high above so much we’ve forgotten, about our addictions, about our feeling Incomplete without such-and-such, about our deep elsewhere sins that unwittingly distract us and make us feel that Incompleteness: just let me have my escape substance! Just let me have my self-ruinous behavior! My existential forgetfulness, irresponsibility, foolishness! And then, too, the Love of the Brethren and of the Sistren, in a patient soul coming alongside. This… this is no sin, right?

The tandem duo of us and Spirit is a call to Hear and See eye-to-eye, the ways Man ruins his or her interlocutors, those we speak with being at each other’s throats, it can seem, and the illogic, the frustration, the difficulty Coping… others, hearing about this, decide to emulate it more themselves… and then the latter crime is worse than the former. But we also have reached rock-bottom, and have no time to dally in the Fight, rather, have a Mission to get underway. All our labors… futile. All our prospects… meager. All our reward… passed by. Yet ourselves bearing a duty to be the “responsible half” of the party, and to hope not all has been mocked and bartered away. No matter: Christ was one man; Christ and twelve were a worldwide movement; Christ and Spirit made a surgical incision; Christ despaired.

God’s substantive nature speaks to any Convert as to the sincerity of an altar call: it truly was Christ who was my all-sufficiency, and when I fell away, it was not from Him, but from a mockery, a fraught, a tense, religiosity. See the fools for Christ. See the gladsome no-holds-barred, nothing to lose, no get-up most reasonable, but foolish and wildly-speaking. Of what dreams may come. Of the loving Conversation held. Of the fact, this day, is a sober day. Is a unreluctant day. Is a gladsome day. There is no “better verve”, no “loud shout” of sincerity other than what we work ourselves up to as those intoxicated with Spirit. And if this seems meager compensation, it can be that indeed.

Liminal, trusting in a crystalline web called Faith. Leaning heavy upon, but also gently embracing, Christ the Dying One, whose Death woke us to an incredulity suddenly self-composed, Complete, wondrous, amazed in the pre-dawn hike across town to spread the news. Oh, so all of a sudden the thirst and the addiction comes to naught, it being a petty consolation, a second-rate compensation. We have had our “first fight” with the lover called dependency, and emerged Forgiven. No longer the elusive type of Christ, but rather the type of the Disciple, the Sinner, the Cleansed. We have wished upon some Excitement, but found it in giddy morning prayer Routine. We are, after all, fools in many-a tissue of crying moisture, and gladsome to speak loudly that God is good, that we are prayed for just as we pray for others, a strange balancing act between the sane and the foolish, the insane perch.

We say “Yes” to a spirit who coaches us up to a first Word each day, and then the words come a tumbling forth… as though what was said was but a warm-up exercise. We each of us must coax ourselves up to a Word called Prayer, a bit here and there, and learn to do it in all things, in situ, so we can in sincerity say, “I spent the day in prayer”. God has already spoken, in His preachers’ words, in His scriptures, in His literature, and we can rest content in that. Our prayers, meanwhile, dream big, and fancifully at times, but always with some germ of truth. Our hopes, these are not disappointed! Our ability to stare into space, this is a glimpse into a curtain torn, a temple Open to us as those who forget to pat ourselves on the back from time to time. For all the sins forgotten: we have forgotten how to sin, in some cases! But also we have to inebriate on Him. And this can always seem faked or wishful thinking. But we know: attack the false theology, and embrace Christ who died for the unmentionables. Who took us far afield from our day’s thought realm, to see a place we are Injured. Where we are Hopeless. Where we are Ill-Advised to venture for long. No longer hopeless, but Today able-bodied, warriors no longer storm-tossed, now Missional, and On Watch, Dutiful. For the sake of the cohort and the flag, if not for our own half-crazed sakes.