2025-04-20 A Meditation on Christ Access

“16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.” (Gal 5:16-26 ESV)

The Christ access happens; we know Him in the catalog of human experience, some life most present as though His breathing, slow and patient, we heard; as though His body of presence is near; as though mild gestures of beginning to look this way and that: He is alive.

The catalog of human experience, then draws a certain “Ehh” from church life, vis-a-vis its precise alignment with what we call Christ Access. Christ Access is a trait, one we’ve gotten to know, and on whose wings and a prayer we can venture gladly forward. It is Alert and Loud in the most quiet manner, a Buzz in the air and a notion that soon these boots shall be a-marching. But now, it is His day, His Resurrection, and us His people, to us He has leaned forth with Trust and demonstration of the wounds in His hands and feet and side.

An emaciated body. A broken frame. A brave march unto certain death. It was not for any loud proclamation nor show of force that He was crucified, but precisely because the most heard, the most demonstrative, of human experience is the One who ventures solely into the nether world of incomparable tenderness, weaker brain fragments and souls refusing thereby to die. The weaker brain portion, this a Soldier such as He sees just as militaristic as any show of power. And in order therein to minister, He risked Dying rather than denying Himself.

That He is holding down the fort, emerging from Holy fast, a little saddened still that it had to come to this; a little forlorn, still, in curious what-if doubt and reassurance: these my people after all, they do see me as standing tall and alive? That is what it’s all about, isn’t it? That death failed to drive in the last nail? That it all made some sense in terms of Divine Scales of Justice? Please? That it will be remembered?

The more Alert, Heightened Awareness, Abuzz mentalism of a Christ access, a Christ encounter, these things are some brand of the warmth of a fellow pewsitter that is minus the lugubrious male-female (or choose your combo) typical mush. These things are the panicky night, the muttering to oneself about mistakes and regrets, the sense of “If so, I can scarcely forgive myself”: then meeting the bright day of morning with a deep and abiding (yes, to that breathing) sense of a second party present. And present only in the deep abiding sense of Together: Together we hold nothing back from whom the Lord has placed on our doorstep. Together we sense Him in that presence, no time to be weary for after all God’s prayers, God’s needs, God’s pain, is too grown-up for us right now: He needs to be astute and guiding, leading and setting an example; no time to mourn.