2022-10-09 A Meditation on Majesty and Majority

“For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Eph 1:15–23 ESV)

Majestic in its services, there is a silent majority that is known because they know the occasion to bend the knee. Not all the cozy pew-dwellers will understand; some will fall away, yet some too, whom we may easily dismiss, are our brand of keen and willing. They are willing to have this salvation come our way. They are accommodating of a strange new culture, to them, a different culture or language a bit, but one they are unashamed to be acolyte to.

All this wild talk is to say, returning to the first point, the church service is mightily prayed over and sheltered; many never find themselves there; many are the members of the parish (a geographical notion) who for whatever reason quibble and dally regarding actual church attendance. Yet these same are the heirs, are the cognisant, are the weary knowledgeable, of church life. For the church safeguards majestic liturgy, all-hands-on-deck invite unto corporate prayer and process, confirmations, ordinations, baptisms, regular eucharist. The church service, to a latecomer in life, is Holy and Large and cause for many new friendships to form, yet too to have disputes and lines of division over some things. It is simply too beautiful to be otherwise. Here, we are not the hungry few who for reasons of companionship and coping did band together; we are not so much that band of brothers as we are curious penitent; hope-filled greeter; peace-passing warrior.

Here is a civic service, to run these services. Here is a community asset. Here is a sincere to many, a heartfelt and genuine reckoning with what Scripture does indeed say. Jesus was the Right One for the job; He was mightily attested to by sign and wonder of a sort we may only dabble in or imagine. He healed and fixed up the leper, lame, and blind. He taught His men and women to start without the sword, only later letting this initial magnanimity reckon with a militant devil: “He said to them, “But now let the one who has a moneybag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one.” (Lk 22:36). Such verses cause us to weep: how much more skin and love is saved in peaceful acquisition or exchange, in mutual upbuilding, in corporate lesson-learning, in adopting by choice not by force a Holy Project.

Our Holy Project, also called an operation, is to reckon with this national asset on the street corner: the local church, the storefront church and the cathedral, a spirit that does recognize peer and fellow traveler in this spiritual realm; from a bird’s-eye view it is a strange phenomena; to those stuck in their prayer closets, it is easy to allow to heighten to a new level of alert, simply because they are not inducted, appeased, integrated, into the common woman or man on the street. Perhaps. Perhaps that is why we need comprehensive news services, not just affirmation of our own politics. Perhaps that is why we listen astutely, and seem the strangely unaccomplished: we are accomplished in blueprinting a spiritual Experience, that of the common woman or man in the community.