2022-11-17 A Meditation on the Strange Power of Love

“But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.” (1 Ti 6:11 ESV)

The soldier, each one, has a strange power to make a difference in someone’s life. Perhaps the greatest gift we receive is the ability to love, and especially, to do so where in former times we were judgmental, unforgiving, rational and “sensible”. But instead, through no striving nor efforts, we can become Love and become Patience and become Sincerity. Those things are the fruit of the soul that has been convicted: not in any boring or heavy guilt-trip way, but simply in the quantity of love coming our way. That is, we know God’s character via the love that He overwhelms us with. We know ourselves forgiven: for being awkward; for being wonkish or too heady; for being nervous and inexperienced, untrusting; for being devoid of that Joy that so characterizes us, on paper at least.

Yet to love others, we feel reasonably that we must become the bigger man or woman. We must have innate strength, to deign to condescend to their level. We must see how and around what corners God’s patience and sincerity do take us. So, the call to soldier on: today, we are oddly encouraged via strange and uncomfortable encounters. Today, we face a simulacra or false front and behind it a hidden war. That war is regarding those simple promises, yes, of the convert that lies in each of us: for God is a God of the supernatural and of the mystical and of the mystery religion and the gnostic focus. God intends to use spiritual muscle, heft, wonder, and amazement, to do what our plans and reason cannot effectively bring about.

So we are back to square one: “Love this one I have given you”; “Be married to the actual experience, the lived experiences that are this hour trying each of us”; “Hope, because you have the entire toolkit in your heart”. Somehow, we emerge from the hour of trial intact. Somehow, we enter that scene utterly convicted, so no longer do we latch onto reliable patterns such as our Sunday worship attendance; instead, for once we feel Awake; for once we feel our Religion is coming to fruition where and with whom we are, even if we share different prayers. Lingering decisions become obvious to us. Of course: go forth in the power of my Spirit. Do these things as though drunk on new wine, but utterly free of wanton indulgence. Know me in these alternate habitations and scenarios. Stick up, in whatever way you can, for the fleeting Spirit and the Present Peace, as though a rare and sought-after gem. Yes, I am in the midst of you. Yes, we shall not fear to lose our own fastedness nor our careful, nervous, perch. For we were nervous and apologetic. We were putting on a false front, simply because it is uncouth to address the tangible and the sacramental and the Present Need and Hour in each of our lives. And that false front immediately is forgiven; God racing ahead, to the scene of the pain, to the scene of the intrusion, to evidence His presence in faltering speech or loving gesture or moment of excited new friendship.

All of us fear falling in love, and all of us fear that very nearness and vulnerability that characterized our conversion hour. Good preachers remind even the stalwart in faith: yesterday is no guide for today; this hour, there are entirely New Things shared and discussed: be brave! Be vocal! Or, be reverential! But expect things unheard of, and step into that yoke that is easy, whose burden is light.

So we fear to be unclothed in the spirit amidst our vulnerable, revealing, heavenly, fellowshipping sharing. We share our very being with each other. We do this in fond notions that our very being will, either in us or in those with whom we have shared, be Testament and Witness; all can “convert” to some shared understanding of what the nominal forgiven person in our midst, does see as an outlook: love for the unloved; simple quiet after a stormy night of the soul; endearment this hour to the Fellowship and to the Project.

If you are like these to whom you in former times were preaching, then you will put all things, all perches, all pride, all judgment and non-negotiables, on the altar, in order that the love feast not be diminished; in order that the immediate presence of God’s Spirit be not quenched. And when we have quenched the Spirit, we rejoice in second and third and fourth chances, chances that spell our own conversion story, perhaps. For we humble ourselves in order to clothe these whom we are given.

We frighten and cope and do mock-battle in our judicious minds, over the differences of thought in our midst. We at times feel discouraged, but then realize it is our own calling thus to be brave and courageous. It is our calling to speak to the ghosts in the closet. It is for us to speak for the sake of the one or two (really, the multitude) needing bread and perhaps a meat, some fish, this hour. So we would be killed at the once, immediately, were the Spirit of God Himself preparing us and outfitting us and calling us to a dangerous mission; He has a plan to make worthy and celebrated each of our life-works in the midst of our congregation. He uses us, and that in ways that cannot be measured by litmus tests of suitability. Each called person is different from any who have gone before us. Each act of ministry is without fanfare. Each writer writes. Each thinker thinks. Each healer heals. Each policy-maker decides. Each priest celebrates. Each jokester heals and laughs. Each shepherd shepherds. So there is so much to hope for in this tomorrow, if that is, we share it with whomsoever is given to us, whatsoever their needs, and in trust that when they say Jesus is shepherd of their souls, that we need not fear for their salvation. They have found their elysian fields.