2022-12-07 A Meditation on Status Checks

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,” (1 Co 15:3–4 ESV)

There are several status checks on the Christian’s mind. One is Resurrection. Another is rebooting (similar to Resurrection). Another is second chances (again, similar). The Christian has delved deep into what this life throws at us. The Christian has stood tall though feeling pangs and feeling sadly pained. No matter: the Christian is witness to an impossibility, a God who Creates, who Loves, who is today giving us just the right degree of coaxing along, just enough Proof, just “Eyes only” Spirit and observation.

So we speak, so long as there are ever those who cannot speak. We attend, knowing there are those who cannot attend. We see this Divine Holiness above us that does, though spiritual and faith-based, act rationally… just not in a rationality we expect. No, His concerns are longer-lasting, deeper, more comprehensive. The witness here on earth who is caught up in jails and cisterns and patiently waiting environs, has seen true Logic at work: first, these things my son, my daughter; second, these other things; third, can you abide with me one more hour in prayer?

For we are on a technological safari, a Wild West, and the technology is today’s variant on the mysticism of yesteryear. Yesteryear they imagine life beyond the grave and a whisper in the heart, “Go this way and not that” (Is 30:21), all things impossible in a scientific era, yet greater accordances and symbioses and jousts of wickedness with purity, are with us Today, this Hour, for All Time. We are not like those who fall away in the company of others, in the company of those not yet seeing the Divine, not yet feeling the Spirit. So we are very courageous to know that what gifts of Spirit we have had bequeathed to us, are gifts to draw back to us very basic tenets: all flesh can be tempted; all life is evasively, forgetfully, nonetheless in dire ways crossed by Sin. All life is seen in a fleeting internet post or hand-raised. If we imagine an invisible “team” somewhere “out there”, then let us clutch firmly to that Calling and Vocation, that Vision and Certainty, even as we are shunned and discouraged and patronized as being presumptuous.

No, we have no qualms with varied output; we need not be in any pulpit if it earns cries of “Presumption!”. Instead, we are certain no matter the hindrance, of a call to make ourselves less offensive, but only so that the offense of the Cross not be lost. The Cross offends because it juices the witness precisely in a dry and passed over place. It approaches us militantly and on an offensive, precisely in our cozy thoughts of innate goodness and works-based righteousness. The Cross is a scandal. The Cross is a direction to go in, that just teases and begins to mine the field called Human Heart. So as Christians we make lousy bureaucrats, maybe. Lousy pragmatists, perhaps. Lousy politicians, maybe. Lousy graduate students or careerists, so-called. Yet we believe in a Resurrection around which reality bends and forms, so that the final issue is greater than the initial boast. We become quality and utility to our handlers and peers. Not because we are Christian and they not, but because God’s Resurrection is called for in every age and every environs, for life torments us; it is a miracle we live out the day, when once we’ve begun to see light in a spiritually desolate place.

It is offensive, to see the manifest “flawed”, “juvenile”, “sassy” accepted on that good day called judgment day. It is offensive to have a Cross that begins to heal the family rocked by addiction, via a declaration of helplessness rather than a point plan. It is hard to swallow a Cross that takes the luminous in our midst, the efficacious, the career-person, and gives them a brush with the wild side: confession that they, too, can face temptation; acknowledgements that might lose them the good job or the position of trust (“He said he is a sinner!”). By “sinner” we mean really wild stuff, thoughts invading and horrifying, a stasis of calm that is afforded only because of us giving all to that Cross Christ bore, not because of our other theologies rattling around in the mind: “If I try a little harder, I won’t fantasize about inane illogical deeds”; “If I was a good person, I wouldn’t be susceptible to lust”; “If I had it together, all my intentions would be selfless and pure”. So it is mercy and Spirit that races to the careerist and person of responsibility with a salient message: you are understood; you belong; you are now good man, good woman; your trials are only the better to form and prepare you for what will come; be my witness.