2024-09-21 A Meditation on A Higher Judge

“24 He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, 25 but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. 26 So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. 27 And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ 28 He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ 29 But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.” ’ ”” (Matt 13:24-30 ESV)

Vacant at the helm, empty at the wheel, faith surpasses all plain-old notions of religion: do you believe that despite all this there is a God who will judge? We are not licensed simply for the sake of our sense of submission or of authority; we are licensed as individuals designed to Thrive. We are licensed to carry forth with a healthy sense of nervousness regarding whether, after all, we are submitted: to a cause, to a moral framework, to a Created-Order-centric Individualism, to representing the Cause to the community.

Vacant? In fact major movements of the Spirit do not boast in their Totalitarian overarching, overwhelming obvious facet of a Posture. They do not boast that what they are is somehow self-evident, that all we need do around here is learn a little patient submission. No, with almost naive horror we discover that the crowd at large thought they had it all figured out. The football being whether our testimony is Christian or is somehow “spooky”: which will it be? Surely Satan has power, powertrips, too, to the subtle and to the suggestive and to the wink-wink-nudge-nudge “we’re on the winner’s side” forgetfulness: good people, forgetting that life is forged in a Crucible, and our Cruciform Testimony is no “Obvious” outcome. It is not “Apparent” that so-called good will always prevail. No, the attractiveness of a devil is so often itself a game around morality: but of making that morality the Judge.

Our Judge will see a more dynamic, velocity-driven, momentum-like Destination and Arrival-Point called the Cross. We cease to fuss around who is the more moral: life will invent morality, if we didn’t already have it written on tomes of stone. We will invent ways to answer that question: why is brother against brother; why is father against son, mother against daughter; why is neighbor against neighbor. We invent ways that use Law and Prescriptions of a legalistic nature.

Vacant at the helm, is simply an observation around our first trial: “Please! Just show me a way and I will submit!”. As we were flat-out floored by our rebellion and sinful ways, we hoped for a simpler form of Religion to save the day, one couched easily in just changing what or Whom we submit to. But God wants to see us Flourish. God wants to wonder, and learn based on what we ourselves figure out, what is in a Man, in a Woman, in His Creation, after all. We are frightened to see: weeds are left to grow alongside the wheat, for some future Judgment; for now, it is a matter for the curious what and how temptations have overtaken those weeds. It is a puzzle as to whether say the casually “partying” animal of society, might not be a weed after all but might have some elixir or medicine of insight, inspiration, for the community.

All that and more: to anyone so-called “Moral” there is the fact of judging others. We moan and weep at Judgment as it unfolds, because it tries us with ever more forgiving postures even to those whom we judge to be unworthy. Some moreover are born, are baptized on their parents’ loving knee, as children, prepped and gifted with a point of Pride: we are those who Serve. But again, that pride is used as infectious gifting for the populace at large: anyone can swoop in and borrow or steal or replicate the Gifting; Jesus was a Pirate of the world’s leading religion’s Spirit. He became the Head because He saw no legacy involved, no hoarding involved, no inheritance involved, but existential, immediate Decision involved. To earn it all back on the flipside and only then instead of gloating, to Die on a Cross. Such is the Call to face the strange and odd look at ourselves: what is our wealth and comfort zone? What do we presume to judge about the street person or the one whose heart they claim is strangely warmed? That is, how do we see the Religious in one another? How do we get to a ground zero where love is in the air, listening is a baton passed back and forth, time is allotted for us to discuss and to repair and to murmur and hum and heal? In all this, we are playing that game of yardage: the football being, is my testimony a legalistic response to the legalistic charges made against us by secularism, or is my testimony all-quiet on the self-justifying tack, and all systems go on the Cruciform, any-day-now Expectation of God’s own elevation unto His deeds of Mercy and Grace.