2024-09-29 A Meditation on All-In

“3 Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. 2 Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh— 4 though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. 7 But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. 8 Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith— 10 that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” (Philip 3:1-11 ESV)

The lifeline of God’s faithfulness means daring raids into those spiritual things that bear time-shift, spirit-change, questioning-new digs: the music has changed and now gives pause, it is something spooky. Or has it? Rather than calmly basking in sure things, our surety is in God who bends over backwards to extract us from the compromised situation. Our certainty is in God who is a beacon of light, a city on a hill, for things far beyond our own comfort, composure, circumscribed safety level.

Because we are those so-called “half crazed”. We have dispensed with any illusion of a safe zone or a calm encounter: momentum has taught us, the breath of fresh air from a friend, and the diabolical, whimsical caprice of an enemy. There is no time nor space to “work it out”. Our right to “testify in our defense”, caput. Rather, far-seeing, the Spirit immediately embraces and builds up the friend, and the Spirit immediately coaches in things like persecutions, like hardships, like suffering-for-the-Name.

And see us also so spooked, or rather so tread-marked, run-over, as to question our own composure, to decide Ultimately not to concede to those demons who call us crazed. We after all are playing a game called “First post!”, that is, who is so insane as to enter this battle frame? Who is so open to suggestion, that they falteringly try to bear Atlas-like the community’s burdens? Who so patiently prayed over, is the outlet, the release valve, the comedic hour of well-placed jokes?

It encourages us to a Gentleman’s, Gentlelady’s calm instead of panic, that some paranoia can be replaced with a gentle Hope: people are good folk, in some things. People who by way of contrast have made a bargain with the devil, we will not be afraid to recognize and to toss out with the trash. Because we see farther, and hope deeper, that it is a symphony of Christian decisions that make things work.

The spooky music, that is everyone’s proximity to a horror movie of complicity. It is everyone’s need for a steel gridiron, a beam because the horrors are suddenly too strong. We wince and brace against the solid steel as the storm blasts mount in succession. Remember Ma! Remember Pa! Remember a deep experienced sense of Embrace! That Someone Else is our final bargain-maker, we having once more forgotten simple lessons and tempted fate, perhaps. Or that we have done well by way of All Things, yet for this reason are in blinding confrontation with a spirit we Trust we rightly know to be Ill. That wasn’t us, was it? Wasn’t a variant or multiverse’s alternate possibility of whom we might have become? Hold fast, the wealth we were too comfy to share, is shared on our behalf by a Judge who has other reasons to love us. And that wealth has for once and all time made us over as God’s Children.

Then the plain appeal to “see”: asking after someone to be an authorizer or a guarantor, the immediate response is, will you respect them any more than you respect those in front of you? If you are asking with impatient frustration—frustrated that peaceniks would bear any authority, frustrated that a soft landing would beckon rather than antagonized aggression, frustrated that anyone would Dare to love they who must never be patronized—then that frustration, to it we must point out, it is turtles all the way down. And they are forgiven, for they know not with what momentum their caprice is grasping after. But at what cost?

“What they do their fathers did to the prophets” (Lk 6:23). The incident report, instead, is as to a life-affirming genuine listening post unto the wandering spirit in the community, we faithful who with a buzz in the air try to downplay our own presence, for Jesus was in community and called each of us upon His death to be New Christ-Image-Bearers. Each were hunted, each persecuted, each martyred. Yet that is phase two: the first phase is an idyllic Eden of a former time, a time when we pursued that Saturday night ennui and longing to party it up a bit: Jesus partied. A time when we wondered if the future “me” was too constrained, impeded, fraught and tense, at times, and needed something Ecstatic, Pentecostal, Imbibing of a New Draft and Pitcher. We indeed love on each other, simply bearing that silent testimony to a whole world unspoken, for now. Until that sober insight beckons unto deeper levels of accomplishment, not ambitious so much as Called to Rise. To Rise in the ranks, to Rise simply because our experience is tantamount to a careful depiction of Christ’s own.

We are not capable of failing. We will never lose our lifeline. The spooky music will not ever make us change sides. And we sense all this in truth when those shifts seem to threaten, as storm clouds or bomb blasts foreshadow, starkly tell, of a Future Apocalypse and our own surprise to be waking up intact, here or in an Eternity Promised. We were sheltered, and we braced, and we shook, and we embraced, and we cried a bit: we transitioned to a Higher Level and it became our immediate “Wealth” to share this with those back home, before we forgot. By our presence.