2024-11-02 A Meditation on Amped

“12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Tim 1:12-17 ESV)

Punch, pluck, talk of the straight and narrow: to arise buoyant and to best the doubters, to be bountiful to the ones encountered, all this initiates a Mystery: why we fast, why we take sharp turns, why we speak up as souls who more than Sigh: we speak up as souls making zero compromises with lethargy or frustrated early age mama’s boys’ or girls’, daddy’s girls’ or boys’ accession, complacency, speaking of those who are trying to please using rubrics that neither benefited this generation or the one prior. Mama, papa, each has their own generation’s insufficiencies and never-satisfied frustrations.

That is, the horizon is wide and the glimmer is deep, the breadth and scope of a Conversion Away from what once filled our days. We are those churched souls who in fact see: more, that is, that church society is no less sinful, no more insightful, than any crowd we call our society; more, that is, that patience is the name of the game, patient hope that our Gospel will not come up empty, our nets cast will not miss earning a salute or two here or there.

If for once we do accept that church life is a divided life, though the One True Church be One Body: more than this, we accept that broad new horizon because in it our Punch, our Pluck, is not metered out or curtailed. We speak things Bold and even Brazen, to wake from sleep the gently resting common menfolk and womenfolk. We do this, yes, with more than simply to sigh and say how trying all this discipleship is, more than simply to peter out and lose our bold footing: we Rise Up a little too excited, a little too joyous, a little too satisfied, insofar as those things that differentiate us—a different Encounter with menfolk, with womenfolk—land squarely on the doorstep of the church: dear Church, you are the host and testbed for Higher Purposes. You are the host or testbed where we challenge with an insane alien love that my former associates may (or may not) have been challenged with: will you love the downtrodden? Will you see the bridge of alien cultures needed? To draw near to each other in Peace?

No, the former associates knew all this and more; we might even go so far as to see ourselves as utterly sinful, until we are blessed with the opportunity to be in Fellowship with others, with those seeded in love, with those rested in maternal and paternal hopes, with those who know the laughing Corrections we call Discipleship, with those who are Preserved by some mysterious no-go-zone, even as all borders and boundaries come crashing down. “Hey, I’m glad you fessed up about such-and-such… ain’t so cool, is it?” Maybe. It is our prerogative to be those of broad horizons and deep shine of light, because we have died and our lives are hid with Christ; because if only this earnest Christian would understand the fulcrum and diametrically opposed Severity or rather Urgency: your every slander or preconception, would you go so far as to dare believe half of it is made up? That the only question for each other is, are you brother or sister to the fellowship as we go forth strangely into the night… together? And you, all you who resent the years of pleasing ma and pa (who, if this is their will for their daughters or sons, had a few salvation screws loose themselves), will you hear the Call to grow up and to seek patiently a Christian Experience that trumps all experiences? All this to say, in a void there are leaders who rise up, not out of ambition nor out of pride, but out of necessity and out of the frightful or lazy, chicken-hearted repose of so many others.

All this to say, our punch, our pluck, revolves around a personal Responsibility and Presentability that states, “In everything be above reproach”. Your enemy, the devil, is seeking some accusation that will “stick”. And accept or anticipate that anyone in that limelight will turn out to be fighting their own Spiritual War, with misdeeds, with suggestibility, with loss of composure or assessor’s skill. We learn to assess our deeds because we, like David of Scripture, have put behind us the wild lifestyle (1 Sam 21:10ff), the life on the brink, the end of all things seeming so near; the patient inability thus far to be Composed and Presentable, because to Convert is to ape half the audience; it is unfortunately to suggest that in others’ testimonies is something missing; it is still our own pride that humbles us, by making the newer deeds equally sinful as to whatsoever comprised the more prodigal years.

The soldier is lively and the barroom or dancehall is open: the friends are assembling, and the glances are full of love. Eye-to-eye, mano-a-mano the horizon is broad and the hour goes late into the night. Here was some sinless extravagance, and it made us—like that proverbial “one experience”—into some brand of New Creation. That is, it gave us sum and substance to lay at the feet of our lately Found Christ. Oh yeah, I knew you all along, as my preservative! It took years! Forgive the searching years! Oh yeah, you taught me and heard my existential pangs: surely—will the assembled Believers concede this much—all that time was one of personal insatiety and depression, or of hopeless horizons, or rather New Projects years in the fulfillment, that seemed to be our ticket to ride? And now we can Sigh, because we just don’t know: if our own salvation is vouchsafed, what of the common man or woman on the street? What of those new friends on the church scene: surely, they are the ones who have reassured me? For, we had to earn it, and now we have a Sunday morning service that celebrates a Free Gift, yet a Gift of militant necessity and urgent Attention Needed. So easily taken for granted, so hear this O menfolk, O womenfolk: your walk on water is my Testimony, your patient Urgency my hourglass, your reliable Faith my roadmap!

To talk only of this, it is to serve a Lord Above in the midst of a crooked and trying generation. It is to value our own dynamic and room to thrive, as an entrusted Gift that not all can be afforded simultaneously: we receive from each other a chain-letter or transferred Gift called Beloved. We are those Beloved, and One Man or Woman Above can inspire a whole community; one passing news story can change our entire perception of a nation; one simple Duty Fulfilled can be the narrow way Found. We therefore try not to fix all things wrong with our place and our family and our nation, but to put on a bit of a good show, in case any are watching. And the nameless unthanked Creators Past, who coached and encouraged us, these had an inkling of Faith in the Unseen, so we each of us are called to resemble that God Above, by way of adjudicating Patience and Camaraderie to all the lost souls and cornered peoples. Who are struggling to make ends meet. Who are chipper to cheer up the one or two held aloft. To hold aloft not their sins, but their alien unknowing Duty Fulfilled.