2024-04-23 A Meditation on Anointing
“10 Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. 11 I am coming soon. Hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown. 12 The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. 13 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’” (Rev 3:9-13 ESV)
The definition of spark is the definition of all-in: insight, anointing, due haste, all these form a narrative of a different brand of citizen, of prophet, of suffering servant. To believe is to make plain an audacious truth claim: that miracles alone are able to keep alive, to rescue from persecution and incrimination, to brand simple believers as the trust, the mainstay, the bankroll of God’s work on earth.
That God works on earth is therefore this audacious claim, that leadership is persecuted and charged wrongly, that strength is a paradoxical fruit of sensitive weakness, that spirit informs spirit, lends its character and shape, infuses, injects, intones and intimates a rarer breed, the water-walking sophisticate camouflaged in the clothes of common folk. Jesus was sophisticated in the teacher’s mandate, to make obvious and make jest of complicated spiritual truths. Each came to its own as a parable or a re-emphasis on the basics, basic truth and basic colors to salute.
That God works on earth is therefore the sparkle of a spirit-inebriated late night, gregarious and loud to some, banking all on what transpires this hour, existentially removed and apologist for a dying mandate: to go all-in, to assess and determine, to vibe off prophet and priest, for spirit teaches spirit, mentalism coaches mentalist, scene meets wide stage and reach, and all this in risk of weightier matters, errors made, due diligence unobserved, from what we are hiding via the juice of Spirit, coming up in tearful apologies, hugs, love ya’s, and some Belief: no, it was all an excuse to go large, the juiced up frame, an excuse to air some thoughts, to shout and point, to reveal and confess, to make this our final night, if only we would roll up the sidewalks come morning and do it all again the next night, the next week, soon.
Sparkle and consecration, then is the shared Spirit of inquiry and expose, the sharper the iron the better the coaching through what is unspoken, lustful image or strange habit, fetish and insecurity: for the Christian is rebooted regularly with all new temptations, with all new traps and pitfalls, and emerges years or hours or minutes later having scraped by, but only just. Having faced manifest spiritual wilderness and insanity, but getting one or two things done by way of saluting the elder spirit, the coach, the one who believed in us. Saying “Be gone!” to all hindrance and strange ways.
The careening world is then sparked and ignited to form dictionary and metaphor, intelligent dual language track, so that each does hear in their own language what the Spirit is saying to the churches (Pentecost). The careening world calls soldier and conscript to a personal perimeter via which no sin shall cross, each masterful and owner of whom and what they are, taught in the moment, informed in the pause or patient condescension. We are the People to whom He was sent and who sat attentively as spirit informed spirit, people formed truce and shapely creed or mission spelt out. For an instant, and then the hounds of hell. For an instant, and then no space for personal pride or false courage, but to be comforted with more pastoral words, that God is for us, that we are recipients of a Calling undisputed and firm, that Today if we hear His voice, harden not our hearts.