“16 “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. 17 Beware of men, for they will deliver you over to courts and flog you in their synagogues, 18 and you will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the Gentiles. 19 When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour. 20 For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you. 21 Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, 22 and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. 23 When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next, for truly, I say to you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes. 24 “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. 25 It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.” (Matt 10:16-25 ESV)

Duty to the crown, to the Cause, to the Ministry: the Apostle (or, the one Sent Out) bears the responsibility for false religion. That hearsay literally breaks out into spontaneous worship of a sort more mechanized or traditional, rather, unaware of the Apostle’s special bent. Unaware, that the Apostle as commissioned by Christ is as much here to correct as to preach submission to the standard faire.

Because the liberal tradition begins, quite beautifully, to speak forth in ghostly perfection around God is worthy of our Worship, around His teleology or endgame being prime to adopt in our lives, around… around Jesus is King? Around the Crown and Jesus as Lord? Around the doctrine of Sin, it being not just some inconvenience to sigh about but something with a victory in sight, it being so pernicious as to rile the soul and raise hackles.

The Apostle is ranking officer in the room, and therefore Offensive to the status quo, to the spiritual hoi polloi, to the riff-raff who “make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long” (Matt 23:5). The one Sent Out indeed understands Christ’s mission to the Cross, because hearts are burning for some Special New Teaching, and hearts are Burdened by some preface most malicious. Something that has swept the community and stolen that innate human right to have one’s own special conversion experience minus politics or self-assertion, minus a false gospel of man versus woman, of aggression and of insinuations most banal or corporal.

Because these gentler souls, the “academics” who teach and speak; these have the same Right to bear Holy Arms as do the radical outsiders and front line warriors. These who abide in the cozier hearth places of the academy, have Pauline instigated Response to True Religion and… please, do not fall back on your comfortable and cautious words from another era. Do not fall back on some bland religion: do not get me wrong! Half of what passes for religion is a farce! It is a particular and polemic religion we today announce.

The mission, then, is to dance with those who brung us, that is, the entire world a mission field. These gentler souls… this special time together… those wildly wonderful lectures and testimonials… these things only prompt the soldier in us to Recognize why Christ died and died again throughout history in the persons of His apostles. Because a sadder milieu had descended. Because a fast track to Hell had permeated. Because we the soldier had little of our own genius toolkit and rapport, little of our spiel and attestations from history, but we had a Sense: the spirit of prophets is subject to prophets, and in this room… some things are beauteous and divine. We had little more than our Cruciform Faith, walking way out on a limb with insane “on water” cadence to murmur just this or just that, by way of dispelling the status quo and accepted religions. We soldier around the Cross. We are Already on our way there, in the Spirit, with cruciform Service, Duty, Self-sacrifice. This… these nice people… they will listen to us for a moment. They will indeed accommodate the Prophecy in our midst, of a rising Pentecostalism or Charismatic nation or land beyond our borders. That God has a plan, which teaches us to be like babes in arms, to Receive, to Adjust and Repent, to go Strong for the Ride.

Because the secret motives and silent machinations, the wise and secretive Agent of the Crown… these aspects are fast at work, in the gesture or brush against another soul. We meet, we foresee something so blissfully absent here, the nature of War, the coming Assault, the hair-raising fact: how will we overcome what the swarming locusts have eaten? How will we adjust what the plague has poisoned? Will it be a response that is measured in human lives? Yet on that subject, please O teacher and O teachers, do speak some more of your blessed open-minded Vision, visions so “out there” as to be suddenly plausible anew. Visions on the nature of the soul, on romance and the nature of love, of Creator status, of First Movers.

Whereas some lines of dialog leave us feeling inept, the Truth of apostolic status has descended on Christ’s people, and in the right forum, with the right ceremony or ability to hold a crowd, such as that apostle Paul had, our words suddenly shift and make movements Divine. They have spacious power and converting ability. They convert; we baptize the new recruits; pride is strangely absent, and that Special Gathering… of “academics” of the faith… finally, in community, recognizes a shared testatory Power. That we were all witnesses to this affair of the heart, of the heart tuned to Christ and to what and Whom lies Above.