A Meditation on Boldness

2024-11-15 A Meditation on Boldness

“23 When they were released, they went to their friends and reported what the chief priests and the elders had said to them. 24 And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, “ ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? 26 The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’— 27 for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, 28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. 29 And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, 30 while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” 31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.” (Acts 4:23-31 ESV)

The Call to be Christian reminds, crisis alert! Things are somehow evading all mankind’s best efforts and loving reframes. Cognitively reframing, the half-way effort may even backfire, creating the very thing it denounces. What this is to say, someone must have Courage, and if Courage then meekness, and if Meekness then humility, and if Humility then—full circle—Excision, sharp and needed discernments, cuts, assessments, divisions Made.

Only who are we, thus to speak, thus to presume, thus to militarize—per Christ’s own words—by way of licensing Strong Medicine? We are those softened in our personal self-assertions, and hardened in our post-wilderness-fast Faith: these things, too, are for real. These things, too, are a mythological Certainty. The Myth… the Cause Celebre… the Judicious Hawk-like Excision… all this is couched in (first) a plain reminder, almost as a joke, that “to lay hands on”, is somehow destructured and demilitarized into a most gentle laying on divine; and (second) the “cuts” we make, we make by way of personal Example, taking—like He did—the sins as our own.

What is this to say, that we should go around hobbling ourselves because of rampant Sins in others? Rather, that we are Trusted and Licensed to act as “Christian” because we heard the Full Gospel, the Fuller Doctrine, the Wiser Embedding, the self-removal and Implanted Presence: we are Present as aid and as surety, knowing it to be a Strong Thing to help someone up a step or two, arm in hand, legs lifted up. And such strength… it is post-Rational, post-feeble Artistry: it Believes on themes nearly illegal were they not so widely acknowledged: the Cross of a condemned Man, Christ to hang there to remind us: as you speak this hour, pretend it is under duress or as your last hour here on earth, perhaps. Perhaps? Be Strong! Be quick to Address, Hawk-like, the overwhelming Faith in a doctrine centered on Gospel overcoming Law. We need Forgive, because it doesn’t quite fit in the storyboard retelling, until that Need is found contagious and shared. Then the storyboard begins to catch people’s eyes. It begins to bring gladsome smiles to the faces. It is a waking from a monotonous daily routine. It is borderline legal, but here the Saint is reassured of having mostly, by-and-large, Overcome.

And when this self-assurance fails, when sins become only more magnified… then we become those “refuse of all men” (1 Cor 4:13) whose purpose in life is to speak a Word from the Beyond. It had to be this way, lest we relax falsely unto a doctrine minus the Cross. Lest we begin to wonder about if Jesus simply had gone on teaching and discipling and healing. Lest we think of our own selves as largely in the clear, sin-wise. God makes fools and martyrs of the peeps and chirps of any and all, new believer and seasoned saint alike.

Be a man! Woman up! You’re entering uncharted terrain, rather, terrain charted by a Theoretical, a Nurture, a Roadmap so elusive to those who doubt. To rest on earthly assurances, is to fail to see it. The uncharted terrain is now Charted and Coached, by a saintly Presence called Jesus-for-me. He takes the meekest amongst us, and asks—not to receive some honorarium or reward for being so faith-filled—but asks for More. Asks for a wild ride to be undertaken. Asks for losses and sacrifices to be answered only in the eyes of faith: that as we lose so much and so many, we gain a World, a Church, a Fellowship, a Divine Mystery: God for us.

The saintly pewsitter, then, Today is to see their former Aggressive Selfhood now an aggressor of the Spirit, that is, patiently Insisting and putting our Foot Down, Line in the Sand. We have this right because of the meekness of our Lord and Savior, almost a joke to say we are now aggressive: for in Him we are the servant to All, the least offensive at the party Except unto those who wretch at the Gospel Heard. Oh. So you are offended. Let me not cow-tow but reaffirm, reassert, rekindle that hated Gospel chorus line. Let me Dare… to rest in a message that offends half who hear it. Ye shall know them by their fruits: the fruits of faith being some wild-eyed meekness, some Patient Firmness, some Cautious Assertion. God for us, and we His people.