2024-06-28 A Meditation on Braving the Day
“11 For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12 We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” (1 John 3:11-15 ESV)
The cultural lines draw and redraw themselves around us, the lesson to take home first is bless one’s weariness, bless one’s beleaguered nature, bless one’s bleary-eyed alert, if tired alert, countenance: it is no imagination but rather each of us fights an inner battle that affects what our disposition to others is.
The majesty of the courts of the Lord sees this trial and blesses: go forth, and embrace optimism! Not the grumpy, “everyone is at each other’s throats around here”, but the strange Life seen in germination, the amazing qualities of thought put on display, the soldier’s matter-of-fact, “you say war? Of course it’s war”: its a spiritual forerunner of the real thing, the impossible lines drawn and errantly crossed, someone this very hour quite lacking in just a little dose of fastedness, and their outlandish grab or assertion or space carved out for a little of that personal sin, tips the balances: all the World was on the line; all the Community was listening for just that slip; all the Congregation was suspicious some demons lay over in there.
That is, the majesty of the courts of the Lord outfits us—yes, a given that we are ready for the spiritual battle joined—in pomp and Christian Circumstance, to offload all worry and simply petition: can the dynamic around here include space for actual repentance, for actual forgiveness, and the like?
That is, a secret club it is to approach the holiest on those terms, terms of Mercy, terms of self-discovery, terms of honesty. We were warned: go there and face degradation; face rude sleights, face untold misery, and be bold to know that the misery is theirs not ours. A few get it. A few marvel or stand in shock at just how rude and ungrateful is a demon. But no matter, we decided today to go on Optimism: and this is a blessed gathering; this is a blessed fact of two people somehow talking not at each other but to each other.
The finest threads for the Host is Holy, while the children play and get up to nuisances, the Host is Holy and in His Shade we germinate, flower, arise. All is forgiven in the instant, the wrongheaded statements and those more amenable. All is invested not in scattering each others’ sense of Call, not in Undoing much that was invested in each of us, but in that strange halting approval, and if not approval, at least Reverence, Mystery, Respect: God is doing something strange here and… while the mongrel hoards are at a brief distance, let us get up to some Fellowship. Urgently. Because it as a Decision Made, to be optimistic, to be forgiving, to shake off any and all insinuations, “This one isn’t in fact a Christian”; no, with years each of us may begin better to characterize how and why these folks measure themselves and each other as “Christian”, but we know something Divine, a Calling unique and certain, determined to Speak through each of us to a willing Audience. Each of us is not only forgiven for being bold—bold to put life on the line, bold to serve—but also Lauded: do you understand, we needed Mercy for our Higher Qualities of service, because they were resented and disdained; and we never lost sight of the Plight, the War, the average man or woman who relies on people like us.