2023-09-07 A Meditation on Breaking the Mold

“42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.” (Ac 2:42–47 ESV)

“31 And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” 33 And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem. And they found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, 34 saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.” (Lk 24:31–35 ESV)

Break the mold. Live for what’s fresh. Sharpen the gospel. Serve. The soldier in touch with her or his angst is a special breed. To know oneself not as a dutiful routine, measured and assigned hours of the day, a trend of late of deliverance from former sins. To know oneself rather in the desire to make it all go kablooey, the urge to turn all season and time on its head, and just gatecrash one’s own measured, timed, familiar routines.

What is this, this sense of it all going blotto? It is where we first begin to recognize ourselves as humans. Humans in need of love. Humans wretched for their longings. Humans who will, in whatever modicum of sanity that has been obtained, undo it all just to see what happens. Just to experience the untimely works of the day. To operate with no theology but that some sort of discord is needful in order to begin to see clearly through the smog. Partying all nighters on all sides and we, we in a quiet trance of peace. Late hour of the day, and we, hearkening to a nonsensical call to destroy, to disregard, to dismantle. Here, not in our fasts and good patterns, here is the reality of that brand of celebration called Christ. He celebrated. We, too, long to celebrate in the barroom or the houseparty, in the trenches and in the boardrooms.

And the doubts: is this religious thing any good for me any more? Think of the Cross, and does this make us fall wrongly in love with our own eventual demise: is that the light at the end of the tunnel, the carrot dangled on a stick? No, far be it! No, we celebrate a Resurrected Lord; who was with us in the trying circumstances: He died so that we might live, and that joyfully. Our event horizon is instead to see a friend again, to do as much by way of painstaking demonstration of our own fast and suitability, our ironing out of former sins, our sensible determination to skip the extra snacks or the pattern of obsessing on a stock price or a shopping spree; see us need some brand of input, something to distract, some rather unsumptuous food. See us then make our peace with a God who wants us a bit oblong, misshapen or strange, that our innate beloved Beauty shines forth. Yes, this will have to do: us, no longer works-righteous and proud, but us, speaking to a Flaw, to a Party desired, to a habitual creme-de-la-creme of immediate celebration rather than uptight accounting.