2023-12-21 A Meditation on Crazed Reality

“18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.” (1 Pet 3:18-22)

Jesus’ descent into Hell so that we know our salvation comes from Him not from our own thoughts. Our thoughts are increasingly cage-fighting, wrestling with utter damnation, unable in and of themselves to save. Thanks be to God we have a Christ who went that Way on His Cross, descending to Hell, losing His blessed estate as it might seem. Thanks be to God we have a Christ who raced to the healing scene of the crime, who loved His own until the last, who cared not to fuss around whether all things were on the up-and-up, kosher, self-made and self-assured. We of all people—if Christ be not raised—are most to be pitied.

Because His wounds are borne in the thought-space and pinching-oneself reality of His people. We pinch ourselves, astonished to have an Answer beyond all answers, of genuine warfare and racing to that scene of the crime, Holy thoughts lifted up, a Better Self adored or sought after, us re-seen in the eyesight and gaze of our Christ. In His prolific banter and beauty we can rest secure and wrest away evil thoughts. Those shall come; and those have no sticking point with we His People.

Because it is one moment a rational counterforce, and another a spiritual gifted rest, a breather amidst the pain and fighting, a Reality New and Endearing. Our reality waltzes through amateur stuff, only the more to find answers suited for the child in each of us. We find answers suited for the wisest and most elderly Wisdom, yet breathed into each of our patient and warring souls.

Warring, we are in that foxhole in which there are no atheists. No one in that momentary battle, fails to believe in Something Higher. Because the alternative is dire: various stages of maiming, loss of life, futility of one’s own life narrative. It ended thus-and-such. It was dismal. It was maddeningly wasteful; see? I fear not the grim reaper, only I fear to die for banality, for pathetic reasons, for stupid errors or overarching carelessness. For the sins of another.

Oh yeah. The sins of another. Here our Captain and Author of our Salvation tread solemn ground, emphasizing that One Life be all our cause for mourning and all our cause for celebration. Focus on the value of One Life. Focus on the simple technical and adjudged, choreographed and drawn up, architecture of form and substance writ into the quiet Place and Resolve of the Christian. Who today loses all embarrassment at a scripture that seems pained or contradictory. Who today is punchy and defensive, reactive and bold, regarding that Tome called Faith, called Scripture, called Determined sifting through verse and chapter, that the finer things in life might be safeguarded and transferred over to His Holiness: a holy fast to emphasize that we are… different from our peers! Only, this is to judge others by our weakness for meat. This is to set up a barrier to class-blind and race-blind and religion-blind coming together.

We start to resent the needs of the poor when we ourselves do not so need. We start to cut down their basic day’s struggle, if different in context or setting from our own struggle. Therefore some place in heaven is automatically discovered by the one Blessed by a pauper’s reality, spiritual or otherwise, a poor-man’s daily grind, a sister or brother’s plain need; all shall be tested, some shall be saved. All shall be patiently listened to: can you sense what an honorarium that is, to be heard? And we then desire to brush ourselves up a bit. We desire to Rise Up to the occasion. We desire to demure and take some of these matters upon ourselves. That we may the better use that Divine Hearing. That we may the better make haste to that Cross Dignified. That we may strangely answer Satan’s crimes against the conscience, saying, “Thus also they did unto my Lord”. On the Tree. At His Cross. In a pre-Christian context, not yet familiarized and taken-for-granted. That, indeed, was a shameful way to die. That, indeed, asks us to choose sides between the occupiers and the spiritual heirs, the owners of Land Mighty and Aloof from the Romans’ diminutive religion of gods and monsters.