2023-04-20 A Meditation on Discovery

“Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Co 13:7 ESV)

Where the name of the Lord is mentioned, a universe of discovery awaits. We discover as we listen to plaintive testimony, and reflect on man’s innate attempts to make it all “make sense”. We each try to make things “make sense”; we try to have the answers; we try to make it a deed done and done, the religious experience. The Pentecost of the soul. The story of God showing up. The blessed assertion that, once I was lost but now I am found.

Indeed, these are good stories, and we wish for them to be logical and forthright. We wish to establish it once and for all: “I’m all good”. Now, I’m all good, though before it was otherwise. Now, I’m all stitched up, though before I was angry, lustful, frustrated, mad at God. Now, I’m just your regular man about church, it’s all good, no sweat, no worries, no fuss.

Therefore we honor our brothers and sisters in the faith for at the very least invoking the possibility: not always, not certainly, not for good, am I healed. Not always, for there are times I want to murmur curses. Not certainly, for there are times I feel caged up. Not for good, for Mr. or Ms. “put together” tomorrow is a wreck. Such are the observed fruits, not any condemnation but rather the fruit of simple genuine observation: the closer one draws unto that holy dynamic, God showing up, the more they are tried and tested. So each gives joy and thanksgiving for the testimony, and only prays this, that the Encounter will continue. That the hidden awfulness of who we are, will repeatedly lead to the Cross of Someone Else.

Our “Someone Else” is a blessed place to rest secure. Our Someone Else is a wistful or joyously puzzled gratitude as to just Who and Why things were worked out. We each have room for this Jesus in our lives. We each hold lightly our fruits of prayer. We each match spiritual malady with an antidote that affects us immediately.

Immediately, carried to the threshold of the church. Immediately, receiving a burden lifted. Immediately, assured our myriad concerns, all that we try to balance and hold coherent in one frame of mind, our diversity amongst unity of thought, all this is generously unshouldered from us. We no longer need to take time just to stay sane about all that concerns us. We no longer need feel apologetic for having a direction to point in, even if to play out all the totality of the matter would be hard for us to shoulder. Even if we are blessing the fellowship by pointing to Something. Something that undoes pain. Something that makes our hearers suddenly not grabbing nor urgently trying to avoid life’s death march. Something that values the Now, appreciates the Fellows or Gals, as being significant part of our prayer life, characters we’ve little stopped to acknowledge, who are who we are in faith today. These are our people. These have power to absolve and power to bless, power to hear and power to create. These are Jesus’ friends, of which we—in patent ecstasy—delight to count ourselves one.

For there is no condemnation where people have genuinely waited in expectation. Where people understand: bless all comers, not just those who have worn thin the verbal record of apology and confession; bless all comers, in faith that suffering is sincere and real, and someone “out there” this hour just needs a little fruit of sharing, of sharing the peace, of passing the joy, of building up what Satan has torn up. On such we dwell, no longer fussing around the free-loaders or the unrepentant. We have a vision, and go with it. We have the beginnings of the proof of concept, and so today start by proclaiming God with us, Jesus salvific and for us, Spirit nearer than we dared to think.

All of us know the strength of one experience, perhaps our boot camp or perhaps our time in school or perhaps our family gathering. We know and live eternally in remembrance, in recreation, of a special time. We hasten to the march, delight in the task, shoulder burdens, in recollection just that God loves us, that Someone entered this our messy and uncouth life, and made us legitimate.

There is no zero sum to it, no small prize that must be divvied up. No, we are not begging after scraps, but rather we believe it is possible for a great host of individuals and families and social circles to be built up. We believe in the scourge of sin, and in the lancing forth of righteousness. We believe in mourning, just as we believe in taking care that someone in our circle today feels the Purpose and Belonging and Celebration.

So to the one intent on being sated in the Lord, intent on proving their claim to have had a religious experience: to them we say, no pressure. No need to worry about perjuring yourself come tomorrow. I can hear, even as you insist this time it is all good, that there is a leaning on your own ability to hold things together. Yes, you point to God the Father Above, but you feel pressure from the gathering to announce it is finished. It was finished. It was, such that we can really dwell in exploration and newness, in fresh location and mind-bogglingly nonjudgmental play. Our playing, our playtime, does not require us to testify to God in reverent overtones. It does not require us to prove ourselves submitted. No, it is designed—by Him—to experiment with actual life, as lived and as celebrated and as walked into, by we who can be sure already, not tomorrow, already, not after signing a statement of faith, already, are in the camp. We are already His curiosity figures and His delight to support and nurture for the progeny of thought and parenting and fellowshipping and so much more that God, in His wisdom and patience, decided long ago to speak into being.

Not for loneliness sake did He speak us into being, but in order to celebrate what creative powers His vote of affirmation can bring about. So we stay limber, unafraid to be that agnostic voice at times, unafraid to say a little by way of our joy in career, even if not punctuated by submissive words of religion. Even if He operates in the huddled street corner gatherings, and the homes of the afflicted, sickly, addicted, sin-drenched, criminal, thieving, searching wonderous ones. Even as today may be the beginning of some great movement in our spirit. Thus we give thanks; thus we race to party-hard (play hard) and work hard. Thus we can hear those words that created, that transcend time and space, that have power untold towards the purpose of building up, of not destroying, of undoing the malaise and ill bent of a friend’s unspoken inner fright, frail need, wild brinksmanship. Yes, we all are victim of a mind terrorized by false and boastful religion, and all can really be grateful for the simple care of those converted hearts that do try—and only try—to live into this Christian calling.