2025-01-02 A Meditation on Divine Frustration

“9 As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2 And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” 3 Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. 4 We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. 5 As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” 6 Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud 7 and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. 8 The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” 9 Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” 10 So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” 11 He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” 12 They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”” (John 9:1-12 ESV)

Headstrong and a bit aghast, to face a Tomorrow of individual endeavor, of pluck, of contributions most devout: there is so much parallelism to achieve, so much working together, and so much lone shark, lone ark carried, even as the world teeters. We are agape: that the limits are tested, what is this one’s prerogative or that one’s divine Mandate? What are the guardrails and protections, of this lone operative or that modest, meek-minded little crew? Indeed, Today is the day when we live in a world by some measures, for some folks, largely Free. And that Freedom rings true when the pinch of war is felt, when the focus becomes patient refusal to be exasperated. When we pray for each other, and for our Others: our Enemies.

The Old Narrative does not promise that those who boast of their devotion are somehow automatically Apprised, kept Relevant to, Inducted, into a patently “Good” theology: we all of us are sinners, and the sheep are kept low for a season, that the outsiders may be grafted in. This much a prophet of Scripture has written (Paul). And likewise, the temporarily-lazied “Jews”: for these it is a gladsome Day, to rise up again Redeemed, already Familiar and Related To the scriptural mandate, the church-going mandate, the discipled mandate, the tithing mandate.

We anticipate a Day most divine, Welcome and yet not one we would dare invent or dream up for ourselves: when God shall visit His people with a vengeance and a jurisprudence untold. When the pleas of the poor shall be heard. When, whilst we calculate men, women, and arms, spiritual heft and church buildings, that the Spirit who evolved us to our present state, will too continue to Evolve and upbuild and do Miracle-work on the highest levels of what is Comprehensible: the notions of a hive mind; the notions of simulation, of imitation, of scapegoating avoided or useful when advantageous (we exclude a sinner? Only in mind that Christ was excluded); the boosting of a lone wolf or two to lead. Who leads with their people foremost, in and of themselves boasting in nothing.

That Christ was ridiculed, made over most criminally: these truths are part of our creed, one can say. For the atheist willing to believe, if not in the Father, then in the Son: the atheist who cools the air, perhaps, but warms to a story of denigration, of ridicule, of crucifixion: this is a welcome beachhead.

And to those who feel misunderstood, made over too ironically or jocularly: there is a haven for a magical trick, a sightlines invisible and surprising, when to submit, that is, to give up, is no invite for a slow ruin, but is a blip and a ping on the radar: Today, you shall feast together in paradise? No? That was a martyred soul speaking, but we today live in the Fruits of their sacrifices. We are passed over, because of, if not presumption of innocence, then a self-correcting hesitation to pull the trigger: who am I to judge?

To pray, to evolve, to work over and cleanse top-to-bottom, the new-fangled things, the ways a gentler sort has evolved into positions of leadership: each generation’s war is on a different set of terms. And we are at war, if we have found our Mandate: the chutes and ladders will come; the each-man-to-his-arms shall come; but such haste… we do not covet it, rather greet Today’s charge as one of Prayer, to allow that ideas gestate and come out of nowhere, as to what a purported Enemy is up to, or what we should after all be doing.