2024-09-25 A Meditation on Existential Passion

“50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Cor 15:50-58 ESV)

The fleeting nature of Man, found in times of War, spiritual and otherwise, reminds both that it is a mercy to miss out on some facets of a long life (one lived in seemingly peaceful, blase environs), and that it is a credit to the soldier that we can make such existential changes of expectations. We make no balancing act as to the relative merits of this sort of Calling and that, militarized and urgent, sense of Calling. This was the generation who lived heroically. This was the lost generation of the Family who Emerged Victorious, the child reading a history in a family manor or civic library strangely intimated that it came at a cost of lives and much sacrifice, a bloody storyline now changed into coherent and simple principles and light-hearted stories. Dear child, can you hear the expectations?

For, probably the only thing worse than the news it’s not all about us, is the news of it all being “about us”. It taps into our own deep dislike or boredom with the self. It shows such loving judgment by layering upon us everything we coveted, including a good name and a place at the center of the room. It judges us to the utmost, when we for example reflect: one chance word from an elder, while we were at play; we still remember and associate that elder with that offhand word. So if they are thus to be judged good, and at times bad, by our haphazard memory, how much more shall we be judged? Like Paul says, “Thanks be to God, that you were once slaves of sin and have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness” (Ro 6:17).

That is, to be given what we most urgently request, with our signs and deeds, is itself a punishment: what God implants in our hearts is Good Desires. God also helps us to see the power of Love, that a Child of the faith led them, that a Child of the faith reminded them there is a brand of Grace that knows no religious cubbyhole. We have those friends, long absent but returned, with whom we do not at all worry about getting the email tone or verbiage “correct”: that is a bright sign of Grace. That we don’t worry about getting a stern tone or rebuke, because they represent Grace. But more, that their Grace is not somehow designed or intended by them quite, but with some sadness (only some) is a product of their own battle wounds, physical and otherwise, their own crosses borne. Yes, for the plain Judgment as they put into words, does heal and does equip. Indeed, let us reverse that: because they are innately “Grace”, they are persecuted in the body and in the soul.

Yet all are sinners, and those who “should be” aiding and representing the “Church” are in dire enmity with it. Rightly so, we might add, but sadly so. It is a remark about the church more than about the would-be Sainted Member. So back to that Christian Testimony, banked on a legacy or rumors good and rarely ill, that earns us the trust of conversation; we witnessed together a Christ-event of some fashion, and therefore we have not “changed too much”, we are not “too taciturn”, we need—here’s the Grace again—do nothing to earn a hug and a nice, spoken through pain and tears, blessing. All this, and to the Battleground, because we saw life here and then there, in our domicile and on the internet “out there”, in the pew and at the church group, that no nonsense, no concession, we with blabbering tongues of fire Defend. How dare they impinge on this or that Life most Precious? Who doesn’t race to the ramparts because the needle or gunshot is already threatening. The faux judgment is already at work. Sin is already creeping, knocking at the door. Yet, wake O soldier, and see it was all a bad dream: friend is here, and companion is there, and all these things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose (Ro 8:28).