2024-12-10 A Meditation on Faith Gone Rampant

“12 We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, 13 and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. 14 And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. 15 See that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. 16 Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies, 21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.” (1 Thess 5:12-22 ESV)

The better witnesses to a Faith gone rampant, are those hardcore in the sense of some opposites thinking. Some thinking around thankfulness amidst hardship. Some thinking around blessing amidst antagonism from others. Some thinking around being seen as Fools… fools for Christ, if you like, but even without that much to boast in: Fools, plain and simple.

Then to the average Christian… except, there is no such thing. All of us can arrive at a Point of Decision and investigate our actions and our life’s compromises or needfulness, in light of whatsoever Scripture mandate or commonly-accepted mandate or Holy Spirit-led mandate, has trickled down to us

The soldier, far from being a lapsed or casual Churchman, Churchwoman, today is called to act on behalf of so many quieter or compromised or held-down Saints in the land. So much to be thankful for, we have still our Composure and our Reputation, almost. We have not quite gone the full gamut of ridicule and even questioning from within, our selves being the ones most dubious and questioning. We may not have gone that gamut, because Today Christ is alive and With Us. We are the happily going-along disciples. We are the curious but not entirely unloveable Cohort. We are touching on a Bedrock—consisting of all those saints throughout the histories, from Simeon, to Barak, to Jeremiah, to Ezekiel, to Anna, to Naomi, to Isaiah. That bedrock is firm and will make mockery of any self-advancing sin, any ambitious signing up: we are ambitious to be brought Low, that He in His timing might remake us New Creations.

So to that puzzle, as to how such a broad Movement (for we see the signs, and hear the gladsome tidings on the street or the strange Gratitude for a war postponed, rather, on the horizon insofar as it gives Meaning and Duty to everyone who hears these words of Scripture and these personal Disciplings made in private, then shared abroad), how such a broad Movement can be so idiosyncratic and curious, blessing the widow and the orphan, blessing those with little in this world. And then to see, a president bow, a captain surrender to the Spirit, a lauded entrepreneur point heavenward: these things Validate and Legitimize even the poverty-stricken contradictory spirit of the Saints. All of them.

Hardcore, because there is an effeminate Christianity, and for those who dislike that term, there is a gender-correlated both-and of just whom and how we interact: for the Women in each of us, what they call so much of church-life. But for the Men in each of us, nothing lost, nothing surrendered: our Calling is to be both-and, to allow for the manly Femme and the sensitive Homme. What is all this, if not foolish pursuit after false distinctions: Church, rightly understood, calls for “More men for the ministry”, because it calls for Both. We are hardcore around filling in what is lacking in our gender-opposites’ outlay. We scarcely know our own—call it the frozen chosen, call it the lacklustre attendee—in fact Ridiculousness and Hardcore Nature: we are actually well underway as the sensitive, as the loving, the forgiving, the upside-down thinking around matters of Wealth and Prestige.

There is no “Average Christian”: the Spirit pursues and makes Men, Women, Both-And, of Everyone signing up for that Name. And each has their track-record as a personal Surety: a personal Reminder, that try we did to put in the Discipling and Thoughtful self-assessment, but in the end it was His mothering, His recollection that “Go with your instincts! Go with the Movement, with the Flow!” that gave us Broad Roaming space, unheard of by so many cautiously holed up in prayer: we are those Entitled and in Service on behalf of the many silent, the martyrs in secret, the lacking influence horror-stricken, the ones just struggling to attribute hardship to their Service rather than to their self-conscious self-image.

To acknowledge a problem, in this Honesty and in this Likeable Trait, we appeal to one another: accept me as I am, because I scarcely can fix it, even by talking through it. We therefore live near to radical Otherness and Contradiction and Senseless violence against the Person, against the Soul. The truth is hidden somewhere between living Contrite and living on the Authority and Hope of Another. Of Christ. Of Jesus and the Saints. Of that blessed Space and Rambling Room some of His people still do have. Because they aren’t the casual attendee, they aren’t the Sunday-only Faithful, they aren’t the nodding acquiescent. They are rich in His People’s Blessedness. They are Testifying with a nod or careless unthought-out statement of faith. They are complicit in His schemes of blessing the poor and orphan and widow and refugee.