2024-11-03 A Meditation on Flying High

“6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away. 7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— 10 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. 13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. 14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 15 The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. 16 “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Cor 2:6-16 ESV)

Veering across a constellation of stars, mad levels of excitement meet Cohesion: we stick together, because we aren’t living for a hoard of wealth or other deterrents from Gospel energies. Gospel life in community gives to each ensign a right to Celebrate, a moment to Bask, Bliss to engage upon: yes, these “illegal” levels of joy are the rightful estate of any who serve the Gospel.

Yet it is said we should instead lurch this way and that, mad and chomping at an artificial bit. It is said we are fraudsters and people believe the rumor that “A.I. did it all”. What is this “A.I.”? It is a feeble attempt to deny Alternately-Originating Christians and soldiers their place at the Gospel table: O Christian, what you might initiate Today, if only you back down from your haughtiness! O Christian, what you might initiate Today, if only you clamor and delight in speaking of a Merciful Judgment, your sins for His right hand and His blood!

For, it is said we are vainglorious and idiotically comforted, falsely built up, strangely calmed, weirdly Pleasant and Basic in our demeanor. It is said, our Gospel is lagging under zero followers and even fewer friends. The patient Truth is that we leave behind those lobster traps of Not There Yet, and we engage and endeavor upon a crystalline Truth licensed to delight and to end despair, licensed to Sign on the dotted line: yes, friend, the movement begins just with me and you, only then see what God can set into motion. See God’s propellant, rocket fuel of the invite not held back, to Celebrate even amidst our sad End of all Liberal Democracy, rather, the end of admittedly peaceful or affording opportunities, life in the rearview mirror. Today we soldier forward into a regrettable War for the Crown.

A new notion is at work, and we may even be the ones who created the alternate ideology called Law, who built it up, who spread the rumors; but Today, if it is still Today, enter into that inheritance that our own sins did bring about perhaps: be the ones Forgiven and of Gladsome Report! The waters could not be more stirred up!

It is not the end of liberal democracy, but a preemptive assault against our worse dreams: that while the pundits pontificate and the scribes lay paragraph upon paragraph, all of a sudden there is an Eclipse of the sun, all of a sudden there is a blast that reaches into every living room and family den, and we—we shall soldier on, still in capitalistic society, with our corner store and coffee shop melodious—but in an outfitted and principled Certainty that each and every soul is either for or against, wink-wink-nudge-nudge we serve as our talents enable us, but scrappy and Fighting, Pugnacious and Intelligent, to win over hearts and minds by our hazardous venture forth.

Officers of the Crown, we truly believe in that strange Dynamic—is it liberal? Is it democratic? Is it a bit socialist?—where Grace takes place. Others have blasphemed and invented strange customs around their brand of Grace; we receive as a gift from On High our melodic practice venturing forth with friends, our trips of the “guys’ night out”, the “club of single folks”, the “romantic duo”. We laud and honor that perhaps because we were poor, we became Rich. And still that nagging zero-sum-game false mentality assumes that life must end in pain and failure. Only we believe the opposite, that life can afford to each Believer a brighter tomorrow, and a present day war to match all wars, because it is over one or two unrepentant souls perhaps, or one or two refusals perhaps. Refusing to dive in. Refusing to take the self-correcting plunge. Refusing to ask, were just the few of us in a bunker together, how and what would be our game? What charade would be our jokes with each other? How would we, about to go to the front, how would we Contribute? Would we emphasize—this being a bit of a game of musical chairs—our road as being Grace, or would our emphasis end up being some flawed endeavor based around a new custom or “good deed”.

Hear, servant of Jesus, that Today we can be with each other in paradise, no longer just imitating those martyred of English record (and Germanic record, if only the wars in Germany hadn’t confounded and lost so many of the records that the English Reformation didn’t lose): we are like those martyred insofar as we accept just the Paradise of each other’s testimony. And we are more than able to Forgive, even those whose muddied feet trod on our welcome mat of our home. For, the ugly thumb in the mix is not preaching Grace any longer, if it once was. Now it is preaching contrariness and apple carts upset, class warfare and non-allowances made: we cannot allow all classes and sorts of men and women to act like this. It is a pristine notion of divine right of kings, that we must reject.

So back to the battalion and back to the Venture into Tomorrow’s great Unknown, officers and servants of the King, of the Lord Above. Because it won’t all make sense. It may grate against our notions of what gifts all do deserve, the divine right of the populace. To see that silly wars arise, that we must really learn to be bold around what talents or gifts we in meekness did possess. Not all will take the side of an underdog, yet in that merciful gaze heavenward, the underdog actually has their own Rightful Place and Joy. Seek that, and be glad, be comforted, be readied, be untamed or non-complacent. Hear in this Word some personal encouragement to be that front line. It will after all work, and we will be the first to dwell in Heaven’s elusive abstract sensuous and spiritually-decisive, upbuilt and luscious Momentary Life Together. For this we are thankful, because it all began suddenly to revolve around what we after all believed, not just in our constitution written out, not just in our basic personal liberties, but in a wild-eyed razor-sharp Dichotomy and War around Repentance and Faith, around Service and Dying, around Tomorrow and Rising to New Life.