2023-03-12 A Meditation on Forgiveness

“My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” (1 Jn 2:1 ESV)

As we focus on the miraculously-obtained, we are calm but with a sense of urgent peace, urgent mind holding mental balance of an unreal variety: that Sins are forgiven, but no empty phrase therein, rather we feel ourselves fated by past deeds to a life corrupted with judgment; and then, the miracle, holding our own, coming into our own, the sin-forgetting glad tidings and call for simple words to address simple undeservedness. We desire to say very little, only as a matter of course to bear witness to a miracle called Mercy.

Ideas gestate and live in the shadow of concrete deeds, the “down time” plausible for inspiration as much as the waking reverence (or consternation) for what-all we are getting up to. What-all is the leap of faith? What-all is the background vibe of our persona, what background does inform and guide the ideas that gestate? For we have pattern and forerunner in a trust fall. We have model and innovator in an emergency soul-revision. We revised our soul to dwell in the embrace of faith, God cushioning with peace while also challenging with project and prospectus, towards an unbored faith and an unlazy venture forth. Towards ideas as they gestate. Towards a fasted discovery: no drink or food or stimulant is needed, if it is Man’s capacities as truly understood that we seek. If we seek Man’s burgeoning expansive self-expression, then in this we discern—because of our background vibes—what Christ is doing. Christ in each of us. A call to escape the need for sustenance, just a bit, if it will teach us of the unmeasured and non formulaic revisiting of Man in his and her solemn estate.

Soldier first, and inventor second. Laborer first, and creator second. Or prophet/prayer warrior first, and ways we bide our time vis-a-vis now being “Christian”, God-honoring, Christ-uplifting, peace and satiety in society because society has been dominated and made to confess Christ as viable religion, viable Lord for the traveler; this, second.

Viable, we then can accept a winnowed self-expression or abode, a self-satisfaction on the flipside of divesting ourselves of patent sins and uncouth behavior. We are couth in Him, in His love, in the lightness of being and simplicity of the exchange: Him for our sins, us for His Resurrection. He rose so we could see through accumulation, on to a peace unreactive, unbothered, uninstigated. Our thoughts stand at the ready to debate cogently and peacefully, us having already accepted a worse defeat, but in that defeat a greater New Life. We were defeated by our sins; now, many thoughts that cross our threshold are no longer too scary to contemplate. Yet, too, we are like children nestled, for some thoughts are too scary.

We expect loud and illogical sins, hackles raised up at times with no logic; we have trouble in truth explaining how blissfully ignorant we once were towards our hubris and proud actions, our solo walk into the night, our friends and accomplices and neighbors murmuring that this one needs a bit more patience and prayer, letting us go but not denying the power of a forgiving, church-building, spirit. Others built while we wandered, in tears, hope a distant memory. They illuminate that old principle: forgiveness is too easily assumed, or too difficult to accomplish. We confess our fault lines, but cannot escape purgatorial or eternal judgment even of those things we have confessed.

Life and society puts positive spin, and this is because of a societal reign made by Jesus, to find some means to express and live into forgiveness. Of the penitent and of the proud unrepentant. For to be forgiven is to find a rare gem, a strange standing place, a bashful kindness to one’s fellow human. It apes “normality”, giving pause even to seasoned church-goers, that indeed forgiveness might just be asking us for a theater in which to display it. Regnant. Dominant. The plain-spoken Spirit and simply-gesturing Son. The knowing Father, who helps us while ideas gestate, to feel truthfully all we hate about our deeds and ourselves, those painful memories, and to know ourselves to be heard mercifully. With our painstakingly earned, or simply gifted, estate and friends, made in greater or lesser innocence. Within life as given to us, now retrofitting this strange Promise and Doctrine.

It is a shocker, to established churches as much as to the unbelieving atheist or agnostic, to see forgiveness. Such is our Word. We sought a testimony of mercy, and were gifted abundantly. We had concrete backdrop that made the appeals for mercy all the more meaningful. For we debate what we see, not what should be but what is.

Then the denouement, the genuine tears for a vicious circle of fault and blame and loss and error, that takes us to that place called Miracle and called Mercy. We are blessed to go forth into the day and into the night, held and belonging and forgiven. We dare even to ape our accusers by being fully-made and by belonging with license to live on in the community. We begin to address our harried fears and trauma. All this is offensive to the routine thinking. All this is our special ingredient, which brings persecution but also much credulous acceptance. So we can hide, in receipt of this strange doctrine called Mercy.