2024-11-27 A Meditation on Game Day

“12 I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. 14 And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear. 15 Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. 16 The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. 18 What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.” (Philippians 1:12-18 ESV)

The translation of certainties, these beckon us rightly to put on a game-day face and to seek the principled stand, the resolute front, the foundational propriety for what is called our Creed. Yet this posture evades, in any honest self-assessment: all of us have experienced the crescendo and utter overwhelming nature of life vis-a-vis us trying to find that strength on our own two feet. That is, we are prepping for a Certainty born in Translation, in Off-loading, in the Baptismal Waters now crossed: we have crossed to another side, and in the process made much about Man’s greed and posturing, Man’s flaws and cautionary steps, too cautious by far for our own Discovery: that Christ meets us when for once we have had to make do, the homeless encampment, the post-attack assault survivors group, the reckoning with being dead poor or mortally wounded or prescribed only so much joy in this life.

Therefore the inevitability of War is a doctrine couched in the Certainty that all our self-doubts and self-loathing and honest self appraisal, are offloaded by the Son and Man (Woman) who has not allowed Sin to catch up with Him or Her. We need that. We know ourselves too well, to think it is somehow copacetic and rational to hope in our own Capabilities and Sanity. We hear the solemn bells as they toll for another, for the life lived halfway in heaven and halfway on earth. Such was Christ’s life and death for us. It helps us, being able to Trust in the absolving Power of a life well lived: it isn’t our self-righteousness that gives us this power that we lend to others, but rather it is our Acceptance that Mercy is indeed a doctrine properly needed. Therein we become little Saviors to one another. Therein suddenly we have matured, and in maturity have found things to live for and things to die for. A principled stand. An experiential perspective. A vast Confidence that we are being gentle and kind to all comers, to all folks and peoples. And we find a new sense of license: to fight, to repel, to defend, because it started in a deadly confrontation within our own souls. We know we are not being hypocritical here, quick to punish others while indulging ourselves. Rather, we know to have gone soup-to-nuts. We know to have gone the full gamut. It becomes second-nature, and mightily Licensed, to be those More Mature, those Grandly Standing but not grandstanding, to have perhaps a Creed scarcely capable of putting into words, but that is Lived Out. In community. In an end to being disappointed that those we meet aren’t there yet, some of them. But also a patient zeal when we do find a fellow-traveler. These years shall be made much of. And we shall see our Lord face-to-face, in each other, in gently Hoping that as we invest in another Soul, we are the ones making it happen: we aren’t waiting for the “savior partner” but rather are making hay while the sun shines with Discovering and Imputing and Assessing Peace and Progress in each other. This is our Divine capacity, imperative, gladsome Front no longer bothered as to whether the war or the peace is in the stars, because our own War is waged, to be for each other souls Testifying, thereby Making Real, a platform new and Rich.