“12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. 13 For we are not writing to you anything other than what you read and understand and I hope you will fully understand— 14 just as you did partially understand us—that on the day of our Lord Jesus you will boast of us as we will boast of you. 15 Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first, so that you might have a second experience of grace. 16 I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia, and to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea. 17 Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh, ready to say “Yes, yes” and “No, no” at the same time? 18 As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20 For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22 and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. 23 But I call God to witness against me—it was to spare you that I refrained from coming again to Corinth. 24 Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith.” (2 Cor 1:12-24 ESV)

Basic gamesmanship elevates some voices to elite, to high tensile, to mission critical informative. Vis-a-vis his or her life in community, the soldier’s gameplay is heroic and constantly “on”: we vibe off of one another; we relish the dialog; we study and are informed by each parlay.

Because of some svelte Enhanced Nature, we learn and mechanistically sway in the winds of a Culture hell-bent on mocking earnest attempts. We participate and Hear, from the oddball voice “in the crowd”, that God is avidly at work in our midst, that Soldier’s Rank for once opens up the table to back-and-forth, to conversation, to sincere “speaking as a private citizen”. We speak, and the deed is done, writ in stone, recorded for a future memorial to seven-day Creation. 

Today, is it evident by now? That today is Occasion for head down boots on the ground March, to feel that elation that all our training and basic preparations now see us in the throng, missional and engaged, pivotally placed and perfectly jocular, jousting, rigged up to Thrive because Today we see the first intimations of Engagement. Of a Fact: that the luscious environs correctly Honor the prophets amongst us, correctly love on the pundits or jokesters amongst our Throng. We are corralled in wild fancy towards the end of All for One and One for All: please, O citizen of the land, Hear this soldier’s patient lived experience as it is Voiced.

Lived Experience around the rather unspoken nature of a Cruciform Theology. Lived Experience around the end of deifying Man and the beginning of low, low, low anthropology, that Christ spotted the scam artist in the midst, and mourned the lack of fidelity to Truth, the vivid fate of hell-in-a-handbasket of so many trajectories. Yet He therefore Healed and made New those so fated souls, because He had that Power, to be mission critical, to yawn no longer but with alertness to Serve the Outfit, the Community, the Intelligence, the dastardly effort always to Recruit, even if in person, in actual fact, we like the apostle Paul, are of little impact, are nervous and socially anxious. “Do not prepare in advance how you are to answer them!” The stories rambling around in our minds are stories of a hero’s Jaunt and Gauntlet. It is no longer about Us, but about Him whom we represent. Our testimony is this: that we behaved ourselves with utmost Correctness and Simplicity while in their company. This is the story of the Cross as witnessed to, amidst love for loads of Genesis-derived notions that we are formed in His image: yes, thus formed, but also thus sent to suffer and to die, all the while Alert and Highly Engaged with the simple peers on the subway or in the highways and byways of a campus corporate or college.

This is the New Normal, that we lusciously arrive on scene and Testify to God’s prevenient Grace towards us. And for this, we use every trick in the bag, every socially appropriate conversation topic, every available would-be Denial were it not instead a patient Friendship Evangelism. We are not denying our Lord’s Cross; we are highlighting it, as New Creations living and breathing, as Radical with the News that Mission is On, even as the polite masters of manners do carry the torch of Respectability and Honorarium. No, if our mission seems muddled or lost in the transfer, be assured O soldier it is still knocking at the door of every heart in the room: this day to face a Stark Decision; this day to go Healed, Evangelized. The aim isn’t over truth claims made, but rather that everyone present—Jew, Greek, atheist and so on—experience some little of Christian Unction. Because we play no name games nor favoritism. Because we are hurried and calmed, both at once, towards the End of near encounters of the Third Kind.