2025-02-25 A Meditation on Going the Course

“11 For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this people, saying: 12 “Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. 13 But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. 14 And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 And many shall stumble on it. They shall fall and be broken; they shall be snared and taken.” 16 Bind up the testimony; seal the teaching among my disciples. 17 I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him. 18 Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion. 19 And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living? 20 To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. 21 They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward. 22 And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.” (Isaiah 8:11-22 ESV)

“4 Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, 2 so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. 3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry. 4 With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you; 5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does. 7 The end of all things is at hand; therefore be self-controlled and sober-minded for the sake of your prayers. 8 Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. 9 Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: 11 whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies—in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (1 Peter 4:1-11 ESV)

This one took a job, that one started a family, a third went on an artsy quest. The Christian’s conviction is that, broad the world and wide the horizon, he or she is uniquely poised to persevere. In the faith. In the certainty fellows and gals are falling by the wayside, entering the sick bay, unable to bear the heat of the day. And we, we have a unique and entrusted Message.

Because the exciting times, these counter-balance with the scrappy times, the nose-to-the-ground punchy times: we punch, we scrape by, in a brand of Religious Certainty, that—thankless the work, beguiling the temptations, endemic the doubts—believes on a Gift, a Necessity, a vacant Seat for us to occupy, to do the good deeds by way of our poor, of our doubtful, of our abused and weary.

All of us He-Man for a moment. All of us a cage fighter for a spell. All of us an efficient discussion companion and polemicist for a time. Or, simply to walk on that Faith which says, know this, O soldier, that someone is Hearing, is in Need, is a bit tired from all the winning team’s jokes, the popular kids’ angle on things, the story told but told lacking in a certain Bold Bedrock Refusal to graduate from simple acceptance, from simple misshapen or come-what-may belovedness, strange and awkward—but effective—hugs and titillating or must-do gestures. That do not do any honor to their originator. That do not do her or him a solid. That make of any of us Vulnerable and Risk-Taking first responders.

And to the front: principled Decisions Matter. How we make decisions, this matters. To take the job, to do the self-sacrificial thing, that is, to take the mellifluous, worthy Task of upbuilt community, of vocal Dichotomy: ideas matter, like decisions matter. We arrive at the end of groping in the dark, we arrive at a Gifted, Externally-Originating Answer, a Confession of Faith, a Theology distinctive (and damn those who don’t salute), an Intervening Muscle. That muscle, it is sheer Grace and absence of threat. It is a safe harbor. It is a measured speech, after a wearying day or while in the midst of pain: we talk as though answering life’s biggest questions: do you love me, are we Bedrock in our Dispositions, respectively?

So pardon the paradox, that an enemy fumes and storms the castle when once we’ve gone Easy-Going. When once we’ve shown that muscle and firepower of Protecting the Innocence, and let’s face it, a noble soldier, a dying comrade… see? It was all for those, whose multitudinous sins are stuff the soldier laughs over, because of Love, because of Dutiful Service, because of having seen the Alternate Half, and knowing: we are all but children, and someone Died for us, just as we Today forget the ennui, the longing for youth, the sense of futility or an impossible mountain to climb… we are Inspired by One Deed, and that from a dying Savior. We will come again in the Resurrection, be sure of that. We will get to live this life a dozen times and in a dozen different ways. Because we discern the Body. Because we take the Elements. Because we knew the dynamo of War-Cries originating in nursing mother mode.

One Deed. None will seem thereby to be saluting… yet. He was remembered in posterity. She was eulogized in fine form, but late. The Christian lives and dies, walks the streets and lives out those Decisions each day Made, in a stark Embrace of unrelenting, uncompromised Doctrine. That I felt a parental or sibling Love in those stark words: Gospel over Law, Creation in force, us as Image Bearers of our Creator, strange Religion that claims so much immodest stuff for its adherents. But also daring religion, that makes a Man God, a Woman God, here on earth and for all to emulate and try and live up to. It will, after all, be okay. Embrace the trauma, embrace the ennui, embrace the Stark Dying Day each of us one day will face, and know you are Poised and Brinksman already, and in effective, winning fashion.