2023-07-05 A Meditation on Grace and Love

“3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel. 8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. 9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, 10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, 11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” (Php 1:3–11 ESV)

Transitions: we prepare for shifting times, because some stance of readiness is subtly discerning and separating wheat from chaff for a day to come. On that day Alarm meets urgent party, the celebration of life alongside the news that a distant front is site number one for breach and war. We are those indwelling, living out what we fight for, the better to comprehend, to know simply the alarm and the concomitant power of sortie and raid: Grace disarms the muddled endeavors to evolve the species, the community, via Law. For the sign says, “Want success? Earn it!”, and we, we are nobly titillated but somehow misled until finding the alternative voice: “Find a place you belong, and be inspired”. The alternative voice: “You are God’s winner, already. Now start to thrive”.

All of us know Law, and its grip in myriad manners upon the seat of reason and of decision-making. Frightened some are by that “easy yoke and light burden” that they marry themselves to Law, to Judgmental Activities, to a huff and a fussiness: such-and-so are not living up to the aggression needed; there is a power vacuum; I met them, and what lightweights! Indeed, we are richer for understanding that it is Jesus we met, who treated us at a distance, peacefully, the better to shelter our sensitive consciences from innate guilt or aggression. Jesus, who healed by His determined focus, on little us. On His twelve. On making into a daring sortie the raid on legalism and on swept winds across the plains of society wherein Grace is needed but Law is prevailing.

The prevailing times call each of us to be theologians: to discern, lay people and professionals alike, to discern the overall attitude of our leaders and our society. Are we drinking the pure water of an abundant and overflowing Grace? As opposed to Love: Love the change agent, yet Grace the mild-mannered strongman and mighty woman that dares to discern, that cuts away what is infesting and too easily swept under but not handled, when using that generous spirit called Love alone.

To Love is to enable; to preach Grace is to discern. It is to be possessed with an entire theology wherein hearts are addicted to the Law, using that very thing that condemns each of us, in an effort to be saved. Grace is bold and not wishy-washy. Grace is more than soft climes: Grace urgently prescribes sane responses to what ideas ferment and strike fear into our hearts; nothing is off limits, yet many things we cultivate a certain morality around and a taste alongside a distaste.

We are afraid to be corrupt, or possessed with unspeakable fantasies or aggressions or allure of dominion. We literally presume to be high and mighty as the front people for entire outfits we have zero qualifications to be a member of, much less the ability to be the prophetic guide for. Yet, prophecy is the word of this Pentecostal generation, that it is a real concept and a strange fact. A child shall lead them (Is 11:6). Now, the cause is to make the discerning cut, to replace a drinker’s third or fourth cupful with a cup of water (they won’t mind). The facing of the fact of addiction to Law helps us to be bold as agents of Grace. To fly the sortie (a party of ready and healed people awaits us!). We are healed upon finding joint project, and that includes the feast and party; each comer knowing their proper role and choosing their destiny within the facts of life: so much is possible, so much is redeemed and blossoms where Grace lifts countenance and rediscovers reactive Love. We love in reaction to the efforts to please parent and kin, the words we speak in hope that they will not return empty. We do all this because life has borne the heat of day; Grace has taught us humility and a Hereafter that is post-discernment, post-revelation of the addiction to Law, empowered to overcome and to be confident that this message—of “Love”, rather, of “Grace”—has prescribed strong meds, that the flipside will be easy and light.

This reminds us the task is not easy at first, until acknowledging more than a few good turns are required: we need total restoration; we are totally at the mercy of our wandering thoughts and ambitions. Therefore the skeleton key is immediately discerned in the love shown by one who doesn’t have all the answers, whose new discipleship is not yet “complete” by the world’s standards, who simply is touched and thereby has become Pastor and Lover, inwardly celebrating and celebrating with those nearby, even as the world careens and is insensitive. Even amidst a world that is damning those properly called Chosen, Beloved; these seem easy words in a church community but we hush and pray and fellowship and embrace: they spell aggression and enmity on a some foreign yet near front.