2022-11-16 A Meditation on Healing the Self-Centered

“He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” (1 Pe 2:24–25 EV)

In a world gone mad, self-centered, we pin our hopes on the Man whom we cannot make any promises to, whom simply we lean on. This is our love-hate relationship with His life of service, in the trenches. He allowed us to laud Him, whilst also inviting too much familiarity, us too at ease, so much so, that we start to outlet our jests and our second-place status to Him. So that we attack and malign Him. So that we sell Him. So that we feel self-righteous, healed, sin-free, by pointing at Him. So that we mourn Him, but only after we—not knowing our own strength nor our own capacity for evil—do kill Him.

Who does the laundry? Who must be serving whilst we rest? Who listens to us carp and grandstand, ignoring the matter of our own spiritual need? Who hears us self-righteously croon on? Our words are disgustingly self-centered on some level, at some time. And rightly, we are called to account. But as far as Jesus is concerned, we are not so troubled; He uses our sinful output as a vehicle for healing, for coming near to His Cross, for getting to know Him the Savior. He delights to find us less than perfect, to see the Full Man, Woman, Non-binary, begin to come out of our cocoon of fears and loud boasts. He delights to see us Encounter a leaning mate, One to lean on, One who talked for us and announced for us that indeed this one, as for this one, she or he has done ample service for their sins; let the sins be on Me, He says.

So there is something healing and refreshing when a self-centered world stops itself mid-sentence and begins, when possible, pointing to an Other. It lightens us up, to know we are neither mandated to be self-effacing, nor mandated to be personally responsible. Both of those things. Whatever we are doing currently, that is Okay with the King of kings, for He has made it into His cause and His reason for suffering, and His boast, and His folly. We don’t have to be perfectly forgiven either; that is Law rather than the Gospel that delights to forgive for the sake of forgiveness itself, not so as to compel us to walk a high and proud “forgiven” walk.

This takes a big man; we do not bandy about the Name, casually waving off anyone who approaches as themselves being Jesus. Only, in prayer, we all do become Him, and are given capacity thus to bear the self-centered, boring, lugubrious, conniving, gelling, mocking up of who we are. We are Saved, no longer Doubting, today Healed, tomorrow Heavenbound.