2025-03-26 A Meditation on History Lessons

“14 About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. 15 The Jews therefore marveled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” 16 So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” 20 The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” 21 Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. 22 Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 23 If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? 24 Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”” (John 7:14-24 ESV)

Archeology, history, assessment: the diagnosis or historical retrospective of a crime calls us to some rather level-headed forgiveness, that is, the anatomy of the discursive deed will not be manageable, comprehensible, justly served. We cannot rightly assess or judge. We cannot fix things, at least not according to an “A then B” logical retrospective.

Resurrection is the firm answer to our searching questions. Resurrection is premised on the fact that a Death has occurred. Already we are in way deep, but a Death has occurred. Man’s inner shrines… his totems… his pride of place, principles, boasts: somehow these are mocked. Somehow nonetheless the sheer weight of glory, the boast of a borrowed, lent, gifted Strength, catches up the naysayers in its wake. Follow Him? This we shall do. Follow the Holy Spirit? This we hearken to.

When mocked, a death is occurring. When humiliated, man in his own element cannot see around corners sufficient to proclaim a Forgiveness, a Peaceful wake and spreading calm. Man already assumes the worst. But peoples coexist, despite mistakes made. Peoples buck and jibe against their idylls that lay ruined, their solids that lay compromised, their backdrops that are not easily reappraised: a friend… a lover… a comrade… it is their Decision that we hearken to. To be Together in the wild question: “Is my presence unwanted here?”. And the dreamy, patience-rewarding, answer. Which gives some mysterious brightness to the man or woman’s countenance: someone “Out there” must have been praying for me. For us. For the entourage. For its leaders, some new and some well-known.

That is, the historical retrospective, the archeology, reminds of simple mistakes that go viral or that implode. To keep level-headed, no rash vacuum filled, no insults to friends or enemies lashed out, no end to our own Mercy dictated, dictum shared and hoped in. We are soldiers of a determined sort of war, an enemy silent but listening in, a punishing judgment for all neighbors, with we ourselves the last to know, the last ones approached being our simple and innocent, flourishing-at-times gathering. Only the pain is real and is shared: this is a time of deprivations. This is a time nonetheless of living out gifted, imputed, invested Peace and Love so well known by now, that we can live off of the meager land because of a seed planted in our hearts.

Fools for Christ? Or pragmatists with unexpected Patience? Simply to be able to love on each other, is to be able to whisk away so much contretemps and accounting and fright zones. We shall, in any marriage-of-equals, friendship, teaming up, we shall go down that rabbit hole of a misunderstanding or a dueling, contrasted, mindset: the “Breadth-first-search” that—had it only been able to go one level deeper—would have let us see each others’ perspective, but no: things we never thought of, a friend, an analyst, a prayer-warrior, helps us in, with the imagined or real, prayed through or acted out, dialog. What would so-and-so think? What would Jesus do? And we, His people: how are we to bless each other in our respective decisions? By certainty: war is the sinner’s protestation of the love shown, the illogical Love, the absent Judgment, the offensive Patience. Law… it only creates impossible binds and impossible resolutions, things that need a sober Judge who looks beyond the letter and considers something that Jesus gifted to us, naming it Spirit. So our innate structure and moral code, is loosened to allow for Fellowship in the Spirit with the power to last two millennia, to be carried down to us. By the traveler to distant lands. By the heft of a loving gestalt. By us being that Heft, being magnanimous and gladsome, with flourishes and self-sufficiency married to acceptance-of-gifts, reactivity, teaming up. God teams up with us in cautious manner, in trusting vulnerability, in no fear to proclaim His love for us, and to let that be the final Word on the matter.