“32 And they went to a place called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” 33 And he took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be greatly distressed and troubled. 34 And he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death. Remain here and watch.” 35 And going a little farther, he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 And he said, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” 37 And he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour? 38 Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy, and they did not know what to answer him. 41 And he came the third time and said to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough; the hour has come. The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Rise, let us be going; see, my betrayer is at hand.”” (Mark 14:32-42 ESV)
Clear sailing meets compromised or murky waters: Christ had radical mind shifting because His clean slate, His benevolent will, His incarnational calling, was not sufficient to surmount the onslaught, cavalcade, ruinous fears and overwhelming Concerns. His Concern became the Cross. His buoyancy, His plumbline of staid sanity, His blessing and absolution of any and all charges of “messing around”, “betrayal of the brotherhood, sisterhood”, “beef with the other entities”: all this crushed down on His head, minus calm, minus some perfect synchronous waltz unto the hereafter, all was Done and Betrayed on His burdensome cross.
We His people are then minus worry, minus despair, minus compromised status: we are agents of a Crown unperfect yet not weary, of an Operation half-crazed, half-cocked, half-true to God’s calling, His perfection, His long-term Plan. God has a Plan, to orchestrate Beauty and Plenteous Joy through standard deeds done by His saints in the land. God… we have formerly associated with the atheist and with the doubter, but We… we see an undefeated Posture that is patiently orchestrating the Victory. Because it is plausible He might be wrong, it is suggested He might be off-kilter, it is remarked He might be foolhardy.
God runs things, runs the show, concerns Himself with the Operation, because His Son ate with the troops, prayed with the troops, and lived and died with the troops. His forward operation revolves around Respect and Camaraderie, dualities, trinities, and quaternions of Peoples formed and bearing down on that elusive rabbit trail called Love, called Affection, called Affinities. We vibe with one another, minus the “beef” or the “contretemps” because we are Soldiers of a new brand of War.
When the history is written, it will be on the other side of a massive public education as to Today’s landmarks, Today’s Ways and Means, Today’s mannerisms and tokens, totems of observance and respect, deities of such obvious import that it is crazy we aren’t already lauding them. Our Totem, nonetheless, is of His Spirit writ large, His pantheon on display, His entourage respected and honored as the Canonized in the land, the Remarkable in the cohort.
It is a New Day that greets the soldier himself, herself found in mounting Despair, directed and commanded to take up the Cross, mandated to Die a war hero whether remembered or forgotten. Yet all human experience is wrapped up in said Death. All life offers, flashes before the eyes, of the One compromised by evil and overtaken by dutiful death. We honor such ones as these, never quite able to recreate or fully imagine what they went through. Because we have Christ to meditate on, that a movement was set into motion by His Cross. That the grave refused to hold Him down, and He rose on the third day.
Call it another generation’s mythology: today we have science and medicine, our fellows in arms around their medical or scientific calling, to point out that the Resurrection was indeed miraculous: see today our fasted warriors with insane strength ten days in, and imagine, then, that Christ—a perfect specimen—did see His heart go broke and His heart resurrect and beat again. This much is plain, but more so it is plain He mocked and surpassed Death, one way or another.
As God’s agent, emissary, world leader, He was satisfied with a meek twelve, of oddball characters and plaintive, searching souls. They were sated as a babe with mother’s milk, in the arms of the Mother, of the Father, in His company, because scarcely did they understand the Poetry of what was going on, the Remarkable nature of what was transpiring. They simply rested in His bosom and free-associated, their speech strangely odd and prophetic, in simple ways: “You are the Christ”, quoth Peter the apostle. As though unaware of the import of what he was saying.
Therefore to be tender in one another’s care and concern, one another’s embrace and linked arms, is to honor such ones as these, who—yes, first and only one in two millennia—gave their lives for the People. It is to remember and to celebrate, amidst the sad fact of War, that legions of saints will overcome legions of demons, that it is nothing imagined: the strange tensions erupting into visible War, the hard-pressed life in certain communities compromised, the weary efforts to avoid plausible notions that we hate, and uphold true notions that we Love.
That is, people assume the worst in our motives, and we fight within and without around a Higher imputed righteousness: that our deeds are done in Love, that with a few edits of the mouse, with some peaceful dialog, calming or “obvious” but “necessary” words can be interjected. The war begins for some on paper, in human dialog, in strange burdens borne by our friends, by those we defend and respect and are furious to see mistreated. We are indeed Noble of birth and of Cause because we stick up for the downtrodden, for the depressed and unconsoled, for the hurt and victimized. We do this because such were some of us, the noble visage of Man in His good and Primitive, caring state, is our picture of Christ our brother, our sister, our Mother hen and Father above. Who died to Save, who engaged to love, who deployed to face wearily the reality of many dying for One Cause, and one dying for All.
One day, all will make sense, and His assaulted calm, His hated peace, His compromised stoicism, will make sense and Encourage, Calm, Teach, and Uplift the weary.