2024-12-26 A Meditation on Innately Radical

“6 The point is this: whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. 7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. 9 As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” 10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor 9:6-15 ESV)

A solemn, a meager, outlet, to be understood… this we balance with being safe, being broad-minded, being kosher. But to be understood, it taxes our very sense of identity, our very sense of personality or personae. These things we were gifted, by a parent, by a teacher, by a community, by some sublime notion most generous and uncalculating: that our better halves, our qualities, qualifications, our advertisement for any and all sense of Cause, these things simply accidentally seem to happen. In our locus. Near our bodily presence. Close to our tin roof and makeshift abode.

We were happy just vibing off of the chitter-chatter of Fellowship, until it dawned upon us as we critique or bless the worldview of someone else, how radically our own outlet is lunacy and misfit uncalculated loon talk. So to the Certainty in a friend’s blessing or pronouncement. To the strange sense of Centrality afforded to something we learned on our childhood playmate’s knee, on our parents’ knee, somehow and in some way, were we ourselves coached to be more Central and Pragmatic, long gone the ghosts of ancestors past, long gone the existential contentedness with some sense of inherited Duty: our Duty is to a street culture and to a friend network, most sublime, most servile, most recruited and drafted. We were drafted to Thrive, because for some folks “out there”, the need is nothing selfish nor self-aggrandizing, but simply for the opportunity to Contribute, to Belong, Randomly to shack up in simple friendly fellowship, with whom the Lord gives us.

Were we any easier to please? Hardly! Our calculations, our childlike desire always to play only at games where we “win”, these oblong articulated Points and Aspects, these ebb and flow around again, the unbroken Gift of some blessed and illogical Perspective, things we just Do without any realization or hope for Reward.

Such as plainly to See: here I see Sin, here I see lunacy, here I see radical Divergence from a godly Status Quo. Here, for once, the pastor is no less sinner than the congregant, except insofar as to the churchman the ambition always, the justification always, for disdain towards a fellow, is that that fellow is in some manner Sinful. And this is erring thinking, because all of us are sinful. We were however Gifted with that awful compromised nature, that we turn to the doctrine of damnation and Sin, to help us out with frustration and personal enmities. Whereas outside the walls of church we were quite content simply to blame and to accuse, minus any self-righteousness. We named our dislikes. We allotted ourselves a Right and a License to joke and ridicule. We cursed and trash-talked in manners most self-humbling, because we were not self-righteous.

The joy then of labors under the umbrella of so much of the Labors of others, the joy of adding good measure to the Cause, the joy of some Rock of stability from a fellow traveler, these things add to the natural course of affairs, that course that puts us front and center as the loons, as the confused, as the unfit, only for this: that where we were to some Unfit, we were to others Peace and Cause. We were afforded this blessed, perhaps poverty-stricken, estate, because God loves on the maligned and uses the meek in life to bring about His germination.

Of real folk. Of the designer mentality that shies back on simple pronouncements and “yo, yo, yo”s of deeper personal attestation, confession, bedrock most flawed yet innocently announced and therefore forgiven.