“8 Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods. 9 But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? 10 You observe days and months and seasons and years! 11 I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. 12 Brothers, I entreat you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You did me no wrong. 13 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, 14 and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. 15 What then has become of your blessedness? For I testify to you that, if possible, you would have gouged out your eyes and given them to me. 16 Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17 They make much of you, but for no good purpose. They want to shut you out, that you may make much of them. 18 It is always good to be made much of for a good purpose, and not only when I am present with you, 19 my little children, for whom I am again in the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you! 20 I wish I could be present with you now and change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.” (Ga 4:8–20 ESV)

Amped on Love, it is all we can do not to spook or one-up the Audience but in many ways simply to laugh when they laugh, to faun when they react or are being cute, to Assure and Reassure the simple Intent to honor as Praiseworthy a sacrifice their little offerings, their un-amped Giftings, their layout plain as day but not as Heavy Hitting.

Hostage situation, holding Captive the Mercy Seat: all of us wade through dinosaur land and play land, through joyous peaceful land and wrestling match land (in all the spirit of fun). The matter held hostage may well be our own Absolution Pronounced, because it is forgotten the crimes of a clericalism (i.e. never acknowledging the matter we are trying to repent of, if it comes to that), and the theological insight that spells Genuine get-on-the-phone, chew the sinner out a bit, and then ask them not to sign on some public dotted line except that dotted line called Christ Saved Me.

Amped, on Love and Spellbinding Acceptance, the Target and Action Person, the Culprit and sincerely-loved One who are loved because they can be rascally (in their own mildly cute or precious way, though fearing it isn’t Sufficient, isn’t Cool Enough, isn’t Front Stage enough) and can be naughty if erroneously we Erred and made Naughty mystical or “cool”.

Any Loving Summit between shipping-container-wielding parties, briefcase wielding parties, the Keys to spelling, transmitting, rumors Peace and rumors War, bends over backwards to love the Vacant One, the one manifestly Lossy and Failed but still—the emperor wears no clothes—still at the helm, only now sadly Denied, Degraded, Deviled and Denigrated. The hostage situation is their own failure to have sat down for the requisite five minutes (thirty seconds?) over coffee just to see that they, too, no room for demagogues or devils here, they Too Belong. What it feels like actually and In Fact to be loved, “Really? You mean Me?” Yes, and amen. Indeed, Yes and amen.

To love the sinner is to Rewrite history no longer around who toed the line called Sinless best, but rather who most audaciously knew the Gospel. The same gospel parroted about each Sunday, but no, we are elitists and heavyweights, connoisseurs and critics, of an Elusive full Gospel that actually has Power to address the demons and demagogues in the room. A gospel from which Satan flees. A gospel… did you feel the temperature just rise? Did you see your Irredeemable enemy just kneel? Did you see a Way Forward minus the policing and society-as-society-comes-and-goes being the be-all and end-all: a distinctly Churchly thing, not a criminal record to pin to our foreheads, but a Church that knows the seal of the confessional as much as her own sins of Gossip and of spreading “news” (it is news, or is it rumors?) without at the least Telling the parties featured, so they can spread their own feeble perhaps response.

But who are we to weep and complain about things standing Beneath the Full Counsel of Christ? We who have the Gospel, the Good News: to us the Paradigm Shift ushers in Full Heavy Metal Servanthood and we grimace and squint in the direction of those Entities and Arenas over which Christ has now proclaimed “Mine” (Abraham Kuyper). We squint, because we would Love to go missional: to enter that arena and love on and patiently explain to its denizens, that Gospel of a Christ for the Ages… but this is a hostage situation, a slippery slope never amounting to anything; they call us good-for-nothings and pieces-of-trash, even, because their own Mountain is impassable. It is a slippery slope. When they claim we didn’t give fair notice, we proclaim all the Notice was that a New but Familiar Thing is here, Christ being Placed Front and Center of the heart, Christ invoked and ushered in. So the impassable and slippery slope of innocent approaches to the Arena, to the gosh Sinner (in the pew, even; in holy orders? Demure, but perhaps so) is now a military matter: we Believe that to say Here I Stand, is to Inspire and perhaps reach these lost souls, these unrepentant ones. And that is why we are called soldiers for Christ.