2022-12-10 A Meditation on Loyalties

Loyalties, first to the Gospel, create and form systems, and we have that first loyalty is often misunderstood. It is a victorious loyalty. It has power to cross borders, and it is more than just legislative, mechanical duties sent to the bishop’s desk for approval. No, each Christian is a powerhouse of community-building. Each Christian can discern, being fools for Christ, the power of the Word made Flesh, to unify and to bring alongside. Each Christian is privy to a social circle called communion. Each Christian is loyal to a church home, spiritually-speaking, that obviously meets the criteria: trying to live a God-fearing, Jesus-centered life. Trying.

Loyalties are suspect when we ourselves doubt what we hold fast to. When we doubt our own Gospel and its power, then we wonder if we aren’t going to be the last one there in the church, as implosion and falling away occurs. We know that first and foremost, Divine courage is needed: no fear when staring down someone else’s false Gospel. We are not those aped and panicky around the good deeds of a friend in the faith, not compromised, not giving in. We have that strength communicated by Jesus’ gaze into our eyes. We long to put it in a bottle, to save up for eternity. And this He did, giving us disciples and apostles and prophets and mothers and fathers and heavenly family, all of whom now impart that strength to us, being loyal to the shared cause. It was theirs to begin with, given them by Christ Himself at a time of first things, at His Genesis story with us, His call, His manifest purity of loyalty, no Judaical infidelity, but patent and apparent Truth.

So the Christian, eager to cross borders, also carries with her or him little wealth of a material sort. Little offer to betray their friend or Father or Mother in the faith. Little betrayal, but much hope and evangelism and cross-border exciting outlay, building up, and doing what the bishop, in her or his respectable office, needs hands and feet to do for him or her. And heart, to say nothing of the deeper qualities of output.

For example, we may wince at the shenanigans of an unchurched cohort, but they have their semiotics and language and signs and portents and coffeehouses and barrooms and workplaces and schools and offices and technologies. So we do well to befriend such as these: surely our Gospel is mighty enough that we remain spiritually “safe” amidst such exploratory, though purposeful, gestures. That is, explore we may, but it is not out of wanton curiosity, but out of a holy desire to share Jesus. And this comes down to that strength imparted, that gaze into the eyes, that handshake, that passion that cannot be forged, of eyewitnesses unto the Truth. Our passion for the story is manifest, and people know we are not inventing a tall tale. No, sociologists do well to study this phenomenon: truthfulness, sincerity of testimony, fair recollections. We trust, and in so doing do allow a Spirit beyond this world into our midst.