2024-11-21 A Meditation on Maintaining the Cause

“2 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” (Gal 2:1-10 ESV)

Disassembling, reassembling, God’s purposeful People here on earth do the inventive deed and patient script Constantly, for the mission field does labor, and it wearies; doubts disassemble carefully wrought castles of the mind; we reassemble because Faith dreams Big. Faith sees a Tomorrow majestic and holy, rife with Employment and Purpose, filled with some duty handed to us, to us who long just to have a heavenly Voice tell us what to do, it can sometimes seem.

That is, our longing is seeking some sense of Mission and Belonging. Bah, those atheists simply don’t believe! That the engines are starting up and the mission is soon to be underway. That the role each of us occupies, is portion and contribution to the Cause, so important as to make us blush a bit, that such holy trooping and soaring and sailing and watching is ours Today.

People overestimate and underappreciate: all kinds of signs and reminders point the way, but it is by some mystical kind of deliverance that some are spared an inevitable judgment, one that undoes because sin is in fact so rampant, so evil, so merciless.

And it is therefore our sane and cogent hope to be rewarded for things we would scarcely choose for ourselves, modesty of purpose, some innocence of fellowship, a mystique of heavenward glance, pointing higher, revealing within our own mortal frames a God and King who is zealous for the well-being of the fellowship.

More than that, we have an exotic notion of replicability, believing Jesus’ beckoning towards the tax collector or the demon possessed or the woman with anointing oil, is that strange Fact of mercy for the sin-laden ones. Church is home to the wealthy, to the dubious, to the “Oh, dear” ill reputation. It is some marvelous Sight to behold such as these kneeling before the Throne. And beholding we ourselves, the first to be grafted in, making much of such a Throne because it comes without any regalia except some whispered majesty, from the clouds, in our dreamy vision, in our wistful Necessity of Sight: we simply must see this, for it is the Authorship and Throneroom of our grandness of soul’s being. Our soul is grand, and the joints are anointed, lubed, unto a working and a mesh, a mechanism and a Logic wherein sin is precisely our first ticket to ride: that Sin, formerly to our undoing and modest nervous glances towards the Altar, is now our Ticket, to boast in His Mercy and His task digging us out of generations of faultiness, bad design, greedy opportunism, and so on.