2025-01-04 A Meditation on One Christian Act

“42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor 15:42-29 ESV)

Attentive to the sensitive, possessed of a faith saying that there always is something Christ-like to be contributed, always something healing and faith-filled, in the wake of the impact, always something by which we bear one another’s burdens: attentive to this, we are beyond and past the Horizon of a redemptive Story. The Story of Christ: redeeming the world. The Story of play roles so significant, such as the role of trainer, in the Law, of mind-melder, in the Spirit, of precious Witness, in the testimony of Grace. It behooves us to risk all thing in order to shake people out of their either complacency or mock horror: we are after all Sincere, though destined to be cast aside, at least our testimony. It seemed too “convenient”, that so-and-so would come to Jesus. It seemed ripe time to show a bit of Divine Exchange towards the claim of change and amendment of life. Yet we are not those who mock, but those who search out the Sincere, search out the seemingly weakened variant on Law: that Variant called Gospel.

And where is the priest, where the prophet, where the soothsayer of weightier matters, who comforts us with that Sure Thing called fidelity to the Book? That Sure Thing called flowerbed of family and community Love, earned on the backs of the diligent scripturally-based witness of its denizens? We are a culture dry and high, longing for a sip from the firehose, and finding this by the route called Contrition, change and Amendment of life. Yes, it is so convenient, my friend, my interlocutor, my challenger, my opposite: to be Forgiven. To be one of the first perhaps to the stirred-up waters, if only there weren’t those decades lost and forgotten, whilst the faithful waited on a Promise and went about their business. Jesus is indeed a paradox, and while there are those who mock, who take out lawsuits against the Christian claims, its prophecies, its martyred King, its unlimited atonement for our own sins: we are those Sincere and Yearning. We yearn to see that One Christian Deed discovered; that genuine Forgiveness… for the sake of time in prayer… for the sake of patience… for the sake of gentle shape and give and take of witness. For the sake of those we love: we are Contributors to the Christ-claim, made on behalf of His people, quiet or chanting, working up an eager Enthusiasm to have seen the walls give, and the ceiling quake, but the home—tent city, hotel room, manger—preserved and intact.

Some things we have no answer for, only to put mind and word to the grindstone, backs to the oars, set a tack according to the wind. Yes, it was prophesied our life should devolve into mad or exasperated servitude. Some, for some that is life. Others, we, have freedom and Principle, yet always pray through the blemish and competition of life in community. We compete, because of some evolved need to honor a Ruler. We test, because of some need for her or him to be Fit. We had to Encourage and Evolve, to Inform and to Train, each other for what is coming and is already upon us: shocking revelations, heartfelt mourning tunes, strong emphasis that the purveyor of scripture be balanced out with the purveyor of its Grace. In scripture is Grace, that the Law though our comforter, has not the staying power to uphold and Create. We long for order, and we long to be held in the wisdom of our prophetic elders, the writers of Holy Writ.