2023-01-10 A Meditation on Our Kind

“And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,” (Eze 11:19 ESV)

Man is in a lifeboat, with his or her own kind, built up against the wild ride called life. If life is crazy, faith too is crazy, a Father disowning His Son on the Cross, ending the fruitful career to string Him up, a bargain none of us willingly accept from our elders.

With our own kind, we scarcely knew anything but the need for this lifeboat. Faith addresses manifest concerns along this wild stormy ride called life. With our own kind, we hold out a vision of transformation. We imagine change of species, into something “fixed” and “better” than this frustrating slog. That is because we cannot escape the kind and species that we already are. But, strange that it would occur with a patent hurt such as what Jesus went through on our behalf.

Jesus was about a patent hurt. He was about a thorn in our flesh. He was about an evolutionary leap still in process. He addressed the awkward nature of our “kind”, and gave us wings to soar.

For we long to “be like” others, yet know that time, chance, fate, and circumstance have denied that boon to us. We wonder how God could have deigned to come down from Heaven for our kind. We understand the Gospel as applying to others, but know our own reach and species a little too well to think He came for us. We are only aware of our limits, not of our gifted expanses.

The lifeboat is a fortification to end the mind games and overwrought gestures. We have a Jesus who went before us. We understand Him as the head of His Body, the Church. In this regard we resist all temptation to see this boil down to a question of worldly authority: we are meek as churchmen and churchwomen, understanding the Headship to be a matter of perspective; most who live in the world will still have their totems and gods and idols; the Church is in stage B: Militant against such other authorities. The church gives a good chuckle and celebration upon encountering any one sinner bound up utterly by the gods of this world. For the church, beyond stage A (Church expectant) and awaiting stage C (Church triumphant), accepts that bequest: we are sent to the Cross, to prove to those who are converted or convertible, that Christ reigns. We forget ambition after worldly, panicked, grabbing and covetous desire and desire to flex our muscles in some sinful way, and claim a victory of the spiritual variety. So the Church washes the feet of those who lord it over them that they, for one, are sons and daughters of the Father, are flawless, riotously funny and ricocheting, buoyant creations. The Church even has, as theologian Karl Barth wrote, the mark of Cain: Cain was marked for life for having murdered his brother; the mark meant, this is my son still, do him to harm nor seek any vengeance of the blood of brother Abel.

So we try always to be theologians when the church appears in a newspaper or in a family or in a muddled forgetful pride after holy things: we nonchalantly approach the holiest, and forget this Ark in Hebrew Scriptures time brought death upon those who reached out to touch it; we understand severity but also utter innocence and saved status, that we approach without fear.