2023-10-24 A Meditation on Partnership
“7 And he called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. 8 He charged them to take nothing for their journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in their belts— 9 but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. 10 And he said to them, “Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you depart from there. 11 And if any place will not receive you and they will not listen to you, when you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” 12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent. 13 And they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.” (Mk 6:7–13 ESV)
The color that comes into our lives is a reminder that man is not saved by adherence to the Law: the maneuverings of anyone’s life leaves much to be desired vis-a-vis the Law. More than that, there is a fraught or ice cold personality that arises in the one who would be saved by the law: lust is replaced with marriage, pride with worship, selfish ambition with good deeds. All these only increase the trespass, until they are done in faith rather than as a boast or effort at self-justifying. For if you even look with lustful intent, you have committed adultery. If you observe seasons and fasts, you have denied God’s will for mankind. If you list your accomplishments, you have blasphemed against God’s accomplishments.
To wit, people discover an innate beauty with the power to change, to uplift, and this beauty is beyond any plea to see how holy and good people we are. It is the full-bodied indwelling where we make space for one another. We summons our affections and channel them towards a partner. We announce our allegiance and channel it unto a Holy One. We state our desire to please and channel it unto good deeds.
Therefore welcome to the fellowship, to the friendly coexistence, as partners, as friends, as those who morph and rise up upon meeting a friendly Other. There is something Holy in that Other. There is some level on which love has the power not to seduce but to inspire, unto thoughts wild and extreme, unto real encounter with the soul’s own matchmaking and sense of fittedness, whom we allow in, how we save ourselves in great Evangelical or Republican fashion for that comment, “It is no longer sin, it is ordained by God”: to marry, to worship, to accomplish.
More than that the things we fight over are not self-justifying but are mysterium. We are not creating a world by our war, a world with proud Man’s charge forth, but in meek Man’s gifted estate, gifted by partner, gifted by corporate worship, gifted by job. In all these, we are not saved because of toeing the line, but because God simply has sympathy for us. God simply sees the bargaining, first of all, to give rather than to receive, to warm to the fellowship rather than proudly to seclude, to give Him all glory rather than ourselves. He sees the sense in which we are carried along, for better or for worse, along completely unplanned and uncontrolled trials. He sees, and He blesses: in His mind, He shall be the last to cast a stone, though all the world announce us a failure. Though we bargain with our very livelihood, risking life and limb to Serve, not to neglect, to befriend, to establish a fellowship via partnering, party of this half or that half, of the bride or the groom in the great marriage announced in Scripture. For we are cold to serve, insofar as our chill expedience then becomes Warmth in the brotherhood and the sisterhood. That warmth we shall never deny, shall never trade for a removed personal pride and self-aggrandizement. That desire to hide out, we shall never allow to be our modus operandi, our will, our tactics.