2025-01-09 A Meditation on Persistence

“16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Matt 7:16-20 ESV)

Is the punchline, “We will never go away?” The punchline to what? To the fright factor, the shriek at a mouse or a ghoul, the consternation around… simple life in community. Some forces, we just wish them away. And some recipients of said distaste, would just resign were it not that a legacy would continue on. And be equally hated. And make its share of mistakes, but also learning “in the field” real radical stuff around turning an insinuation, a slander, a completely made-up situation, onto its head. We must be tough: they will suggest and provoke. They, in their pride, will not allow that maybe some points, to some we do say “touche”. That was a good one. Some real labor here. I see: the spiritual things are adjudicated with spiritual things.

When people speak of “submission”, it is prime time to acknowledge that one act of submission is to keep communication channels open. Whether for good or ill, to hear someone else think out loud: this meets up, commiserates, aligns two inimical minds around their shared… humanity? Ambitions? Frustrations? Simple ability to laugh?

Love teaches that we may always find common ground, may always seek out a bigger evil; and to assume, well the gall of them! To assume that the greater evil has a name and a face, well sometimes it has a trait found in each of our stone-cold (at times) hearts. See the drunken or sleepwalking condemnation. See the irrational decision-making. See the need, yes, we are soldiers… we believe in intervention… we learnt this in the Scriptures and in the community… that we must At Once assume this one or that one, to be Christian. Lest we bank our own salvation on those ways we judge others.

We must never bank our own salvation on anything but the pure word of God. Who forgives the sinner. But also who uses the Church to accomplish Spiritual Things, not tangible, not material, not financial things. The Church has the power to condemn, yet she does not use this power but rather chuckles through the frustration, allocates a little peripheral Space to the would-be penitent, gladly accepts that life is too conflicted, too many sides at war with each other, to concede that belligerence to an enemy. We are never belligerent, only a bit forlorn, a bit sadly punchy, a bit possessed of a bark rather than any need to bite. We are possessed of a deep reassurance, that the Condemnation is ephemeral, not having legs to stand on. That is Christ’s logic: that church things are held in spiritual Trust, and are only going so far—not as just who is allowed in the pew—but only so far as the wild preference to Bless, to critique an enemy via Blessing.

And then the sadness, as we wish after all not to be in the forward positions we find ourselves: let someone else! It is a hard mantle, to be in leadership positions. We question ourselves. We hate ourselves. We lose all perspective in the presence of a (relatively speaking) benign interlocutor. Because some things, we need our space and our time. And this all goes topsy-turvy, but the sluggards they will drag feet no more. The similarly persecuted, they will deny no longer. The fight, after all, will sadly escalate. And we, peace-loving and patient, will never concede a material bout to a spiritual cause. The cause is Spiritual: freedom from sin, Scripturally-led life in community, no sad “look the other way” Tiananmen Squares. On repeat: yes, we are sinners, but yes we are fighting a confused body for now called “church” but in history called Failed, called Antichrist (at times, at points), called False Gospel. God lifts up some and degrades others, to the divine mystery of Life Together, life-affirming time in community.