2023-06-15 A Meditation on Power-Trip

“1 But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior. I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you. 4 Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you, I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life. 5 Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. 6 I will say to the north, Give up, and to the south, Do not withhold; bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth, 7 everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.”” (Is 43:1–7 ESV)

It’s a rather modest venture. Wild license may be deduced and obsessed about: the church may err, or forget that at one time it had a sense of Call to the Gospel. The church may be a bit too top-heavy for those newly minted, the new Christian, the one marveling to themselves that Christ came and died for them. So, wild license meets each of us in that societal mystery wherein we do believe our deeds shall come to the light of day. Sin is messy; sin is revulsive; sin is observed in silence by the secretary or the community. Since when did our churches make compromise with what used to be called sin?

That is, no power trips are indulged. No slick ideations are indulged. No lazy posturing is excepted from coming judgment: the Christian, as a soldier of God’s Cross, is in the business of being nerdy and wonkish, or what amounts to the same thing, being principled and moral. Charismatic out of a soul that, without explicit plan, is preserved, prevented, from greater sins by simple habits and accustomed patterns. To withhold the fantasy. Just for another day. Just for a moment. To save our romantic ideas for that hour when we have in fact surmounted them. Only then, not in the morass or the heavy spell that has descended upon us. Only when we have walked through the valley of the shadow of death, only then to do what comes naturally. To love and be loved in return. To recreate and self-check: my Call is to stay far away from zealotry for the Law; it is to be zealous for Good, for Grace, for Gospel. And therefore a peculiar people we are, not quite catholic but not quite unchurched. Somewhere in between, the Church a receiver of what words have been invented on our lips, the pastor kept innocent of greater sin, the churchman kept innocent of dastardly and commonplace habits, the deacon kept innocent of lust for power.