2023-04-07 A Meditation on Rallying Around a Strange Act

“God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.” (Ac 2:24 ESV)

Some capable people rallied around the phenomenon occurring right before their eyes: Jesus, charting new course for a prophet, at least as far as what is recorded in Scripture. Jesus, proposing to Man, to Woman, that she or he is due a reckoning with sin, with wild and uncouth actions past, with a bee in the bonnet today, with little things that ruin and wreck and poison the calm, the present and clear patience, the love for the brothers and sisters. In any event, we draw nigh in a hopeless frame, unwilling to forgive ourselves yet hearing His determined haste to forgive us.

That haste means all that much more, not on a day set aside to remember these things, but every day, insofar as we use the scheduled observance to put forth a bit of a truth-telling: some way, somehow, some time, we shall be ones in need. Some way, somehow, some time, we shall forego the rumored sanctity, our lives rumored to be “cleaned up” now, and will be for each other the sinner staring intently at the ground, too messed up to shoulder our own burden.

These capable people were breaking a mold, allowing an Individual to speak newly-discovered words, calm and copacetic words, inspired words, from-the-heart, from-the-pressure-cooker words. His time was nigh, yet it required His individual input and insight. He was not just held up as a sign of the times. He was not just the lapdog of a few wise religious leaders. He spoke up, and that with radical devotion.

He had indeed already “Died” to so much, and His personal presence, His wise relevance, His intentions to heal with a word, these things went before Him. Women and men alike inspired, rallying to the call of the visionary, except this was no tempter but one with whom the buck stopped. The buck stopped here. Jesus had an unction invisible to the one trapped in sin, but clear and present to the one with a bit of penitence near to the heart. The one who had this Ideal in mind, at least, had it upon meeting Christ, of a Better Man. A Better Heart. A Better Conscience. That would flourish in tempted season, in the pressure-cooker, in honest gratitude to the Father rather than needy whinging or complaint. For it is not our vociferous determination to clean up our act that draws us nigh unto Christ, but rather a confession made, into the listening calm, into the ether, that we are full of foibles and especially on this Good Friday are taking whatever we can get by way of a special time when and whence we should know ourselves to be Forgiven.

If it takes a special day, so be it. God on High knows we self-hate and self-loath, that we self-immolate with pleading and needy escapist voice. We set ourselves up to make a spectacle rather than simply to be content with society’s quiet and orderly march. We put on a brave face all week, then go AWOL in the wanderlust of escapism, in a dynamic that all this Good Friday are called to reckon with in and of themselves.

For today we have a strange peace about us, one that convicts and reminds of former days. That peace is God’s gift to us, who are proud of our sane endeavors but brought to mind of furtherance of the debt we owe, in days past. We are brought to mind of an Ideal Woman, Ideal Man, who spoke words we knew could make peace and calm in our hearts, because our hearts had been reckoned with, and had emerged passed over and rejuvenated.