2023-04-21 A Meditation on Self-Expression
“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.” (1 Pe 2:1–8 ESV)
Self-expression meets regular style in an excitement around Jesus. Being found in Him. Having all personal quirks somehow caught and normalized in Him. Taught on the knee to be unafraid and unashamed. There is an ambience, a modality, an attitude called self-expression.
Doing battle with self-expression is the notion of “regular style”. Buttoned up. Part of the crew. Careful and together in not rocking the boat. In teamwork and in shared expression. This is the duality of life in Christ.
Life together, life in Christ, life of havoc saved from, of empty expressiveness listened to, given ear, patronized: in this we celebrate, the odd ones out having reached agreement that nothing is too difficult for Jesus to love. No kind of quirk or loathed identity is barring us from joint labors and joint basking in rest of a Divine kind. We rest. We get the platform just to speak, to air our inner voices, to give glory to Another, to Christ, who had a mission of regularizing so much that is uncouth and too individualistic.
Therefore we reach that elysian field called togetherness, even if just with One, together for the journey, together in awkwardness and overfed, overweight or gender-questioning, artistic or bearing pathetic traits (so-called), patient to air quirky thoughts and the joyous journey of self-discovery in light of One who loves us. Who took us under His wing. Who barters on our behalf with a devil that hates and misallocates, who puts people in wrong arenas of too much judgment, whipping boys, suffering servants, scapegoats, all over the major distinctions wherein some are simply—lets be honest—not liked; and nothing they do can change that.
Therefore do we each hear a call to be the magnanimous ones, to adopt our regular style in Christ so as to be unafraid and coping with our own distaste, our instinctual hatred, our knee-jerk exclusivity, to self-express via a word or a style of dress, because something Beautiful emerges in personal expression. Something that takes captive all thoughts unto Christ (2 Co 10:5). Something that begins in the very location that regular style ends. Regular, yes, but only insofar as it is now the new normal, life together in Christ. It is now the new adoption of the peripheral member, the limit-walker, the near-to-enmity and far-from-camaraderie individual.
Who is just as capable as any of us to be witness to a New immediate experience. Who is just as capable as any of us of giving the acceptance speech for a major award called Belonging. Who is just as ready as the best of us to nerve up and button down and get thee to the church on time, the church of our community life together, the church of our selfless Love, the church of that same Christ who was oddball-met-with beloved Son, met with beloved Leader, met with beloved Strange-Days-Are-Upon-Us.