2025-04-12 A Meditation on Self Knowledge

“50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Cor 15:50-58 ESV)

To understand ourselves as sinners, is no recipe for defeat. Rather, exceedingly great things proceed from that wellspring called contrition. We dare, insofar as we are able, to clasp on most assuredly precisely to that dynamo, rather than any heroism of the lone individual’s kind. Our lack of heroism—our sinfulness—translates to Acting in place of His Heroism on the Cross. That is, we Act, from an actively forgiven posture. From juiced up and mesmerized Reflection on the exchange wherein He literally lived and Died for us. We become Him. We become His Father’s sons and daughters. We enter mesmer and reflection most sublime, that in Christ God was reconciling the world to Himself.

Because it is defeatist to mope and grumble, to beg and to wallow, to try and edge our way a bit “closer” to that hallowed status called Accepted. No, we are already jumpy to claim Christ as our own, for He put aside fashion and intrigue to do the base level “Normal” thing called Loving on the unloved, on the boring, on the mundane. It is mundane, like a child’s messiness, to do that kind of clean-up. It is pedantic, like a rambunctious teen’s matter-of-fact needs and crying tears, to Teach and Love on them, looking past the posturing. It is patient, like loving an aging person in their simple human need, to prefer this to a night on the town or other Fashion and Excitement. Jesus did all this.

Jesus loved the demon-possessed. And the party-lifestyle He engendered, walked in, was from a third realm of Presence, somehow immune now to that drink he sipped upon or that lounge chair He reclined upon. How? Because of training the body, disciplining the flesh, until Removed from the come-what-may, removed from the gorging need for drink or fleshiness. It suddenly all was given back to Him, to the Son, His knowledge of party lifestyle and appropriateness now Post-Wilderness, Post-John-the-Baptist, Post Temptation and entrance into the towns and countryside: “The Kingdom of God is at hand…”

Demon-possession, this evokes a need to have several persons hold down the wild-eyed helter-skelter aching frame, boisterous body, of the one Possessed. Yet Christ did it more sagely, calmly. He prayed for the possession, and He tapped into some Shared Experience with right-on Devil in person and present. The demons heard and whimpered. The demons heard and went quiet, murmuring, “Do you, after all, love me? Us?”. Is it to us you were sent, you who know the uncontrollable tired and hungry Frame of Man? That come Pressure Points, we all go helter-skelter. We all must learn to coexist with the claustrophobia or the Heightened Alert. Today, to bring our Pressure Points to Christ, this is to be then rewarded with a Friend in need, or a Friend to join the party! Simpler needs, the days’ concerns sufficient for our worry. The Fact of War that will test precisely that we lamp into His Life and Style, knowing ourselves defeated by Sin but stronger for the Journey. Directly Encountering defeat, we rise up Sage and Picky, Boisterous and Determined, not to wallow nor beg nor flatter nor wait… not to Wait for our hour, but to know that Christ’s hour comes like rain from heaven down upon the one Contrite or Convicted: to be Immediately recast as soldier and duty-bound officer of the Cause. Which Cause has not placed anything higher than the diagnosis: sinful! And has placed its hope in nothing less than the prescription: Christ! Each of us being Him, His hands, His feet, His armaments, His Presence most sublime and appreciated. “Be that for us,” is cried out, by the would-be possessed, now Healed and Built-Up in truth. Because a sane and sage bedrock was found, that was an asset, a gift to the community. Thank you, O God! For the clean bill of health! Indeed, we rejoice. Indeed, we party. Indeed, we emblematically inspire each other!