2023-12-10 A Meditation on Strange Trials

“8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. 11 By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.” (Heb 11:8–12 ESV)

A little contribution, a little salve. Amidst a world high on brainiac, legalistic Christ, there is room for the Unknown, the Spiritual Heights of our God, the fact He hears us when we pray and He loves us as we patiently await His return in Glory. God is a Spirit comprised of the sum of His parts, amidst being comprised of all things Holy: those parts are we the Body, and ninety percent of what separates us are all things that can be streamlined, legislated, sued over and rationally, coldly administered. Ninety percent of what makes us different from that origins, heathenous outlying land, is habits and rules, differences around language or style of dress. After all, any lazy pundit may gesture this way and that around what license he or she believes he or she has in the news that we blame others (namely, Jesus) for our sins. As though not having any personal pain, or desire to change!

But the ten percent! It becomes the entire message. Here each and every one of us is that stranger in a King’s court until we take up rightful inheritance as owners of the Gospel. We are not jesting when we say “Christ!” or “Jesus saves!”. We are not reducing the Majesty unto plain humanity: God with us, Emmanuel, is a gladsome tidings which forms that salve unto the dry wound. Giddy with the soldier’s paycheck: a paycheck of time and substance, of spirit and mind held Aloft, though life tempts us to dismiss so much as rubbish or a losing game, we have the Joy and the Certainty that prevents, that prepares, that precludes. Prevenient Grace, Grace going before us, fresh out the Baptismal waters and already riding the lavish Steed of Victory, an end to the fright and trauma of a church who shuns her people, who imagines it to be their special duty to find fault.

For there was a season when strange trials led to stranger appearances, disheveled and aloof, ungainly and ill-fitting, the Church believes her daughters and sons are mocked by Satan. The Church believes her legalists have no claim over her Gospel Children. Those who make it their special duty to put a splinter in the wound or a fly in the ointment. Yet too we think in unison with each other, and repent when asked to repent. We propose a magisterium, mirroring the works of so many other fine theologians, of us decrepit but earnest thinkers, to discuss just what this shunning or pogrom is about. That is, we are conversational about the premise: about that dastardly fault-finding, a world high on sin, lawyers and economists, measuring rods and secular gamesmanship; little sins versus big sins, or rather, no business of ours to intervene. If they don’t hear you, brush off and move on. Don’t invent a quest, and hey, you are in fact and in truth loved.

So the Call is sincere, no hasty lesson: that the Faith requires the mind of the Soldier, who knows madness in wartime, trickle effect from any one doubting poor soul. They doubt, we brace and shelter and shield ourselves from the blast. For Christ genuinely had no way to call on that battalion He spoke of, that is, His mission was compromised not by a stronger adversary, but by a weaker one: by a Judas; by a doubting Peter; by all the disciples returning to their fishing, not quite yet feeling Called or Ordained unto the project. They needed to see their handiwork of abandoning or betraying or denying, turned to a Boon. And so to us, the end of the war, the end of the incriminating finger-pointing, and a belief He shall turn all things into Goodness. Thus we listen. Thus we pray. Thus we give thanks: someone took it upon themselves to love me, even as their Love was to try to find fault.

Thus we know His battalion to be the brainchild of a sincere Christ, a down-to-earth Leader, a rewarded Teacher, a gentle Voice Heard. The people who hear Christ hear His prophecy of coming again in glory, all morality upheld and yet all things upheld through the Cross. That will be a time mighty and with gladsome soldier’s hand, smile on the face, reaching from high above down to the little children and heirs of the Good Land. There was a message with a sense of fruition and of salve to the wound. This is the inheritance of those for whom we fight. This is the fresh Art and modicum of social cohesion, fluidity, efficacy, and progress, when One Soul makes His sacrifice, for the sake of the battalion’s Mission, the Officers’ bequest unto the Philosopher or Sociologist or Thinker on things Holy. Unto the Politician and Teacher, unto the Business-person and those Gainfully Employed. In that Holy Thought is a beginning of License to fight, the best lacking conviction no longer. Speak, and let it be heard. Work, and let it be evidence. Serve, and let it be honorific. Repent, and let it be healing.

We progress around bedrock, not addicted to the past (submit to the Bible!) nor imagining the future to be some taken-for-granted progress (worship evolution, cold evolution!). Our hope is in a Bright New Day even as the fallen soldier sees it only in divine Vision, of what he or she fought for and lived and died for. It is a society penitent, something feeling so good when properly understood, when not abused. It is not a blithe trust in progress, but rather a homestead faithful and true, to know the joy of ancestors spiritually owned, and of plain service unto the New Things of our day.