2023-02-02 A Meditation on Talking Shop

“For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Co 2:2 ESV)

Talking shop, platoon life gives air to our deeper affinities. We are a people fascinated by this Gospel. We have traded our life and meaningless banter for a cohort who listens and responds, building up, blessing in quiet words the gathered Body. This is all we have, yet it is everything: to make timeless and patient the gathered believers, this night, this hour, this sincere and educated, odd even, plain speech.

Speech is plain because this is prophecy lived out, a body of faith, a great host, a winning hand for some superior, who uses us and loves us and inspires us, giving over unto a daring forward stand; lives on the line, somehow create a greater music. Somehow, in a prior time, before the lives on the line, there was only hindrance to deep insight, to understanding of whom the enemy is, to accomplishment. For with simple and present soldiers, fresh faces and seasoned warriors, our Master Jesus is building us up into a fighting alternative. Faith is the one-track-mind, sacrificial, plain even, resolve in the soldier’s heart: the alternative. The soldier warms to the evening’s modest and spare crew, to share a few words, to listen with warmth overflowing to the prophecies spoken over one another, to with nerdy fascination speak a few honorific words.

Honorific of the great wealth of compliments and upbuilding. Honorific of the “no matter” attitude towards deeds good or evil that precede us. The reputation for a certain kind of lifestyle, no longer hinders or obstructs the drawing near. We are listened to, and blessed, and loved, not because we deserve it, but because it is what that instruction manual the Bible tells us to do for each other.

So the reluctant audience is the chosen audience, chosen to be our hearers of testimony, to attest to what zeal and delight lived within this, our heart. Chosen, indeed, in at times bored and at times loud-mouthed or combative; not always with patience does a person listen to us. But Jesus made His will to a few unready souls, though time would prove them capable by God’s Spirit to renew despite the errors made as He was being crucified for Mankind. Each repented and served with that paradoxical combination of zeal and joy. Already, and not yet. Here the Kingdom, and tomorrow a bright new dispensation, a God with us and through time and tribulation here to save us, as peace is ushered in.