2023-11-23 A Meditation on Thanksgiving

“29 So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, 30 for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.” (Php 2:29–30 ESV)

“Thanks” never quite gets at the terror, the shame, the startling sacrifice. That is, to say Thank You is to begin a project, to put up a placeholder, a name for what we call that appreciation, the soldier thanked, the daring social mover honored, the teacher regaled. That is, “Thank you” is said with increasing reverence as we age, or perhaps already in our youth it is tied to some notion of the horror involved, the stark Otherness of what we Christians believe.

Namely, that all those years invested, from the womb to the loving upbringing, the moral foundation that caused the investment in militarized volunteering, the signing up, the enlistment; all those then lost in a mad dash to the front, a stoic battle line unmoved and unafraid of the hailstorm of fire. So we are thankful because we know blood-bought freedoms. We know that Jesus appalled and horrified and terrorized evil and sin incarnate, with His party’s willingness to die. His party’s wake up call to the world. His party’s punishment averted, each guilty sinner waking up in the morrow somehow passed over and their crimes absolved.

Therefore to say Thank you is to marvel, to wonder, to rise to the occasion, of a proper joy in celebrating what has been lost never to return. The souls indeed will return in the hereafter, but today we are able to share vicariously with them in the heavenly feast. Hosted and led by none other than our Martyr-in-Chief, Christ Himself. He had a glimmering of a new understanding, right there found in scripture, that the Apostle curated unto a deep theology, called Grace. Paul the Apostle, for all that he is hated for, came up with a way to celebrate already, before fixing ourselves up, in the Now and in the Milieu, in the Field Office, the Situation, the Placement. Here and now, to accept clarion Mercy, clear-thinking sanguine alacrity. A lens to the sore eye, a droplet of the medicated liquid, a hearthstone Home and Cozy, to be near one another, to dream of a pause or anticipatory embrace, a touch, a dabbling with what others call “Sin” out of fear and out of the effort to earn their own keep. No, the fraternity and sorority of near brothers, near sisters, is grabbing death by the center of gravity and wrestling it to the ground. Death, where is your sting? Grave, where your victory (1 Cor 15:55)? What is Good is quite near to what is tempting and adulterous. What is Good, to hear the recent evangelical preach, is to cozy up and marry, to solemnize simple attraction or proximity. We, too, are like the Apostle, post-vows. We are vowed unto the Lord, ready to say “No” to much that could wax easy, wane light, go with the flow. We have a higher Calling that supercedes momentary impulses. We fear no longer to be tempted, because Christ has a love letter written, via Paul, via Peter, via John, to those who are sincere. Sincerely trying to evangelize one another. Sincerely hearing in say the Song of Solomon a “wife”, an “husband” eternal and writ in the passions of the soul’s “flesh”, the soul ready and celibate by outward appearance, unto an experiment internal so grand, which experiment undoes pewsitters’ boredom and antsy behavior. No, we are bored unto fruition, unto summit, unto climax. Our boredom with the empty simulacras is our enamoration with full-on soul Passion. Here we arrive, as though the better for the journey, yet as though meek and bringing nothing with us. All is found in that soul’s passion unto the Christ Walk, the soldier’s gait, the cause to be thankful for all that bookmarks, placeholds, the Christian reverence for the ultimate sacrifice made.