2024-05-08 A Meditation on the Dare

““The voice of one crying in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. 5 Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall become straight, and the rough places shall become level ways, 6 and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”” (Lk 3:4-6 ESV)

“30 “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. 31 If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not true. 32 There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true. 33 You sent to John, and he has borne witness to the truth. 34 Not that the testimony that I receive is from man, but I say these things so that you may be saved. 35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me. 37 And the Father who sent me has himself borne witness about me. His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen, 38 and you do not have his word abiding in you, for you do not believe the one whom he has sent.” (Jn 5:30-38 ESV)

Anyone acquainted with the setting of church is deeply aware, but perhaps not possessed of a conscious understanding, that we—teamwork, here—push, and push some more, and create loving reality, but not always appreciating, sometimes leaving on flimsy framework, that salvation comes to us through the very thing we are heave-ho’ing about. Salvation is elusive, and the gladsome friend’s advice that we submit to precisely because eventually to do otherwise would be to blaspheme the Name of the Lord. That is, any thoughts in our imagination (“so-and-so could be a bit more shaped up, ‘round here”) are not in fact the sticking point: our “friend”—the mark—may well be easy-going, receptive, well-oiled, in the regard with fuddle or fuss about. But beneath that biblical submission, is too a bright and shining light, a Name to spell our unforgotten, not lost in the melee, salvation Story.

Therefore—yes, friends—we are seeking a city that endures! We are seeking a strange mission here, situationally with back against the wall, fending off so many curious but lazy interlocutors, interlopers who assume: this one is less contrite than the standard called for; let us heave ho! Let us teamwork and get them to a better place, spirit-wise. And to our “mark”, to her or his worldview, the task is like a game of whack-a-mole, every maddening fantasy of unrepented sin caught up in a maelstrom. What if, however, the better thing to emphasize is the call for Respecting each other? We Respect, because parents have already been loved on; because siblings have already been attuned to; because friends have already heard their own variant of the pastoral quest, the heave-ho.

So to the end of the distraction! To the gifted strange prognosis meted out by church! That all are equal in sin, and the urgency is here and today, to make of our confession a life raft. To submit to the “Law”: to submit to the incriminating “evidence”, is to catch ourselves and reposition in order that we never deny what is under sail. An outlet, offensive on so many fronts, for that space to minister a Cruciform Message. If I, speaking for many, am “in sin”, then let us bless the Lord who gave us forum to acknowledge it is His work, not our own. Because we are, after all, busy. We demand Respect in this endeavor. We hear the whispering on all sides, and turn to a genuine article: faith in immediate restoration, the end to all smug visages and the end to all lazy church membership. The church is appallingly blessed, rich in so many ways, copacetic and patient, loving and healing; and then why the surprise that this “tax exempt” institution will be the first one called to the Altar, the first to confront a radical oppressed message? The Message not our own but entrusted to us, who—yes, gladly, honor that mother and that father—but who aim inoffensively to be offensive only in regards to something outside ourselves, the Christian Gospel.

God was a prophet; this much is agreed upon. The prophetic call reacts because people do the “good deed” exactly if and when, with some obtuse determination, we bless and Forgive them where they already are! That glory may be to that same prophetic God-in-the-flesh. That we can openly let out a breathe of fresh air because our sacred space—family hearth, marriage, church roles—is inviting us: repent Today, and know in all truth you will not be faulted! That is, the church may fault but—here is the clarion Call—let this be to the Glory of your Father in Heaven. Who prophesied in His Son that persecutions would come; who let out a breath of fresh air, almost a strange Delight that we are accounted worthy to suffer for the faith. Oh dear, and to “die” for the Faith, upheld in our vocal gentle blessing and forgiving Testimony. From all genders, in a church post-Pauline; from all stages of Encounter; from all Ruinous Histories of personal sin.