2024-04-30 A Meditation on the Light

“7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; 10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.” (2 Cor 4:7-12 ESV)

“10 He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. 12 For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. 13 By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, 14 while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. 15 Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” (2 Cor 9:10-15 ESV)

Rather blinded by the light, the Christian enterprise instead of staring at the sun mints powerful ways to serve minus religious language. Christianity is a mindset, potent to save to the utmost those who thus put their faith in Christ Jesus. Who thus even perhaps dispel with traditional marks of the believer, knowing salvation springs up first here and then there, the role of tradition or rather hubris (for, tradition still holds much promise for each of us) is ended by a strange obstinance (Rom 11:25; Josh 11:20) or pride: the official Christian is simply aghast and unwilling to acknowledge a mistake.

But then to that sad state of affairs, the children of the Faith roundly rejected, touched in not holy way but by way of exclusion from the priesthood (1 Pet 2:5), and us… going the next decade of our lives, indeed, going the multitude of decades of our lives, in a bit of unseen shock, hurt deeply yet unable to talk it through, stunned that, though sincere our penitence, the fruits of righteousness in this generation were obstinate hatred. Were an adult or mature reality: you, child, take up the Cross of Christ, of the grown Christ Himself, though you only were pleading a kid’s Trust Fall. You take up the persecutions and the mock horror. You take up the accounting, that says “as we punish one-fold, by accounting and debt we multiply by a dozen-fold the punishment”. No! For any soul logical or mathematical, knows—philosophically—that something else is called for. That sin is already enough of a punishment in its own right; we have no need to mete out a purgatorial spell. And if we do thus mete out, what is the role of self-awareness, the fact we ourselves are not passive observers but do influence the Word and the Experience stated? We are afraid of our own guilt. We are aghast at our own life-long membership being that of no social club but of an “All are welcome, prodigals included” church.

Therefore the social trust, when any voice is afforded a hearing, to bear a duty unto the listener: to teach, to speak with humility, to testify to things true, to educate in plain simple examples. We know the better parables of you might say “evolution”: that a gesture in time saved countless generations of evolution; that horrid backwaters can be found and can gestate for some millenia; that we may face a torrential and evil future already even now, the spaceships and moon colonies already launched and no way nor time to recall them to reseed the message, retell the narrative, graft a less panicky or final motive unto them. Recall the space travelers! Tell them peace is here and now! Dare to be in the business of hastily, determinedly, forgiving the prodigals! Dare to avert a future of life unprecious, tormented and mined for knowledge, illegal science and more illegal lack of social justice towards the poor. Native souls, plain Life, echo-response, as what is Living and True can rise up an example of patient love to all.

The light is blinding, because so quick is the judgment therein met. Yet careening away from the Sun and the Son, we can make judicious marks and bites into the Reality. The unbeliever is found to be Truthful: that a “Christian” testimony emerges out of an end to social impropriety and illegal teachings, and the beginning of a life-affirming Task. People do not need to take up a grown-man’s, -woman’s Cross per se: the Cross, that is, will take care of itself. But people need Hope; they need Employment; they need Progeny regarding Future Dwelling. All these things are Christian. All these things are a Courage to dive in, to retool, to go head-down into the phase two, to believe that Testimony is a determined opposition to life-long hatred, to experiences of abuse, to unanswered plaintive child-like questions, to frustrated absences, to life’s unfair march, to the hate unto any claim we are siblings in a family, because the pay ain’t in the pudding: nothing was affirmed, nothing drove us to a grateful stance, but rather to a cynical mindset. They coveted the holy things, and tormented their less entitled brothers and sisters. Who had their own God-given right to these things. They made it easy for some to walk the walk, and nigh impossible for others.

Our spaceship, therefore, is intact: persecuted, robbed, disdained, abhorred, it is an occasion for life to spring up unprompted. It is an occasion for survivalism to meet impossible situation. We were partakers of a Resurrection, for indeed Crosses had been felt and found, and Resurrection life was our strange Possession, a Gift and inheritance not smugly-adopted but rather dreamily understood: those others, they just don’t “get it”! We can share abundantly, but in the patient knowledge God works on a scale of millennia and of multitude of generations. One day, God will spare them as well; but for now, early adopters and patient warriors, we are those with strange innocent wealth and therefore strange armor and ability to meld into a community unrobbed, because the devil doesn’t know what true Honor and Wealth consists in.