2024-12-27 A Meditation on the Ugly Alternative

“2 Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me. 2 I went up because of a revelation and set before them (though privately before those who seemed influential) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure I was not running or had not run in vain. 3 But even Titus, who was with me, was not forced to be circumcised, though he was a Greek. 4 Yet because of false brothers secretly brought in—who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might bring us into slavery— 5 to them we did not yield in submission even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might be preserved for you. 6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.” (Gal 2:1-10 ESV)

Flip, distanced, demuring: guideposts most divine and most personal, this-not-that thinking most germane, we naturally blanche at certain mindsets, whilst signing our name to others… and this, this notion of the muddy paw prints of a colleague or an enemy, this brings us to the day’s Cause: willingly to enter the idiocy, willingly to enter and bend over backwards to accommodate, someone else’s wild-eyed strangeness and lunacy. What is untenable to us, what we gladsomely laugh away in the barroom or around the dinner table, this too may spell a sort of Call upon our lives, that all folks are equal, that people we meet may be facing trials or need too great to put words to, even whilst presenting themselves as choate, tenable, put-together, one-of-the-gang.

The muddy paw prints, then, we do well to demure and to beg off: please, may I just go a different direction on this point or these points? Yet to a proper soldiering mindset, some brand of head-bowed prayer, of head-down humility, of waking up, alighting upon, lifting our countenance in order to See: ordinance divine, cavalry commingling, stockpiles sublime. The wealth of this our “Other” is botched up and dragged down into those muddinesses whilst also being ready at first morning Call to dispel and dissipate: they can indeed be loved into some New Form. They can indeed heed the stronger arm most benign, most Giving, most Sublime.

That arm is ours, knowing any interlocutor is Rich in their gladsome repartee, yet to see one high and lifted up—what they are, truth be told, is still Poor—is also to marvel at this elder who bends over backwards to Hear the cry of the oppressed, to allot some love and Encounter to the one muddied all over, to Divine a Horizon most blessed and pure, a Horizon gifted, shared, fussed over and Prepared.

To the march, then, is to enter the Ring and Combat Arena most put together, held aloft, held together by Divine stitchery, such as we Discovered when once we blessed the losing boast, the loser’s throne, the strange ugly accolades of one gyrating and gestating in unforgiving fright, in doomsday trials, in the End of the Ruse, the End of the Charade.

So too then we may simply hate on the Enemy, but this challenges us as leaders, as ones to whom the children gaze upon, also to put aside our familiarity and ribaldry, and to Coach, to Love Upon, to Gift, the unspoken culprit felt to be present by all, in the room. And should we do this, it will spell a New Chapter, family dynamics moving along and into the next generation’s stars. The brother mentality, the sister mentality, the soldiering Crime Averted, all this is to reckon with the muddy paw prints as affecting, influencing us, too, but no matter! To the ramparts! To the turrets of Grace! To the Time and Circumstance here and now to Be Different!