2023-09-14 A Meditation on Underway

“8 First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. 9 For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I mention you 10 always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. 11 For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you— 12 that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. 13 I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you as well as among the rest of the Gentiles. 14 I am under obligation both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and to the foolish. 15 So I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome.” (Ro 1:8–15 ESV)

Getting the whole rig operational and up and running patiently tolerates our grand designs but focuses really on those things that don’t seem on the surface of things to spell progress. Those things that we would rather save for a rainy day. The action of joints oiled and encouragement joined between friend and what is “out there”, the myriad encounters with anointing and with purpose, with belonging and with togetherness. We find ourselves together not via calculations but rather by sacramental exchange and groupings and discovery of this our peer in our vicinity of prayer. We succeed because we are self-composed towards thriving. All our life’s worries are able now to answer a question of divine proportions and to soldier forth sated and complete, made up for the journey but also not under the influence: we cherish our boundaries and the perennial overseeing question as to “What would they think?” Be not confused! What is call and duty in this age? In our prayer closets and frontline perches: do you know, young soldier, that you are forgiven for the wild scene called War? Do you know it is your calling and duty not to deny trials and temptations, but boldly to embrace them and live near and alongside of rampant trial and situational concern? Can you see the influencer furtive and fleeting, lingering and hidden: this is no exercise but the real deal. This is the reason for the self-composed and At the Ready maneuvers, to share a bond and to share a barracks, a teamwork, an experience chaste yet loving, the ways we call out to one another out of deep respect for what limits the spirit meets vis-a-vis things that are unspiritual. Things that are simulacra of the Spirit. Things that seem all goodness and all satiety, but that leave us empty and at impasse.

So the soldier fights and knows the lust of war, of longing for something fighting and alert, unapologetic for their readiness but also humbled by the fulcrum that can lean towards aggression or hatred. We hate, but only with righteous indignation at the atheism, the apologies not made, the sincere assessment that concludes: “this one is not so moral”; “that one is a bucket of lusts”; “all these are corrupt through unconfessed sins, lyrics of life’s walk, scenes of despair”. Indeed, those scenes are to a sympathetic soul, to a Christian, of despair, but to a naysayer they are in denial and forgetful of bludgeoning each other with the Law. The naysayer wants oomph and concrete, intelligible, sensible invocation of demand and Law: only by preaching restrictions and rules do we get anywhere, they say. Yet to us those restrictions have not the power to save, but rather what does save is the line that we walk self-realized and understanding “under the influence” of an alternate gospel, of something in principle not wrong: togetherness, a teaming up, shared community; but because of that dastardly thing called Man’s Fallen Nature, the fact of us being in that era the reformers called Church Militant, we cannot long brook fantasy nor aggression, but rather together await the next era, the Church Triumphant.