Monday, October 5, 2020      (today’s lectionary)
Wars last too long
I am amazed you are so quickly forsaking
The one who called you by the grace of Christ
For a different gospel.
There are some who are disturbing you.
Shelby Foote, born in Greenville, Mississippi, fell in love with the Civil War. Many of us have fallen in love with it too, thanks to him. His stories of that history reach down beyond my mind into what I generally call my soul.
Famous through Ken Burns for his Trilogy, Mr. Foote also wrote novels. In Jordan County, he tells of a soldier come home wounded.
He was still a young man but he looked older than his years, as if the furnace of war had baked the flesh of his hard, handsome face, which by now was tacked in replica on cabin walls and mooned over by girls in attic bedrooms. The softness had gone from his eyes and voice. Having him home was like having a segment of some actual blasted battlefield at hand. His mother, after an hour with him, came away shaking her head. “What have they done to my boy?” she asked.
“He’s a hero,” Isaac said. He had seen and known heroes before. “What did you expect?”
Later in Galatians Paul wrote, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free!” Ever since, his words have been used and abused to free our individual liberties room to move in pretty much any direction. But Paul wants us to return to Jesus’ gospel, to the words Jesus said again and again, “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” In this way and only this way, the kingdom of God comes near. Rejoice and be glad.
Why did slave spirituals need to ring with “We shall overcome?” Their owners would say, “What needs overcoming? Trust God and pick the fields. You are free in Christ.” Because of course, they were. We are.
But my individual freedom thrives in community. Whether I’m slave or master, the people around me show me the way to move toward God and not away.
I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart
In the company and assembly of the just.
I’m not sure how well I can “love God” without loving my neighbor as myself, sharing my time and space, riches and poverty with others. When I “corner up” because of some real or imagined injury, God is harder for me to find.
But am I seeking to please people? If I were still trying to please people then I would not be a slave to Christ.
Whether I’m alone or part of a team, troop or tribe, God’s love pushes mine beyond whatever borders I have set. Unconditional not only means all ways, it also means all of us. All God’s creatures, every one. It’s so easy for me to be seduced by a conditional “gospel.”
In Shelby Foote’s story both the soldier and his mother die, leaving only Isaac living. Nearly ninety, he sits all day in his rocking chair.
Footsteps approached, then Isaac saw him. A Federal officer, complete with sword and sash and buttons stamped US, stood on the hearth. They looked at one another. Isaac saw that the officer was a young man, rather hard looking, however, as if his face had been baked in the same crucible that had hardened and glazed the face of his son Clive. And Isaac thought, “It’s something the war does for them, North and South. They get this way after a time because nowadays the wars go on too long.”
Just how long is that, Isaac? And how long when it ends does it take for my soul, no matter how fearfully and wonderfully made, to return to God’s gracious plains of mercy and peace? When, on what day in what far off year, will I again listen and act, as I’m reminded to “be still, and know that I am God?”
On God’s field the battles cease. There are no longer any sides, so what is there to fight about? As old soldiers from North and South together found fellowship at their reunions, we march together hand in hand. Jesus’ story of the injured man and good Samaritan pushes his listeners to leave their tribes. Who was the neighbor?
“The one who treated him with mercy.”
Jesus said to him, “You too, you go and the same.”
We can encourage each other. Each time we do, the kingdom of God comes near.
(Galatians 1, Psalm 111, John 13, Luke 10)
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