True Comfort (God is my helper or I am my own)

Two Characters, Two Patterns

“In God we Trust” or “in Mammon we trust” continues as a theme. We either come to rest, to Shabbat, in the produce of our own increasingly narrow vision, eclipsed community, which is existential excommunication, or humility teaches us, connects us, with God’s mercy and makes us to be merciful like Him.

Morphic Resonance. The idea of remembered (relied upon; “build your life upon”) truth, evocative of trust (the personal habit/quality correspondent to words and promises of God lived by). The epitome is Abraham, the one who trusts and is in the trusting already deemed righteous. He is clothed in a glory garment far greater than the purple satin of Egypt. He is made communicant with God, Elohim, once again. What we live in, remember, rehearse, resonate with, is who we are, it is of what Spirit we are about, it is either in communion with God, who is merciful or it is incommunicative.

The question becomes, in what are you clothing yourself, habituating yourself, glorying yourself, comforting? Are you yourself the sufficiency of yourself. If so, you are in danger of eclipse, of increasing coldness, distance from comfort.

Gustave Flaubert’s novel, Madame Bovary: “Of all the winds that blow on love, the demand for money is the coldest and most destructive.”

Fred B. Craddock, Luke, Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1990), 193.

The blindness of systems, of a way enclosed, of 666, of unremitting self-sufficiency, forgetting the wilderness, thinking that the fruit of the land was because of the work of our hands. It is the failure of praise, thanksgiving, and also therefore of mercy. We do not know our own need, our own dependency, our own flesh that has to be clothed in God’s comfort or it is cold comfort. There is a chasm between those who take care of themselves (which is to be without care) and those who care for having been cared for by God. The beloved are loving, to those who have, more is given. God grants our longing. What do we long for? Are we content in the empty and only-ness of our own self-righteousness, or do we understand that these are rags (not “woven air”) apart from the mercy of God?

The margins have to be seen: the margin of our own need in repentance and gratitude in meeting with God, and the margins of those who are at our gates, who need kindness. It is living in the haven of God that means we will continue. If we have leaned into the side of God in trust, we will continue there. It is our home and will be our home. It is the household of God, which is also a home. It is not an impersonal arbitrary economy, it is a place of habitat, of hospitality, of nurturing. It is a temple garden palace of eternal love.

These patterns, these morphic resonances, are often enculturated in enclaves. Five brothers (the six wicked sons of Herod, and the reminder of 666 doubled.) Once set, once settled into, it is a miracle to be saved from this. The family system, the cultural way, the lies acquiesced as “this is how it is....” We must die to these dead ends, these dead means and ends. It is the world that is passing away, the elemental pattern, not the real pattern for metanoesis. You must die to the antiChrist pattern of self-sufficiency. The real ABCs are Emeth. Beginning, middle, end, the Living one, who was and is and is to come. The alpha and the omega, the one who was dead and is the Living One, the Life-Giving Spirit.

Moses & Abraham. Humility and Trust. The eyes that see on the periphery, that leave the house of the world (Ur/Egypt), and trust (or are tested until trusting). These are ones who are set right, because they are un-fitted from the lies of the world and made fit to stand before God through pruning: set into God by dying/rising, by being BAPTISED in Christ, and therefore clothed in righteousness. He would have us not just dip our finger but be infused and continuously suffused with His life-giving Spirit. These great ones of faith, these saints clothed in Light, these children of Light: this splendor, this festal garb, is not of their own doing, or their own weaving, or their own strength with which they make merry. Their splendor is not of their own machinations or of the settled (lying), deficiency, of the world that is cut off and pretending to be alive. It is ruled by death, deceit, and the devices that operate to deceive and pretend away death and our own fleshly/vulnerable existence, the curse that is meant to be educational to cure. Moses is God’s instrument of mercy for His people crying out. He can hear because he has been humbled. He can see, out of the corner of his eye, because he knows it’s no longer possible for his hands to rule in any way good apart from God and His wisdom and mercy.

The identification: with our own ideas of identity? Solipcism ends in isolation. We are surrounded not by morphic likeness, the ultimate being God in Christ, and our neighbors who like us are of flesh, vulnerability, longing. We are increasingly resonating with power, with self-service, with the constructs of our own ideas and self-identities, and we have the technology to assert it, impose it, surgically, forcefully coercively do it. Our flesh, our humus, is not teaching us. We are, instead “instructing” it, or really “destructing” it.

What are we resonating with? Are we those who justify ourselves? God sees our hearts. Such a heart, the opposite of the humble heart, and therefore the opposite of heaven (for He dwells in the humble/contrite heart and the high and lofty place). It is the arrogant, self-arrogating, heart that is already in hell. It is the head that looks down and not up. This is “abomination” or unclean to God. It cannot come into the presence of God and it is already “out.” It’s how God sees that is important. We need to have our eyes cleared to see Him seeing us and so that we can see those who are like Him, and therefore also be like Him.

Luke The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:14–31)

Is not this the fast that I choose:

to loose the bonds of wickedness,

to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

and to break every yoke?

Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

Isaiah 58:6–7

Comforted: parakleisis. The clothing of the Spirit, the Comforter. The recline, rest, in the side of Abraham, is to live in trust of God alone as our helper. Eleasor/Lazarus: God is my helper (my paraklete). He is, in John, the beloved, dear, friend of Jesus, who weeps for him, even though He will raise him from death (which interestingly, does not convince the already set-in-their-ways of the kingdom of this world). To entrust yourself to God and His promises, not in your own schemes, your own earthly kingship, as from your father or mother that you grew up with, is to become truthful, to come out from the bush of lying about our nakedness, in order to be clothed in grace.

This has to happen now. It has to be a resonance for living now to be the residence for living for ever. Die before you die, there is no time after. (Lewis). Time is meaningful. It is the theater in which we either celebrate lies or truths. What will we resonate with? What will we disciple ourselves to? And, this has to be more than mere information conveyed in bits and bytes. It has to be resonating in hearts that hear and obey, that read scripture aloud, in promises that are lived by, not assertions and self-arrogations. We are the temples in which truth is meant to be heard, with the hearts that are inner sanctums where Christ is supposed to be met, with words of grace and atonement that are supposed to be taken out to the gates, forcing the tent pegs to expand.

The timing is important, it is urgent, always. It is formational. It is not optional. It is an ongoing experience of imprinting one way or another. Will you be imprinted with truth and love, or with selfish power that condemns and isolates? The story of Esau is instructive. He could not repent, though he had tears. The one blessing that he sold to Jacob had been given. It couldn’t be undone. He received another blessing. There are consequences to living out lies, to not be formed and conformed to truth and love, by being souls that are humble, needy, fleshly, naked, wounded, deeply aware of their need for mercy and grace.

Part of the problem of not repenting, of continuing in a pattern of denial, deception, self-formation/deformation, is that it will influence others. It will influence little ones. For this, there is no mercy, because there is no mercy when you are cold to mercy. It’s an impossibility.

The moment you repent, you are forgiven. The grace of 7. The potentiating of 8. Increase our trust, God! Increase our trustworthiness/fidelity! Just a mustard seed, caused to grow by the Spirit, will rise up in divine life and power. It’s root will be well-fed, it’s branches will be splendid in the sun of righteousness. It will be that tree planted by living water.

The way: a cloud of unknowing, a cloud of glory that washes away the past. Leave it behind, be present, let the accuser’s voice be silenced in the dense weight of God’s holiness, ascend and wait for Him to be you forward, to meet with you, to speak to you and reveal Himself to you. Don’t presume, but gently press, rise up, look up, wait in vigil… And, when you come down, you will bring light, even especially the light of mercy. You will see and participate in the loving of those who are on the margins of your life, who cry out for the hand of God to meet them and lift them.