Ready to be Taken

If you're going to worry,
worry about The Holy. Fear GOD-of-the-Angel-Armies.
The Holy can be either a Hiding Place
or a Boulder blocking your way,
The Rock standing in the willful way
of both houses of Israel,
A barbed-wire Fence preventing trespass
to the citizens of Jerusalem
-Isaiah 8:13-14, The Message

You are the Shelter from the rain, and the Rain to wash me away. -Jars of Clay

He is the Rain and the Shelter, the Wind and Storm and Raging Sea and the Safe Place, the Fear and Dread, the Holy, the Anointed, the Passionate and Determined, Restless and Relentless. The Lord is a Warrior. The Lord is his name.

I am really, really weary of the religious bullcrap going on around me. Very weary. And I am desperate that God keep me from the snares of cynicism. You know how the Catholic church believes that the bread and wine actually become the body and bread of Christ the moment it's blessed? Some of my friends balked at that the other day. They're more holy because they understand and box and ship our Lord. And I think, really? How can you take what is so far beyond our ability to comprehend, a Mystery far too great to analyze and compartmentalize, and try to break it down into something reasonable and safe? I remember most of the folks who had gathered around Jesus when he was talking of safe things and sweet things of heaven and the Kingdom and loving one another and God's love for them. They loved it - warm feelings inside. And then He says to them that His body is bread for them to eat and His blood is wine for them to drink. And most of them scattered. That was it - too much. Whoa, Son of God, we were okay with you discussing cozy things, but this you've taken too far.

But I'm starving, and God allowed his Son's bones to be ground to make my bread. To share the cup of communion and to take Him up on the offer of marriage is either completely insane... or the only real sane thing there is. Either we say yes to His life and that offer, that invitation, or we turn to what is safe and analyzed and made in our image by our hands. But what of those things that make us? But what of the Passionate One who sweat blood in the dark night, alone?

"The Spirit reveals the deep things of God."

All my life I've been disqualified from one thing or another. I don't have what it takes by someone's or something's standards. Not tall enough. Not short enough. Not smart enough, kind enough, courteous enough, safe enough, wild enough, loving enough, hating enough. Not something enough. But this... but this. Here I stand, barely... stripped and flogged and condemned by those holding the stones. And, amazingly, this One stands here, too, taking it on. Taking it all on. And, after all is said and after all is finished, who is condemned? And still, still I hear the invitation and the cup raised towards heaven for me. "Do this to remember me. I have come. Will you follow?" All acts that the Hebrews would very well have understood to mean, "Will you marry me? I have come to abide with you as the most intimate of friends. Will you with me? Will you ride with me?" Not a word of my sin. Not a word of my indiscretion. Only the Invitation, true and deep and real.

This great Mystery is at work in me. It's as if the Blood I just sipped this morning, the Bread I dined on, is working in me to make me holy, set apart. I have human blood swooshing through my veins, sure. But there is more. I am also awashed in His blood. I bear another name, born of another time and place that's my real Home. Somehow, I'm not disqualified. Not this time.

There's One greater than all the rest to fear. Those who accept His proposal, who give their hand to Him, learn that life is for them a freefall and a surrender, leaving them gaping-mouthed, sweaty-palmed and breathless. And hungry, desperately hungry, and never sated.

There is a river who makes glad the city of God. And the waters there are rapid, wild, and free. I am bone-dry and ready to be taken.

I will lift up the cup of salvation
and call on the name of the LORD .
I will fulfill my vows to the LORD
in the presence of all his people.
-Psalm 116:13-14