Surrender in the Moment

It is time for me to focus more closely on the implications of “roused, readied, reaped.”  The concept of “roused, readied, reaped,” as I have tried to describe it, is meant to relate a phenomenon that—in its nearly infinite manifestations—characterizes human experience.  The cycles of rousing, readying, and reaping occur in every plane, through all times, and in varying duration throughout our mortal lives.  Even the very concept of “the moment” (or “the instant”, if you prefer) entails in our conceptualization the tiniest of experienceable time-frames.  A moment is a span in which something happens (or notably does not happen)—no matter how tiny or fleeting a moment is, it exists as a span of time.

So, there is no such thing as the “instantaneous,” if by that we mean something that occurs in “no time” and could be experienced by us as such.  Yet, of course, the briefest of moments are usually the most difficult for us to manage (or, most importantly, for us to manage ourselves within.)  In the moments of our lives, we are thrown up against our most undiluted dispositions and are deprived largely (if we address those moments in concerted fashion) of recourse to mental constructions of the surrounding time and place.

So, in the moments of our lives, we are (if we are willing to accept it) deprived of the constructions of time and place that constitute our inwardly-appreciated lives.  A moment truly lived is a moment outside of the lives we know, and it is in the Jesus-approved focus on moments that we find the greater life that he promises us.  Or, to put it another way (and this is the key, I believe, to understanding the ministry of Jesus), we find the greater life that Jesus promises us when we cease to see ourselves as possessing lives in which Jesus intercedes periodically, and when we begin to see that the life of Jesus is all that really exists, and our own “lives” are those self-bounded realms of referential assurances that are really self-reflections.  We are not wakened to supernatural events that we might associate either with miraculous revelation or with life-changing moral challenges—we are wakened to the Jesus-mediated life that really exists, and in those moments we are lifted out of the un-miraculous mire of that which we each in our own way label “real life.”

This is how the story of Jesus begins in the Gospel of John.  Here I must apologize for using the phrase “story of Jesus,” yet it is not without reason that I use it.  The gospels, or stories drawn from an amalgamation of the gospels, can be called “Lives of Christ,” and it is usually with the greatest of reverence that they are so called.  Unfortunately, the notion of a “life of Christ” is terribly misleading, and this fact can be demonstrated best by the beginning of John.  Here we can begin to see that, as I stated above, “the life of Jesus is all that really exists, and our own ‘lives’ are those self-bounded realms of referential assurances that are really self-reflections.”

In fact, the first part of John can be called most revealingly the “life of humanity,” with Jesus’ character the sole static element—only Jesus’ fleshly manifestation participates in the story with us, and the recurring effect of the story is to show how we are raised up (or hauled up) in moments long or short into the glare of God’s truth.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

We can call this part of a narrative, yet it is as much part of a narrative as “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”—it is a pre-story, started and finished as a premise, not as a Chapter One of the story.  So far there has been described no process conceivable to us.

“In him was life; and the life was the light of men.  And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”

It is inconceivable that the light that “shineth in darkness” did not precede the creation of humanity, and if this “light” is the “life” in Jesus (“the Word”), then there is no way that we might conceive of it as other than pre-existing the creation even of physical darkness.  Again, we are being given premises, not elements of narrative.

“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.  He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.”

John participates in the story, but he does so as a person thrust into the narrative (or, if you will permit, “roused” to his calling.)  In every moment in which he responded to his calling (and it does not seem later that his focus is all that God might have intended it to be), John was living the true life offered to him (and to all.)  John is describe as interacting, not with a narrative Jesus, but with a stable and endless stream of the changeless character of Jesus.

“That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.”

Again, the point is made—Jesus as an element of the salvation-story of his ministry is as an overarching, impending (some might say intrusive) source of light.  He exists in the story as an agent from time immemorial until time unimaginable.   The KJV has as above, “That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (1:9).  The New Jerusalem Bible has the verse as, “The Word was the real light that gives light to everyone; he was coming into the world”—but for our purposes the import is the same.  Jesus in the gospels is described as something happening, but it is never forgotten that Jesus is always and everywhere something happening.

The “story” of the Gospels is the story of how persons are shaped by moments of dealing with Jesus, but the very fact of the ubiquitous and changeless nature of Jesus’ interactions with Creation makes plain a simple fact.  People are not changed because Jesus or an agent of Jesus breaks into their lives.  People are changed because their lives are broken (even if not totally or forever) as those people are lifted into the life of Jesus.  People are given chances (monumental or mundane, brief or long) that are the “rousings”, “readyings,” and “reapings” of mere existence.  The light of Jesus always shines (or scorches) and in moments of recognition of that light we are blinded to all surroundings and unconscious of time.  Our lives are shorn from us, and we are well rid of them, and we have to assent simultaneously to letting them go.

How this is to be done (or at least addressed) is exemplified by the quote from the Baptist later in the introduction to the Gospel:

“John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.”

John the Baptist interacted with the fleshly Jesus, but (as the verse just above makes plain) John was capable of understanding that the character of the divine Jesus exudes divine light always.  As I wrote above, when properly oriented to Jesus, “John is describe as interacting, not with a narrative Jesus, but with a stable and endless stream of the changeless character of Jesus.”  It is only when John looks at Jesus as a time- or place-dependent person that John ceases to have a proper understanding of Jesus, as in when he sends his disciples to ask if Jesus is the one for whom he had been waiting.

How different is this confused and worldly John from his very self a few years earlier, when he had said of Jesus, “he will thoroughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner; but the chaff he will burn with fire unquenchable”!  The Baptist’s experience, however, is not fundamentally different from anyone else’s—we have moments that overtake our lives, that become our lives, but of course we do not handle those moments perfectly, and they do not last.

Faced, however, with the impermanence of our moments of enlightenment, we tend unfortunately to decide that such fervor is rare (and probably just as well rare) and needs to be supplanted gradually by a more mature faith that by bits and pieces stores away a more sober and ostensibly more certain approach to Jesus’ teachings.  And then we sift through our stores of “faith” and content ourselves that we are learning to be ready to answer the calls of challenge that Jesus might thrust into our lives.  And then we think of time and place and of how blessed we are to have a sure theology and to partake of what we term the “abundant life” of believers enjoying the blessings of God’s creation.

And then we are wakened from our slumber by the voice that says, “You fool!  This very night your life will be required of you!”

What will time and place, what will our very lives themselves, mean to us then?  How might we ever answer, not merely for what we have done, but for what we have left undone?  I have no better answer than anyone for my own life, but here I want to highlight in any event the very pitfalls of an internalized “life” itself.  The only life to which we must aspire is that which finds its substance in the character of Jesus, and therefore by definition finds no substance in itself.  And the only source of instruction on this matter in the teachings of Jesus is to be found in the most unsparing assessment of his ministry itself.

Jesus went often by himself to pray.  Jesus went often to tend to the needy.  We also do such things (though neither kind of thing intently enough.)  Of course we tend to make assumptions about our moral character that will allow a far greater (in fact, infinitely greater) degree of failing on our part than on the part of Jesus.  When we pray, our minds wander.  When we attempt to address the needs of the needy, we stint.  Of course, we will say, our actions in such regards will always be lacking, and we might even indulge in examinations of ourselves in light of some theory of “total depravity.”  Fair enough.

But what shields the behavior of Jesus from such unsparing analysis, save our determination to account him unassailable by any observation?  Skeptics enough will tell us that Jesus lied about attending the festival, that he acted spitefully in cursing the fig tree, that he prescribed unstinting adherence to the Law while defying many of its provisions, that he treated his parents deplorably.

The answer to such contentions, I will argue (in accordance with the moment-by-moment implications of “roused, readied, reaped”) is found in the general scheme of analysis inherent in the introduction to John.  The vindication of Jesus (and the only hope for us to claim shelter in his eternal and ubiquitous mercy) is found in the moment-by-moment grasping at the eternal and ubiquitous nature of Jesus.  Sure, we can haul out schemes of moral analysis, but any merciless application of such a scheme (either by skeptic or by “total depravity” adherent) can claim victory on its own terms.  If merciless analysis is to be applied, why would we not look at Jesus in his very agony in the Garden?  If it were as simple a matter as Jesus being sinless (and as simple a matter as Jesus being analyzed like any human), might we not attribute sin to him even in his very agonies?  If he were sinless, would he not accept his fate serenely, and pursue the positive moral good of comforting his disciples?  It would be harsh enough for us ask such questions, but if we were honest with ourselves, we would admit that placed in such danger as Jesus contemplated, any higher thoughts we might have would be tinged (at least) by baser thoughts.

Or is Jesus’ sinless acceptance of his fate really what the Agony in the Garden all about?  Jesus, quite apparently, does not “accept” his fate except as a latent possibility through the long years of his life and the harrowing years of his ministry.  He asks to be spared his fate.  He accepts it in the moment.  IN THE MOMENT.  In the moment, his life is nothing but submission to God’s will.  He promises us nothing more, and it might be said that he “promises” us a good portion of suffering—all so that we might sacrifice all that we call our “lives,” and all for the sake of a “life” that finds its purpose in anything but ourselves.

We cannot do what Jesus asks except moment by moment.  The gospel accounts of his ministry have tortured us (and led to innumerable tortured commentaries) by how they return again and again to requirements of us that fall apart when “sinlessness” is held to be the issue, and that make no sense unless surrender in the moment is the issue.