Where is my Aaron?

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/112917.cfm
Daniel 5:1-6, 13-14, 16-17, 23-28
Luke 21:12-19

I’ve sat at times with some of my differently principled children, and opposite-thinking relatives and friends, sensing that we were entering an important, vital Jesus moment, a Spirit-filled adventure where I should be attentive to the other person and the discussion we are about to have. The topic? Debating the character of the creator of the universe, specifically centered upon the identified faults of he/she/it, as the creator’s is vilified. Or, more likely, we avoid the creator issues and focus upon the identified faults of creation’s design and course through time. I fear a loser, lost, lonesome, and whiny diatribe, with a gauntlet applied obstacle course is already laid out for the both of us.

This epic engagement turned confrontation should be an exciting opportunity, a hopeful encounter. I get to broadcast positive truth and hear truth's other voices! The results, unfortunately, rarely turn out positive. I know myself after hundreds of implosions, explosions, and the subsequent deadly fallout from these experiences. Rather than awesome and inspiring, all of my acrimonious conversations usually end up ugly and ignoble. In most cases, incendiary escalations light up the bags of bombs and fireworks brought by the fellow or gal to our encounter. (I rarely realize my own cache.) I point out the incendiary devices, strategically place them for the most permanent damage, and then eagerly ignite them with the lighter in my hand.

I can tell when I’m about to be hammered, grilled, and beat about the head. I scan for weapons to use. My antennae have been upgraded. I’ve paid handsomely for weapons recognition software and slithery snake-tongued tuning. My politics, my beliefs, my religion, my neighborhood, my words, my friends, my race, my gender, my automobiles, my poverty, my wealth, my work, or something else that pushes the on/off button of the person sitting in front of me is about to be triggered. My defensive skills, honed to be audibly crude and bodily antagonistic, rarely provide channels for grace. We may say grace before battling it out, but grace gets the message to be the designated driver, and await the bandaging in the triage tent after we’re done.

My friends with similar baselines and shared notions of God’s presence and grace and power nod at my all too familiar account of caustic relationships. While we acknowledge the trinity of presence, grace and power, we never bring them to the fight. My cohorts in familial and friendly circles agree our failures cause us great pain. We're very poor lovers.

While we want be known as a holy men and women, instead we present ourselves as assassins. Our positions turn our conflicted family and friends into targeted opponents. Their eyes go fiery, and their lips quiver. They envision the destruction of their world because when folks who do not trust that God is currently and actively involved in repairing creation, because it seems like annihilation, they expect and ultimately demand that we must forgo our fantasies and join their primarily secular (read scientific) mission to fix earth and its inhabitants. We cannot, though, mask our disdain at their principles, because we too have come armed, night goggles engaged, and rifles lifted. If they don't trust God, we must shoot them.

Ready, aim, fire.

In my debriefings with God, often alone in the car or the bathroom, I sit shaken by the awful reality of failure. My well planned out arguments, rather than gems of conversion, stand as absurdity in the face of the other person’s truths, and an abject denial of a reality where they insist God is busy doing something other than communicating with a ridiculous person like me. Where I see light, these friends and family turned into opponents insists that I am the dark one. After repeated experiences like this I now come to these meetings afraid, like an outed spy about to be unpeeled. I expect to be reduced to a clown rather than a friendly font of wisdom. These conversations almost always end up with me more scary than succinct, and more ludicrous than humorous.

I know I’m not alone, because this shared and serial set of catastrophes herds the battle weary into garages and bars and coffee shops, yearning for mending from like-minded pals. We gather like forlorn and injured animals. 

Our conversational goal intends to begin these conversations with love, yet we each have our pre-mapped Waterloos, our well worn road to assured defeat. Mine is that I jockey for a position in an elevated seat, a pillowed spot on a rocky top. A friend told me that as I near 70 years of age I should be morphing into the “Sage” phase of life. Instead of plunking myself into the rarified air of a mountain top, though, I find myself climbing out of a fox hole with my hands up.

The verses in Luke 21:13-15 are familiar to Christians. They often come to mind when these opportunities for dialogue arise. I’ve know about the admonition on testimony in the midst of adversaries, as do all of my like-minded friends, but something alludes us. Something detracts us.

“It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.”

Discussions lead to testimony, Jesus says, which will inevitably require a “defense.” In essence, when faced with an opponent, an attack is imminent. That, dear friends, is our conundrum. Attacks, especially ones we see coming, are going to get our dander up. The natural response to haymakers and potshots, our built-in DNA responder, prepares us to fight or flee. The more practiced we are at incoming missiles the more practiced become our responses.

“Drop your defense,” Jesus says. “Lay down your weapons.”  Sheesh. “Drop your guard.” What? “Do not run away. Don’t hide.” This can’t be good.

Preparing a defense means to be both defensive or offensive, whichever will achieve the desired result for our safety. Most of us, I assume, presume that the priority is to avoid a skewering. That is our detraction. The sure expectation and the subsequent preparation to avoid arrows, foul speech, spears, flame-throwers, guilt, grenades, acid, sabotage, and humiliation (all undesirable) requires a stealth we typically consider prudent. To drop our defense, stand still and be humiliated, sounds stupid. 

I come with a presumption to woodshed meetings. My well-meaning foes do not have my well being in mind. They are enemies, nefarious folks looking for a battle. In my heart I expect be abused in the name of necessary corrective therapy to my wayward ways and warped thinking. Incorrectly, I believe that God will protect me from abuse due to my holy and wise ego, my saintly character. I arrive, project a Morgan Freeman stare, a sly mixed demeanor of Mother Teresa and Bruce Willis, and a slouch the like of Longmire’s Robert Taylor, hands on hips and certainty on my morally high ground lips. I’ll be an awesome representative of God, pleasing to his eye and remarkable under the gaze of the saints and angels. I want this so badly. I want to be cool, suave, steady, and memorable. Minds will be changed. Hearts will be turned. Souls will be awakened.

God, though, paints a different picture. He expects uncompromising sacrifice, a stance that awaits the timing of the Holy Spirit, not our lightly tethered hubris. Dark bruises beneath many surface cuts will appear before our voice should be heard. God doesn’t protect us from the abuse. He armors our heart and soul, safe from harm. They are what matter. Our bodies and egos are the armor. He desires that we absorb the assaults because they only injure our pride and ridicule our honor. Our emotions will be riddled with holes. They can be sacrificed. It’s the pause that the Holy Spirit waits for, where our opponents grow weary. We should not ruin God’s opportunity with our impatience at absorbing another's rage. 

This is so hard to do. My fists clench and my teeth grind.

“No,” Jesus says. Stand there and take it. Shut the Moses up and await Aaron to arrive. In fact, pay for the coffee. Bring the expensive Danish, not those cheap day old donuts. Let them even kiss you on the cheek before they swing the axe. Give them your scarf if they are cold. Leave your phone in the car. Take off your helmet, set aside your gloves, show the tender parts of your belly (metaphorically speaking), and don’t wipe off the spit heading your way. Refrain from sighing and rolling your eyes. Allow them to measure your frame for the coffin they are going to build to house you and your crappy ideas. If Aaron is late coming, don’t look over your shoulder. The powerful comeback response that you so eagerly want to deliver may be voiced by another, standing on your grave, and pointing out your martyrdom.

Dear God. Really? That sounds just plain awful. Especially if you’ve got every knee-jerk response already loaded into your chamber.

“Alack,” I am dismayed. I cannot wait. My mouth rattles like the frantic lid of a teapot spout. I lie trying to tell the truth. I manipulate the character of God, rather than let it reveal itself. I intimidate with a sneer and smirk, unable to smile sincerely.

I feel the disappointment immediately, but cannot clamp down my lips. Any hopes for an Anthony Bourdain sleek and aloof wandering among the foreign land of my adversaries is gone. I am a burbling man, defensive, argumentative, and pathetic.

“Alas.” The fighting genes rising from Scottish ancestors, Irish farmers, British barkeeps, and French cheesemakers — as I ridiculously imagine my legacy — have no governor. They are furious folks, admirable in their tenacity, I claim. Yet, unfettered to a Holy Spirit, who can drop the Berlin Wall without a shot and rescue a doomed group of miners from certain death, my imaginary ancestors bounce against each other, shouting epithets that create heat and no light. Counseling and patience have little experience within the fiber of my makeup, I insist, so I blather about high crimes and mistaken identities and political correctabilities that make no sense to the current discussion of my living relatives and friends.

How, dear Lord, do the fools like me operate as your worthy representative when we cannot simply do as you ask? Why is it so hard to stand still, knowing you are going to step in when it is appropriate?

I believe it is more than the patience I don’t have, and even more than the reality that God is present. It is the appropriateness that I determine God must have. I have put expectations upon God's timing and his response. God can wait years, decades, centuries, and millennia. Why do I insist upon a specific set of minutes? God can change the weather, re-route lava, lasso the wind, while taking as long as he needs. And in moments, God can rise up leaders who baffle us all. He can bring down authorities who appear to be impenetrable. My clock pales to his cosmic calendar. In fact, I am an arm on his clock, a crucial page on his divine Daytimer. He has decided to use me, so I need to tune myself to him, not my own weaponry.

When we act as God's good soldiers, helpful assistants, and loyal servants we are not alone and unheard. There are clear moments to be swift, if we trust him. Mostly, though, I believe God works with us according to our gifts. Playful or methodical, he is at our backs. God will gift us with the most dear of favors to shore up our courage, and hearten our will. It is not our weapons that amount to anything, or our ancestral DNA that forms our nature. It is God’s promise that our defense will be awesome, even if revealed over our broken egos.

God loves both us and our enemies. Behind the uniforms these are our family and friends. When we are the enemy we want his love, too, so our reactions should follow his lead. Waiting on God will subdue the weapons, reveal our friendships and familial ties, and allow the Holy Spirit to speak the truth.

Help me remember, dear Lord. Help me to await my Aaron, and hear the Aaron from my loved ones. It'll be a relief not having to sharpen all these knives, keep my powder dry, and my lighter always handy. I'll go study up on Danish treats and practice being quiet.