Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Epic Wants

"What do you long for?" we were asked in church last weekend.
What is your epic want.  It is good to know, because uncovering this sort of longing within ourselves puts us in touch with our most intense form of hope.

I participated in the exercise.  I came up with this: my most intense longing is to repeat as often as possible those moments when I have felt the Spirit of God lift me to a place where joy seems almost tangible and time irrelevant.  But when the "thinking" time was finished, the pastor began listing sample answers, and I realized I'd gone a different direction than he intended.  He spoke of failing health, broken relationships, financial or professional issues.  Maybe it would involve an epic want for the sake of a loved one--one with failing health or addictions to battle.

So I went back to my thought on the epic want and began considering it in terms of others.  Use the word epic with me, and I'm going to engage.  I love the idea of the epic. Saint Peter lived epic.

Sept. 21, 2005
Thinking more on this idea of being "in the gap" as a prophet.  Reading about Peter's vision in which God proclaims clean what had been unclean since the days of Moses.
 

Peter Visits Cornelius Acts 10:9-15

9 The next day as Cornelius’s messengers were nearing the town, Peter went up on the flat roof to pray. It was about noon,and he was hungry. But while a meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.”

“No, Lord,” Peter declared. “I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.”

But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.” The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.

Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean? Just then the men sent by Cornelius found Simon’s house. Standing outside the gate, they asked if a man named Simon Peter was staying there.

Meanwhile, as Peter was puzzling over the vision, the Holy Spirit said to him, “Three men have come looking for you. Get up, go downstairs, and go with them without hesitation. Don’t worry, for I have sent them.” So Peter went down and said, “I’m the man you are looking for. Why have you come?”
 
Two different things appear to be happening here. One being that God intends that all people have equal access to the effects of the sacrificial Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  The other being that Peter is told he can eat unclean foods.  Had Peter gotten "stuck" thinking the vision was devoid of a larger symbolic meaning, he'd have missed that point entirely. 
But Peter understood. When he met with the Roman officer who sent for him on an angelic prompt, "...Peter told them, 'You know it is against our laws for a Jewish man to enter a Gentile home like this or to associate with you. But God has shown me that I should no longer think of anyone as impure or unclean. So I came without objection as soon as I was sent for. Now tell me why you sent for me.' (vs. 28-29) The symbol within the vision (eating what was unclean) was different from the reality of how Peter was to walk through its meaning (going into the home of a Roman officer.)  The symbol was personal (Peter was hungry when he went into the trance) but the reality was universal (all people can be made clean.) Peter's visionary "filter" was working well.

I have spent the years since writing that post in September of 2005 waiting for some of the things visionary to migrate from personal to universal. When a vision finds its reality as quickly as Peter's did, that's one thing...when it is years coming to any life-application it is more difficult to keep its image-potential real. Peter stood in a gap that involved perceived Hebrew law and the revelation of God.  His only defense for the inscrutable gap he was called to fill: "Who was I that I could withstand God?" (Acts 11:7)

The day after receiving the challenge to uncover my epic longing, I read the following in Forgotten Among the Lilies, by Rolheiser.  He based it on his reading of G.K. Chesterton.:

"A man who was entirely careless of spiritual things things died and went to hell.  And he was much missed on earth by his old friends.  His business agent went down to the gates of hell to see if there was any chance of bringing him back. But, though he pleaded for the gates to be opened, the iron bars never yielded.
His priest went also and argued: 'He was not really a bad fellow, let him out, please!'
The gates remained stubbornly shut against all their voices.
Finally, his mother came, she did not beg for his release. Quietly, and with a strange catch in her voice, she said to Satan, 'Let me in.'
Immediately, the great doors swung open upon their hinges. For love goes down through the gates of hell and there redeems the damned."

Christ "descended into hell," and I believe there are ways in this life we act in kind as His ambassadors.  And maybe we don't have any other "excuse" for what we're doing than Peter's: "who was I that I could withstand God?"
So with regards to other people, I found my epic want.
You've called me to be a Mother, God.
You reminded me that when Deborah, the prophetess was "recognized" in song, she was not described as one who arose a prophet, or even as one who arose a judge--though she was both. No, the song went like this:
"The peasantry ceased in Israel, they ceased until you arose, Deborah, arose as a mother in Israel..." (Judges 5:7)
And Deborah is my name, too.
So I agree.  I acknowledge my epic longing--to be such a "mother" sent after those You choose for me--though they be in their own personal hells.  I will go and ask for the gates to be opened that I may enter.

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