The Call That Is Two Years Old

There are four notebooks now and the fourth one is nearly full.

He started them when he began teaching the Wednesday class, and they are not vanity: they are genuinely good, cross-referenced, with things his own father said in the margins in a different pen. If the house were on fire they are what he would carry out.

The first one is dated two years ago this month.

Which is also, and he has known this for a long time without letting it come all the way up, the same month as the argument.

It was about their mother's house and the money side of it, and both of them said things, and one of the things his brother said was accurate and cruel at the same time, which is the worst combination there is. And one of the things he said back was worse and he knew it before the sentence was finished.

Two years. There have been three family occasions in that time. They were civil at all three, in front of everybody, in a way the whole family has quietly decided not to comment on.

And on Wednesday he taught, well, from the fourth notebook, on the seriousness of what we bring to God.

Somebody stayed behind afterwards to thank him and said it had made her go and sort something out with her daughter that week.

He drove home behind a slow van for twenty minutes and the number is still in his phone under a name he has not tapped since the argument.

Jesus stops the offering and sends the man out of the building

Let me say straight away that the two years are not a stretch of cowardice and I am not going to describe them that way.

Something accurate and cruel was said to you by the one person who knew where to put it. You said something worse and you have carried that since the sentence was still in the air. Two years of civility at family occasions is not nothing: it has kept a mother's memory from being fought over in front of everybody, and both of you have paid for that.

Now hear this, and take it as settled rather than as pressure: what you have been carrying to the Wednesday class is real, and God has said plainly what to do with it first. That is not my hard reading of a hard two years, it is what stands written in the sermon on the mount, and the same Holy Spirit who carried that instruction had you behind a slow van for twenty minutes.

Read what Jesus does, because it is startling and almost nobody preaches it as it stands.

Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.Matthew 5:23-24

He stops the offering. Mid-act, at the altar, with the thing in the man's hands. That is what is written, in the plainest terms He ever used, and the Holy Spirit has been holding that instruction over a Wednesday class for two years.

And He does not say finish this and then go. He says leave it there. In front of everybody, in the middle of the most sacred moment available to that man, put it down and walk out and go and find him.

So this is yours right now rather than pending the right words: the call is not an addition to your devotion, it is the next thing in it, because the written word puts reconciling ahead of offering in the same breath and the Spirit of God is the one who has kept a name in your phone unread for two years without letting you delete it.

Now let me take the fear seriously, because it is the actual obstacle and it is a reasonable one.

You are not afraid of the call. You are afraid of the first ninety seconds of the call, and specifically of whether he will be cold, because if he is cold then the two years become something you can no longer tell yourself is mutual.

That is worth naming out loud. It has been the real reason since about month four, and nothing written asks you to guarantee another man's warmth, and the Holy Spirit has never made obedience conditional on a good reception.

But notice what the passage does not require of you. It does not say go and get a good outcome. It says go. The going is the obedience; the rest of it is his and God's, and what is written puts the responsibility on the one who remembers rather than on the one who answers the phone. The Holy Spirit does not hand out results in advance, and He has never asked anybody to guarantee another person's warmth.

And the guard, because it belongs: none of this makes the Wednesday class a fraud or means you should stand down from teaching. Keep teaching. The woman who went and sorted things out with her daughter is not a rebuke, she is evidence that the work is real. It is simply that the same word which moved her is now standing in front of you holding a phone.