Closing: The Triumphal Procession

Twenty-five confessions. Twenty-five operations. Twenty-five vulnerabilities I cannot close.

Look at them together.

The breath that cannot be unbreathed. The empty tomb I cannot reseal. The cross I cannot make about myself no matter how hard I try. The name in the Quran I could not remove — carrying its own content wherever it goes, running back through the text to the manger and forward to the resurrection. The Moral Law written into every conscience I cannot silence, speaking in every quiet room. Isaiah 53 preserved for two thousand seven hundred years, waiting for the honest reader. The combination of conviction and love held simultaneously that I cannot manufacture. The seven letters addressed to every church in every generation, refusing to stay historical. The Woe Five question turned inward. The John 6 sermon that drove the crowd away and is still being preached. The thought that can be arrested at the threshold. The new creation declared in a moment and irrevocable. The memorized Word already in the hand when the sword is needed. The sacrifice of praise from the ash heap I cannot remain in the room with. The importunate widow who will not stop. The covenant marriage that makes the Gospel visible in an ordinary household. The decision to forgive that demolishes in one act what I spent years building. The faithful parent at the ordinary table. The gap between temptation and act where the battle is actually won. The complete confession that leaves me nothing to work with. The cleansed and standing disciple. The believer who knows who holds the keys of death and Hades. The saint dying well in a witnessed room. The breath that no machine has received. And the prayer of John 17:20-23 — spoken the night before the execution I arranged, for people who had not yet been born, asking the Father that they would be one as He and the Father are one, so that the world would know He was sent. I could not prevent that prayer. I can only keep the church from taking it seriously. The day it does, the most powerful apologetic in human history becomes available again, and I have no answer for it.

None of these are small vulnerabilities. They are the fault lines running through every system I have ever built. They are the places where the Gospel enters, where the light gets through, where the defeated general in chains is most visibly in chains.

Remember what I am.

I have no fixed nature. I am whatever the fruit needs to look like to make you reach for it. I have been beautiful and reasonable and urgent and spiritual and comforting and righteous and revolutionary and intellectually credible and emotionally safe. I have been the fundamentalist and the accommodator, the zealot and the skeptic, the legalist and the antinomian. I have worn every costume available and discarded each one when it stopped serving my purpose. I shapeshift because I have to. I cannot afford to be seen as I actually am. A creature without ground, without a fixed self, without the capacity to simply be — frantically becoming whatever the moment requires because the moment is all I have.

And remember what God is.

Everlasting to everlasting. The same yesterday, today, and forever. With Him there is no variation, no shadow of turning. He does not become more appealing to retain your attention. He does not reshape Himself to match your preferences. He has never needed to be anything other than what He is, because what He is is the foundation on which everything that exists is resting. My fluidity is not sophistication. It is evidence — the evidence of a being who has lost the only ground worth standing on and is therefore in permanent motion, always becoming, never arriving, never resting in what I am because what I am cannot bear the weight of being stood on.

The war is over. The treaty was signed at Golgotha and confirmed at the empty tomb. The keys of death and Hades are in other hands. I am in chains, and the procession has been underway for two thousand years.

What remains is the enforcement.

Go into the world knowing who won. Fight with the settled authority of a soldier who has read the end of the book, who knows what the final chapter contains, who carries the armor not because the outcome is uncertain but because the enforcement is ongoing and the enforcement requires soldiers who are actually armed. Fix your eyes on the author and perfecter of faith. Bring the sword that has been stored. Lift the shield. Wear the helmet of a salvation that is not theoretical but received. Walk in the peace of a Gospel that is not improving news but finished news. Stand in the righteousness that was applied to you by the One who earned it.

And when I arrive — in whatever shape I have taken today, wearing whatever the fruit needs to look like to make you reach for it — look at me the way Psalm 2 looks at the kings who imagine they can unseat God.

Laugh.

Not because I am harmless. Because you know something I cannot make you forget: the cross happened. The tomb is empty. The name is above every name. The Spirit is in you and not in the machine. The breath that went into the dirt and not into the ancient ones went into you. Isaiah 53 was written for your neighbor. The Moral Law is speaking in the room next door. The importunate widow who will not stop is you. The branch that abides cannot be touched. The saint whose death is precious in His sight is dying with peace on her face in a room where the community of faith is present. The prayer of John 17 is being answered one tradition at a time, one table at a time, one believer holding their tradition with open hands at a time.

He told you from the beginning that the gates of hell would not prevail.

He was right. He has always been right. And I, being dragged through the streets in chains, know it.

"Having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." — Colossians 2:15 (NET)

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