When I was a senior in high school, my mother (and father, I expect) bought me a camera, a Polaroid. I paraded that thing around as if God had walked down the middle aisle carrying the camera, waited a bit, then handed the camera to me. I was ecstatic. I was professional. I was already writing for the local newspaper. Now I thought I could be a photo shooter, as well. As always, I was way ahead of myself.
My creativity was running ahead of my ability. The local newspaper told me if I could get pictures of the South State basketball tournament, they would publish them. I took photos. They did not publish them.
Why? Uh, they stunk. Bad composition. Bad contrast. Bad lighting. I still loved that camera, though. I loved taking the photo, pulling out the "instant" developing film. You would pull out the single, shake it, then put it on a table of something akin to that and watch it "develop." From nothing came people, places, things. Spectacular work, I thought. Why knew others didn't quite see it that way. Within a year I was shooting photos for the newspaper using one of their Nikons. Though you couldn't see the finished product within a minute or two, at least when the photo was developed, you could see what was in the picture.
Lo and behold.
Wave, wave, wave goes the photo as I tried to dry it.
Wush, wisssshhhh, wavey, wavey.
Thousand of years earlier, the Apostle Paul spread the offense out and powered through the line to a synagogue or two in Asia. He took with him the Gospel, the good news of Jesus. Paul's definition of good news stood for a while, but then it would always come back to "Can we see this Jesus?" And inevitably, since Jesus was killed, dead and buried' raised from the dead after three days; ascended into heave.
But there was more, much more, than simply seeing a living body, God walking the earth. There was the little matter of love. Paul makes, made, it clear that even if you gave everything you have, even if you taught the scriptures, even if you gave up every second of every day to the cause of Christ, without a loving relationship with the Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, it would be nothing but white noise.
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am becoming sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal," the Apostle Paul wrote in his first letter to the church in Ephesus.
Naturally, we can't handle that. We can't love the way God loves by our own means. We can't save anyone... ANYONE on our own. Simply can't.
Paul also wrote in verse 12 of the 13th chapter of his first letter to Corinth, "For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face; now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known."
Symbolically, the morning shows us what we face. This morning, the fog was truly deep and thick. I walked out of the parsonage about 7:10 a.m., headed for the fellowship hall, and I wanted to get there early to start the coffee and go back over my notes of the fifth chapter of John's Gospel.
The fog made the early morning quite eerie. The sun wasn't capable of burning off the darkness, not with the fog developing quite on its own. It wasn't cool, but the humidity was dripping, literally. Jesus stood tall in this pre-dawn light, calling out the tongues of men and of angels.
Can we call out to God, church? Can we exchange the clanging cymbal and sounding brass for the love of God, a unique love that needs no explanation?
And there's the dilemma. Scales of justice, with one side weighed down by all we've done, the other side weighed down by love. Eventually, the love will out-weigh the other side. But we've got to wait for that to come. It simply isn't on demand.
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