Gentle Reader,
If you haven’t heard, Eminem released a new song. I’m not recommending you listen to it. Rap isn’t really my thing, though I admit to liking a few of his old tracks. I was a teenager in the early 2000s – it was hard to escape hearing him on the radio. Yes, the radio. Dinosaurs also roamed the earth at this time.
The song came my way specifically because I belong to the Xennial cohort, those folks who are (at times uncomfortably) a blend of GenX and the Millennials. The internet is always listening. The algorithms know things. I listened once from start to finish, chuckled at a couple rhymes, and will most likely never listen to it again.
But there’s one line in that song that I can’t get out of my head: “Sometimes I wonder what the old me’d say (if what?) if he could see the way [stuff] is today.”
Eminem swimming in theological waters.
I keep coming back to write about holiness. I think this should get me retroactive seminary extra credit, or be applied to the doctoral work that I begin next month. I’m just stuck on it. Holiness seems esoteric and difficult to pin down, but I’ve come to think that it’s actually one of the most practical aspects of Christian faith. When Peter writes –
Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’
– 1 Peter 1:15-16 (NRSV)
– he’s doing so because he genuinely believes, because he honestly knows based on experience, that this is not impossible. He’s not setting up his readers then or now to fail. This is the same man who the Gospels tell us runs his mouth, acts impulsively, and even goes so far as to deny knowing Christ. He’s also the man who first understood who Jesus really is, upon whose faith the Church is built, and who was empowered to preach on Pentecost. He’s been the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Peter is deeply, intimately aware that bestness only comes into our lives and only grows with the presence of the Holy Savior.
Peter’s not telling anyone to be holy and then you can know the Savior. He wouldn’t do that, because he knows that’s not true. That’s impossible. We become holy because the Savior came to us first. Loved us first. Patiently works within and all around us to sand down the rough edges and pull out the hidden splinters of spite, fear, selfishness. We’re holy because we’re held in the scarred palm of the Holy One.
So the question actually is: What will the new me say?
None of us living in the United States are unaware that we’ve got a presidential election in five months. In fact, if I were a betting person I’d put a good chunk of money down on the fact that most of us feel like we’ve been living in election season since, I don’t know, at least 2015. It’s exhausting. Mind numbingly irritating. How one can be numb and irritated at the same time, I don’t know, but we manage it.
It’s not just “outside forces” causing this, though. Or, okay, the nasty fighting that our politicians choose to engage in that creates perpetual government gridlock is the cause, sure. But we’re contributing. We’re not asking, What will the new me say? The me that is fully surrendered to Jesus. The me that understands that I’m a stranger here. That I’m not meant to fit in comfortably here. That temporal power is temporary and nothing that I’ve been directed to pursue.
We’re wasting time talking like our old selves. Hating like our old selves. Fearing like our old selves. It’s no wonder that we struggle to believe that. holiness is practical. When our eyes are focused on the old, the new is cast in the shadow of impossibility. But the old is not who we are! I don’t know if we forget this or if we never believe or understand this in the first place, but Peter is still saying: be holy.
Who cares what the old you says? It doesn’t matter. What does the new you say?
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Andrej Nihil