Five Words in a Corridor

She asked it in the way people ask things at two in the morning, which is without any preparation at all.

The chaplain had brought two paper cups of something and sat down on the plastic chairs opposite Ben, and they had talked about nothing for a while, which is what she is good at. His father was through the double doors and the night was going the way those nights go.

And then she said, what do you believe? Just, in a sentence.

She was not testing him. He worked that out afterward and he is sure of it. She had watched him hold it together for six hours and she was giving him something to hold onto, and she was doing it in the plainest way she knew, which was to ask him to say it out loud himself.

And Ben, who is forty-four and has been in that church his whole life and has stood up in front of it more than once, said:

Well, it depends what you mean by believe.

He said that. At two in the morning. To a woman holding a paper cup.

Then he did about ninety seconds on the difference between assent and trust, which is true and which he has said before in other rooms and which was, in that corridor, on those chairs, with his father through those doors, entirely the wrong shape of thing.

She listened properly. She nodded in the right places. And then she said something kind and general and they sat for a while and at about half past three she went off to another floor.

He has thought about it perhaps two hundred times since. His father came home, which is not what this is about.

It is that he was handed the one moment in his adult life when a short sentence was the only thing that would have worked, and he heard himself reach for the long answer, and he could feel himself doing it and could not stop.

And you may know that corridor. Yours may be a kitchen at four in the morning or a hospital or the passenger seat of a car, and somebody may have asked you the short question, and you may still be thinking about what came out.

The whole creation ends on three words

Take this off before we go any further, because you have carried it for a long time and it was never yours.

You did not fail that chaplain. You never could. Scripture ends the biggest sentence it has on a confession of three words, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your accuracy at two in the morning, who makes anybody able to say it. Set it down here. It is heavy and it has been on those plastic chairs with you ever since.

Now hear where it lands, and notice the scale of the run-up.

There is a passage that goes down as far as anything in the letters and then up as far as anything: a Person who did not cling to what was His, who came down, who went to a death, and who is then given the Name above every name, and every knee bows, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

And then, at the top of all of that, the whole thing resolves into this.

And every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.Philippians 2:11

Jesus Christ is Lord.

That is the destination of the largest arc in the New Testament, and it is three words long. Not a definition of belief. Not a distinction between assent and trust, which is a good distinction and belongs in a different room.

Three words, said by everybody, at the end of everything.

And they are yours to say. Right now, at forty-four, sitting wherever you are reading this. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who puts that confession in a person, and Scripture says elsewhere that nobody says it any other way.

Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.

Nothing here says the ninety seconds were false or that the distinction you drew is unimportant. It is important. It has helped people, including you, and there are rooms where it is exactly the right thing and you have been useful in those rooms. Scripture draws careful distinctions of its own and His Spirit has used yours.

That is what furniture is for. It is real and it holds weight and you did not make it up.

And nothing here says a man should have a short answer ready like a card in his wallet, produced on cue. That would be its own kind of performance and it is not what she was asking for either.

The point is only that a short sentence and a long answer are different instruments, and you have spent forty-four years learning one of them, and Scripture ends its largest passage on the other. His Spirit is the one who supplies it.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is kind about it. You did not reach for the long answer because you are proud.

You reached for it because your father was through those doors, and the long answer is a place a man can stand and be competent, and competence at two in the morning is the last handhold there is. His Spirit was on those chairs with you and He was not disappointed.