The Argument I Cannot Enter

He has started coming at half past two, which is when the food is nearly done and the argument is nearly over.

Nobody has noticed. Or if they have, nobody has said so, and Nando is not going to be the one who brings it up.

It is a good table. That is the thing he wants said first. Eleven or twelve of them most Sundays, three generations, and the food is his aunt's and it is not negotiable. He would not miss it.

But somewhere between the plates going down and the coffee, the same conversation starts, and it has been starting for about twenty years.

His uncle holds a position. His cousin holds a different one and holds it better, because she reads. His brother in law has read one book and holds it with an enthusiasm the other two find funny and slightly maddening. They will go at it happily for forty minutes and nobody falls out, and at the end of it somebody always says well, there it is, and they clear the table.

And Nando sits there.

He is not stupid and he is not new. He is forty-one and he has been in that family and in that church his whole life. He follows the argument perfectly well. He can tell you who is winning.

He has nothing to bring to it.

Not a position he is hiding. Nothing. When he looks for the thing he would say, what he finds is not a view, it is a Person, and there is no way to put a Person into a conversation like that without stopping it dead, so he has never tried.

And over twenty years that has slowly turned into a verdict he has passed on himself, which is that everybody at that table has faith and he has something smaller.

He said it out loud to nobody in the car in April: they have all got something and I have just got Him.

And then he sat there for a while, because he had heard the sentence, and the sentence has two halves and he has only ever felt the first one.

And you may know that table. Yours may be a small group or a staff room or a family with one loud subject, and you may have started arriving at half past two.

The answer a man gave when he had nothing clever left

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

You do not have something smaller than the people at that table. You never did. Scripture records a man answering with nothing but a Person, in a moment when a clever answer was available and would have been welcome, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a position, who holds a person up. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it has been arriving with you at half past two.

Now hear the scene, because the setting is what makes it.

A great many people have just walked away. Jesus has said something hard, the crowd has thinned dramatically, and He turns to the twelve and asks whether they want to go too.

It is exactly the moment for a good answer. A summary. A statement of position, a reason, a defense of what He has just said. What His Spirit had written down instead is the shortest thing on the page.

And Peter, who is not short of words on any other page, says this, and His Spirit had it written down as the shortest answer on the page.

Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."John 6:68

To whom shall we go.

That is not an argument and it is not a view. It is a man looking around a thinning field and finding that the question of where else he would possibly stand has no available answer.

And that is what you have, and it is not the smaller thing. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who put it in you, and He did not issue it as a lesser grade of faith to people who are not good at conversations.

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 your uncle and your cousin are wasting a Sunday, or that thinking hard about a question is a lower activity than not thinking about it. It is not. Your cousin reads and it shows and the table is better for her. People have given whole lives to some of what gets argued about between the plates and the coffee, and Scripture is full of careful working out.

That is what furniture is. It is real, and it holds weight, and your aunt chose some of it.

And nothing here says you should bring the Person into that argument on Sunday to make a point. That would be using Him as a position, which is precisely the thing you have never been willing to do, and you were right. His word is not a debating card and His Spirit is not a position anybody wins with.

The point is only that a Person is not less than a view, and twenty years of quiet arithmetic has told you otherwise.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. What you heard in the car in April was the whole sentence, and you have only ever felt the first half.

They have all got something and I have just got Him. Read it again with the emphasis moved. His Spirit is the one who put Him there, and the word just is the only thing in that sentence that is not true.