The Plaque With Two Dates

It is on the left as you come in, at about chest height, and it is polished because somebody polishes it.

Brass. Six lines. Eight names on it, in the old way with initials rather than first names, and above the names it says the congregation was constituted, and gives a year.

And then, under the names, on its own, there is one more line.

It gives a second year and it says what happened in that year, in seven words, in the plainest possible language, because the man who ordered that plaque was not the sort of man who would have paid for a euphemism.

Tomás has walked past it twice a week for thirty-one years.

He is fifty-eight. He knows the second line by heart in the way you know a thing you have never chosen to memorize, and he could recite it now if somebody stopped him in the street.

He has never read it out loud.

Not once, in thirty-one years, and he only worked this out in the summer when a boy of about twelve, waiting for his mother, read the whole plaque out loud slowly the way children do, and got to the last line, and said: what does that mean?

And Tomás, who was three feet away putting the hymn numbers up, heard himself say: ask your mum.

He has thought about that a great deal since and he is not proud of it.

The boy's mother is new and would not have known. She would have said something kind and vague. The boy will not ask again, because he is twelve and he has moved on to other things, and the plaque will be there when the boy is fifty-eight.

And what Tomás cannot get past is that the plaque already says it.

The plaque has been saying it, at chest height, in polished brass, in seven plain words, twice a week, for thirty-one years, and it has said it to every single person who has ever walked into that building.

And the only thing that has never happened is anybody saying it back.

And you may have a plaque like that where you are. Or a photograph, or a paragraph in a book on a shelf.

John attaches a promise to the saying, and to nothing else

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it thirty-one years and it was never yours to carry alone.

You are not the guardian of that wall. You never were. Scripture attaches a promise to one act, and the act is saying it, and it says what God is when it is said, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a well-polished brass plate, who cleans anything. Set it down here in this entrance. It is heavy and it has been at chest height beside you for three decades.

Now hear it, and hear what God is called in it.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.1 John 1:9

Faithful and just.

Those are the two words chosen for God at the moment somebody says a true thing about themselves, and neither of them is the one you expect. Not merciful, though He is. Not patient, though He is.

Faithful, which means He does not vary and does not have to be caught in the right mood. And just, which means it is settled rather than granted, because it was settled at the cross and He is not doing a favor when He applies it.

And notice the condition is one verb long. Confess. That is the whole of the requirement, and it is the same verb whether the thing is thirty-one years old or three hundred.

Saying it is the whole of what is asked. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who purifies, and He has never once wanted a thing polished rather than said.

Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.

Nothing here says the eight men on that plaque were bad men. They were not, and one of them paid for the roof, and they wanted every Christian in that town in one room, and Scripture has nothing but honor for that as an ambition.

And nothing here says the fault is down the road. It is not, and there is a plaque or a book or a photograph there too, and Scripture in that verse gives the whole condition in one verb with no clause about who started it, and neither will I.

The point is only about the saying, and Scripture promises something to that one act, and His Spirit is the one who is present when a man finally does it.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. Ask your mum was not cowardice.

It was thirty-one years of a building's habit coming out of your mouth in half a second, and habits that old do not belong to one man, and you did not build that one. His Spirit was standing beside you with the hymn numbers and He has never once held that half second against you.