“Why did Jesus Christ have to be God?” the potential ordinand was asked. And, at least so it seemed to me, he muffed it: “It took God to offer perfect obedience.”

Well, no.

The perfect obedience Christ offered for us he offered because he was human. Jesus Christ came as the Last Adam, the “Son of God, the Son of Adam,” who undid in a wilderness and on a cross the harm done in a garden and by the eating of forbidden fruit (see 1 Corinthians 15:45; Romans 5:12-19; and Luke 3:38-4:13). To offer perfect obedience was why Jesus Christ had to be human.

My puzzlement at the potential ordinand’s stumbling over the necessity of our Savior’s divinity sent me back to Robert Webber’s cogent discussion of the incarnation in his Ancient Future Faith. Even as I write, my late-in-life friend battles terminal cancer, and I find myself especially prizing the economy with which he says profound things.

Webber notes that the early church settled on (or perhaps groped towards) two axioms:

One: “only God can save.” The other: “only that which God becomes is healed.”

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This was a summer of firsts, including my first (and hopefully not last) gator hunt. It couldn’t have been more fantastic. We went out on the St. Johns River, between Orlando & Titusville, only a half hour away from my house (there are gators everywhere in Central FL … you know you have to be pretty hardy to live in the subtropics).

So what happens is that we (hunting party of 3, plus 2 guys running the airboat) hit the water at 7:30 this past Tues. night … it doesn’t get dark till 8:30, when you can start hunting. I’m up front with my harpoon (think: Captain Ahab looking for Moby Dick).

The idea is to get a gator’s reflective eyes in a high powered spotlight, run up on him in the airboat as fast as you can before he can dive under, harpoon him, chase down the buoy connected to the rope connected to the harpoon tip in his back, then reel him in, dispatch him with a 45 caliber “bang stick,” pull him aboard, tape his mouth shut (“just in case”), and take care of his spinal nerve (at which point you assume he’s probably actually dead).

By 9:00, after about 5 or 6 unsuccessful runs, but increasingly good harpoon thrusts (it takes a while to realize you have to thrust the harpoon, not throw it), I’ve harpooned a 7-footer (good size for tasty meat). What a man-rush! Entirely primordial.

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As all my friends know, because I can’t not talk about it, my youngest son and I have been studying a form of Japanese swordsmanship for a little over a year and a half now. Well, we were finally invited to do our first testing this summer, and we both passed. My son did so somewhat more respectably than I. To mix metaphors (well, to mix sports), I hit a single just inside the baseline, while my son hit a double off the wall. Regardless, we’re now both “first rank” (in the U.S., not the Japanese, association), though that’s not something you’d ever actually mention — which is one reason this whole sword thing is so cool.

The predominant lesson is one I’ve ruminated about before: the “way” of submission I’ve seen in my Scottish-bred, Key West-born sensei. He doesn’t cut corners. He has given himself in humility to learn what his Japanese sensei wants him to know. He has no patience with “know it alls” and self-promoters. He’s learned a power of greatness that comes from taking the lowly path. For my son and me, what we learned from testing is something we already knew: testing isn’t the deal — making progress in the art of the sword is.

A second lesson has to do with the cumulative power of little acts of obedience when combined with a master teacher’s powers of observation and timely guidance. It has only been since the spring that the sword thing has become enjoyable. That’s because there have been several “breakthroughs” for me recently — that is, finally “getting it” about certain mechanics of the discipline.
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For almost a year and a half now my son and I have been pursuing samurai swordsmanship. Finally, next month my son and I will undergo our first testing, aiming for our first “rank.” It’s taken a year and a half of tutelage for our sensei — our sword teacher — to think we’re decent enough to show in public.

From our first class to the time we were allowed to handle sharp swords and cut tatami (reed floor mats rolled up, rubberbanded, and soaked), it was six months. Six months of tutelage in how to take a dull sword out of its sheath and put it back in without losing a finger. Six months of trying to do “forms” that require our bodies to move in stylized, ritualistic, awkwardly Japanese ways. And then another year before being deemed ready to try to earn our first rank. In all, eighteen months of waiting to do “the good stuff.”

Our sensei’s attitude? “We’re not interested in students of the sword who are not students of ‘the way.’” He’s made it clear that if you’re going to be exasperated at “a long obedience in the same direction,” you’d be better off elsewhere.

Really, though, it’s been remarkably easy to submit to a man who himself has submitted to another.
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Part of the “singing” side of Jesus’ story is the celebration of his many voices, which, as my friends and readers know, I parse in terms of Bach, Bubba, and the Blues Brothers (Chapters 8-10 of With One Voice).

Recently and unexpectedly, God allowed me a special hearing of each of those voices.

• Bach’s Voice: The Gloriae Dei Cantores
• Bubba’s Voice: “Life is Like a Mountain Railroad”
• The Blues Brothers’ Voice: U2’s Vertigo Tour

If you want to read more …
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I started Japanese sword training three months ago — that’s right, the stuff of Kill Bill and The Last Samurai. Wasn’t really my idea. My 14 year old son has long been enamored of all things Japanese — it’s a Godzilla thing. So we’ve been training to become samurai warriors together, and I’m told this is the pinnacle of the martial arts. My son’s good at it. I’m horrible. My sense of my body-in-space is so not Japanese — and as my sensei keeps saying, “Looks are everything.” (Even folding your uniform “just so” after class is part of the class! Actually, I’m getting pretty decent at that.) Overall, it’s been a humiliating experience so far.

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