“2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. 6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 7 For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; 8 he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways. 9 Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, 10 and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. 11 For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. 12 Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. 13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (James 1:2-18 ESV)

A first tenet of the Christian walk is that it is undertaken as though having no alternative. Social pressures try to cause a landslide of reversal: “Hey, life isn’t so bad after all”. Social pressures try to coax this way or that, but ultimately the chief temptation lies within us, not in our interlocutors nor those we pass on the street. 

The chief temptation is that we forget “what we’re made of”. It was a dire set of circumstances, after all, that left us barren, forlorn, lost in the wide world of sensualities and dishonoring of the bonds of affection so patiently taught, so intrinsically holy, so patently united. And even there, the crime is in some intangibles, not in any deed however “dastardly”. The crime against  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was our strange concessions unto the corrupt and wily church or non-church. The Church, the Non-Church… both hotbeds of some brand of low-key “Getting along”, but a little too cozy. A little too self-assured: we define ourselves, falsely, by our good deeds and sobrieties, but not by our status as Forgiven.

Everyone compromises. The heroes of Hebrew Scriptures: these were tested, and the evil in their midst raised up but only in order to be judged. The good, having passed the test of being tempted, these too sin if not confident in their Blessedness. Life really is that cavalier at times! That we are easily maligned by a wicked body ecclesiastic. And, being suggestible, sacramental things are replaced with finger-pointing and insinuations most bizarre. We were supposed to, after all, recognize the pastoral genius in this our partner, and really go “all the way”, giggling and jesting, building up a tower most Spiritual via our conversation. Because it is a crime against the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to careen about on the juice of hatred, of judgment, of false pretense, of deep sense of disunity.

The unity, we see it in those we pass on the street, each “crew” a bit different but hey, we’re all friends here. The perimeter, staffed and silent in the dark of the night, is to remind of how much the nations teeter, the peoples shout and congregate, the upswell of antagonism (or of friendship) does battle against the Wall. The Wall that protects things scarcely seeming worth it, scarcely seeming politic or sociologically upright. The saints in the land bereft of spiritual perimeter because they are assaulted in the spirit, and tempted, and a little too post-conversion, eager, forgetful of just how and where they came from.

For a season we tell our story and see the accumulation of half-crazed notions, yet as Pastor tries to talk us down a bit, we point back to the great divide and the wall, that it would be a miracle for these two to get along. We scamper away from each other, not trusting that some Divine Mandate makes of the sleepy church, the trusted, however, church, something egalitarian and communal, a place for wild tangents of sin and precocity to be melted and rhymed and integrated. Only let it be known, that these most familiar but distanced, “Christian” souls, are good folk. Are on some level abiding by the Law. Are willing to help and hear any likewise “Christian” appeal. We who believe have crucified the flesh with its desires, that we may live into a personhood miraculously, via law, upheld and intuited and created. The law as received from the ancestors of Scripture, does this. It creates an unfair advantage, but also creates a proper safe-haven, like that of the pained, impoverished, poor and unbelieving. We asked little in life except to be licensed to “be fabulous”. To celebrate, with a paucity of words but a truth of Integral Living. We live integrated, and we see those nearest to the flame to go the way of Christ in His sacrifices, the way of the Disciples, in their wild-eyed Mandate, the way of the Crowds in their experience of some love for the poor.