“35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. 42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. Mystery and Victory 50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. 54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” 55  “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Co 15:35–58 ESV)

Victory takes place in a great swoosh of so much lost, not inevitably lost, not lost because the Victory isn’t real, but lost because the times they are a-changing, because “an enemy has done this”, lost because they were gambling with non-negotiables, negotiating a trifling insincere and immoral game, a gambit unprincipled and purely Evil, evil beyond most people’s wildest imagination.

The flipside is that God loves on all people (universalism?) and the tragedy is really a tear in His eye as much as a tear in the eyes of the mark, the sinner, the convert: oh, judgment is nothing more nor less than just the fact I have to live with my mistakes, praise be to the Lord notwithstanding, I have to live with the relics and recourses of Decisions I, pre-converted, did make.

Decisions not to blanket Accept the newcomer, the convert, the prodigal; decisions rather to kerplunkety and pluckily to, no cutesy factor we’d hope, but hope in vain, to Complain against the system or rather to make it a parlor game amongst the children; to “sue” our notions of a Cross-bearing Substitute, to do mock worship and mock honoraria. To despise the very bible that we—temporarily in the losers’ column—conceded to “them” that they owned notions of scriptural integrity and Book-devout following.

No, they do not Know their own Book: they lie and cheat and deceive, and they gossip and rumormonger and kill. Yet the Devil may quote Scripture for his purpose… fine quote indeed, but the Catholicity, the third leg of the Anglican three-legged stool, the one called Tradition: some ebbing and flowing Material Spirit is passed down, and we learn from mother and father, from coach and drill-sergeant, how to interface with the Scriptures vis-a-vis the campfire induction ceremonies, the portal of a pan-religious brotherhood, sisterhood. Yes, and to this portal, we race because to delay, to bicker and dispute its merits, we will never arrive but always push it farther out into left field.

No, the portal, and the agents of the portal: entrusted with so much, they may do nothing more profound then to hand out a telephone book of fifty names. They may do nothing more than to say, your name is in the hotel registry. 

Because we all search for ultra experiences, ways to Belong, ways to Express or get off our chest, our Allegiance and our Camaraderie. We all take the dinner date as a working one, meeting over a fine meal being the Summary of Christ’s own gentle but urgent Ministry to the people: He, who went to the homes of sinners to recline in Belonging and Mystical fashion. He belonged. He was not tossed out as emblematic of those Jews and Pharisees who would Judge the sinners.

And it can feel a bit like a game of merry-go-round, that is, that the License to proclaim Mercy and a New Era of Christendom, it falls to certain souls at the center, grounded, licensed, spinning but Conscious; and others hate the fact they can’t quite, whether licensed or not (all are licensed by their Baptismal Promises) proclaim mercy without also proclaiming something Heavy and Judgmental. And they hate that they can’t be so mellifluous and merry, but also resist and resent the Free Licensing, calling it a license to Sin.

People don’t know the first thing of what they’re doing, sometimes. We also pray through our basic training, that our subconsciously-directed lancing forth will take place Kindly and Aggressively and Militantly, as second nature but also as Rooted in the Traditional Group Spirit passed down, so we shoot when we should shoot, and we shelter when we should shelter, and we corral when we should corral, and we nod through the civilians at the check point when we should.

We pray because Godly Inspiration is Real: people are raised up, and despite all parables of aging and decay and of dying and temporalities, we live in the moment Excited and Militantly-Laboring forth into the bleary sun of the day. We are existential around Immediate Mercy minus some weird logical purgatory that flatters the unconverted, straight-laced mind, but that Denies the Expedience of Christ’s own race to the Cross. Forgive, even if it seems undeserved; forgive, because God will mock the undeserving recipient of mercy, on His own times and with His own artifice.