“6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, “Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. 7  Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready; 8  it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. 9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are the true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God.” For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” (Rev 19:6-10 ESV)

The mad dash when Christian things are on the table, the scampering rush, the due haste: some illogic at the helm, means for the Christian the Unknown prevailing, the Surprise entailing, the Remedy pertaining. Remedial and of inchoate Origin, buzzing and giving fly-by to those who would ask for a more orderly transition: we see the Body Christian open up, and we scamper, dash, and hastily Pursue to embrace therein, to scramble in before the doors shut.

Because what we celebrate is no voodoo, no devil worship, no totemic appeasement of “The gods”, but we celebrate a Living Variant on Jewish themes of Monotheism and recorded Writ, Law, Codicil. We celebrate the voodoo of a sin-bearing Substitute, no doll however but a Living Corpus, whose Dying Breath was indeed in Angst and Pain, indeed in plaintive panicky ferocity or ungainly pain. Jesus therein Worried. Jesus therein Pleaded. Jesus therein summed it all up as a call to Receive His Spirit perhaps, as later recorded and attributed to martyr Stephen.

More, to the respectable, a Dying Vehicle, a Mode of Painful Attestation, comes as we are signatories to a public statement, of how these respectable folks, names in the who’s-who book, do light up, stand up to be counted. We are Counted as possessed by some mystical Decisiveness around world events, as we Endear upon these in Patient Submission. We are patient, as we submit, to break out of the ever-deepening, widening Research, and seeing akin to Christ’s simple focal points, a simple contrarian Stance. To Stand tall and be counted. In a world where scarcely a word is out of our mouths before it is Confused and Perplexed by the illogic of the times. A world in which what we stand for, is always adopted via cynicism and self-centered release. We are selfishly Observed, and even more selfishly Slotted, Expected to Perform like a rat in a maze, sued and arrested around “fitting in” and not “Shaking the boat”. Yet then to Christ’s marriage banquet of the Lamb: it is a celebration of what the Law cannot itself alone accomplish, the mystery and celebration of two people overlooking each other’s faults and needs, and celebrating a life together.

The mad dash for so many is a call for the time being to celibacy rather than marriage; no time, in the present distress, to marry or be given in marriage. And we are strangely androgynous and celibate with success in this pastime or era, epoch Miraculous and timeframe Copacetic. In some things we can dwell only a little lower than the angels. In some things we can put in the strange Other Patterned day’s output or intake, having given up on prayer in its naked sense of daydreaming, and instead seen prayer as an invite to experience something New or Different, and in so intaking, to allow thoughts and concerns to Gestate. We are never, after all, alone in this: we have an office and fellow travelers who are enabled by strange new technologies and things as simple as the Telephone. These fellow-travelers… our church friends… our warm and fuzzy pastoral care team, or prayer team, or body Church: these are Successful in overcoming the cynical downward visage of the church, namely it being no different from the unwashed masses. No, the Church—the True Church, the one now coming into the world in as Calvin said, a militant stage—owns its outlay and streaking through the sky Goodness. We are hastened and cajoled, to hurry on up down there and get into the Party! The mad dash, the frantic haste, the scampering rush, all this because Church life is in an instant Redeemed and become Center. Of all being. Of all sentience. Of all longing to be better people.