“22 And again Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying, 2 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come. 4 Again he sent other servants, saying, ‘Tell those who are invited, “See, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding feast.” ’ 5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city. 8 Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, but those invited were not worthy. 9 Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ 10 And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests. 11 “But when the king came in to look at the guests, he saw there a man who had no wedding garment. 12 And he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. 13 Then the king said to the attendants, ‘Bind him hand and foot and cast him into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ 14 For many are called, but few are chosen.” Paying Taxes to Caesar 15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted how to entangle him in his words. 16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances. 17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites? 19 Show me the coin for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. 20 And Jesus said to them, “Whose likeness and inscription is this?” 21 They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” 22 When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away. Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection 23 The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, 24 saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. 26 So too the second and third, down to the seventh. 27 After them all, the woman died. 28 In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.” 29 But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. 30 For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 31 And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” 33 And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. The Great Commandment 34 But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. 36 “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. 40 On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”” (Mt 22:1–40 ESV)

Hazardous behavior can pretty much Always be described as blasphemy or profanation: that is, nothing earth-shattering or quite too riskily Atheistic, but still profane and blaspheming. Being blasphemed is just any Promise, Law, Requirement, Stricture that failed the nouveau believer. A loved one lost. A relationship broken. A hell on wheels or in cubbyhole and personal quiet space, retreat. To lance out and Break, to hate on and shock Anyone in the constellation who might Care, this is to profane something internal whether literally something Holy and God-given, or something just peculiar to the person’s life experience, a parents’ promise bouncing on the knee, etc. that maybe itself lacked some faith.

Signing up, this is a proper channeling of the Hazardous, we might oftentimes argue: do something Sincere with your life, go into the service, join the priesthood, serve your country. And the desire to go ruinous or blotto, this is equally joyously Lifted to the surface and repented of in Giddy Delight. 

Because we are scientists on some fronts, in the sense of being Studious and Inoffensive, Basic and Responsive. And on other fronts we are the tycoon shouting and shooting from the hip. Innate Sensitivities we have long harbored, for the Advancement of International Law, in the name of a church friend or a Proselytizer on march: the Law is the end of the law, in the name of Christ who is the new, embodied Law.

Similitude of peace, then, is similitude of a war already Won, the license to sit in a crowded room or ride a crowded subway, bus, tram, to visit the World because waves of preparedness have washed over and we, we ponder just how it is decided, this one is in, that one didn’t make it.

The prayer request for the frontline Agents is therefore to bear the weight of Christ’s glory in their every impactful motion. We learn to rest up, so we can as we learn Lance Up and Drive Forth. We fall head over heels in love with the Game, so we can be those inauspicious and basic driving force Ready Ones. We are in love with the Basics, with streetcleaning and window washing; we dwell in a world with any number of Aspirants to all holy offices, and we as the bedrock Soldiers do unapologetically Tidy Up and keep the joints lubed, oiled for Jesus and Observant, Servant-Minded soldiering seizing the day and taking the helm.

In the holiest Encounters, there is some notion “a photographer should be present”, so weighty and momentous is the hour. We learn to marvel not at ourselves but at the Loving Hands of the community that make plain their gig through humorous and basic loving words. We are trying to live Elevated and in Wartime Readiness, without spooking the troops: indeed, we do not spook the troops with our Minutiae and Multitudinous Ideas, Rigs outfitted, Gigs endeavored upon, and Game played. The average city member, neighborhood member, has God’s Promises in his or her heart, and is Indispensible to the Cipher called Community.

The cipher as writ into Stone, that International Law is post-Law, via the New Law who states “I am…”: I am the Law, I am the Rule-maker, Stricture-breaker, Measure for assessing all comers and their Relevance. He is, and we Are, His people and patience rewarded and yet, “Boss, I got this, got another day in me, lead on”. TULIP (Calvinist) theology reminds that the errors made, the sin, is always Abundant, so every Agent in the field, who knows but that they missed their Window to do Jihad in Christ’s name. Who knows but that a shout in the street might have Intervened in suitable fashion, however unkosher and uncivilized. But we err, and go comfort zone, and go hemmed up by our own sins. Disgusting people, we even begin to Judge, not knowing we ourselves are Called to heal and Minister to the disgust, to the lusts and convenient explanations of all life in Freudian terms or Machiavellian terms or Fonda-esque terms. Any war calls for heartfelt Conviction whenever possible to be at the root, for Errors in mankind’s means of coming together, corrected lest a plague break out. Company men, company women, these are no less availed upon to Serve than the unencumbered, untitled man of the street. Moral capitalists, moral statesmen and women, moral tycoons… all these know the pinch of a war that has been lost, and fight manfully, womanfully for a Recognized—all Calvinistic sins repented of—togetherness and brotherhood, sisterhood.