Gospel in Brief

What is the gospel in brief? What is seen most clearly once those reading eyes are cleared of the gnomish technicalities of theology in the essence of that "luminous Nazarene"?

Movement.

Christ, perhaps the only man in history, lived without punctuation -- his acts clutter together without a moment's reflective capacity for him to group them apart. He is like the writing of Kafka: rushing forward, without pause, stealing away scattered repose, pushing toward the end, indifferent to conformity's history. In this sense, the gospel of Mark captures him best: the work is compressed with conjunctions -- the AND is as palpable as his mystery.

"To be a Christian is to be," quoth Bonhoeffer. More: this being is founded in becoming; never a superfluous rest for despair's dark, drab household, but perpetual thrust. To be a Christian is to move; to be a Chrstian is to continually grow oneself out of the soil of necessity by virtue of the everlasting possibility the Eternal provides -- whether this is evidenced in Luther's bold rebellion incarnated in the notorious Theses, or Brother Lawrence's rebellion against the stagnation of his own common work, choosing instead dialogue with Eternity as his soap-soaked arms repeated the act, the universal act, of cleaning.

"Our nature is found in movement. Absolute stillness is death." -- Pascal