Lucifer's True History of Everything
Apr 3, 07 08:01 AM
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True Life of Jesus, cont.
It was still pretty early in the morning when Magdalene made her third trip to the tomb. This time, she brought Mrs. Joanna Chuza (Simon Peter's mother-in-law); Mrs. Mary Cleopas (Magdalene's former business partner); plus a whole troop of "women who had come with Jesus from Galilee," mostly born again prostitutes and girls of that sort, several of whom had been supporting Jesus financially with their weekly earnings (Luke 8:3, 24:10).
Gabriel took care, this time, not to catch the ladies by surprise; but that was unnecessary because most of these gals had been working since age 13. Nothing surprised them any more. Indeed, they had a nice chat with Gabriel about Jesus and his Twelve disciples, and the Crucifixion, and the missing corpse, before retuning to Bethany for lunch.
Back at Mary's Place, the born-again retired prostitutes from Galilee told the Eleven disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead. "But the disciples did not believe the women's report, which seemed to them like utter nonsense" (Luke 23:55-24:11).
Mary Magdalene took two of the apostles aside, Peter and John, and whispered, "Actually, they carried away the Lord's body from the tomb the other night, and I don't know where they put him!" (John 20.1-2).
John panicked. He feared that when Caiaphas's people heard that certain women from Galilee had taken Jesus' body from the tomb, there would be eleven more crosses next Friday, and a disciple of Jesus nailed to each one of them.
John and Magdalene had a footrace to the tomb, which Magdalene won (she was quite athletic). Simon Peter followed along behind, whistling a hymn (John 20:3).
When Peter finally reached the cemetery, John and Magdalene were sitting on a bench outside the tomb, weighing the evidence. John rightly doubted that the women of Galilee would steal Jesus' corpse and carry it away. Simon Peter speculated that Jesus's body was never really put inside the tomb in the first place: "For the disciples did not yet understand, from Scripture, that Jesus had to rise from the dead" (John 20:8-9).
Examining the inside of the crypt, Peter "saw the strips of swaddling cloth lying in a heap." That put a major kink in his theory. "But then he just walked away, still wondering what had happened to the body" (Luke 24:12).
(I know what you're thinking: Duh!)
John also left, wondering who it was that carried the Lord away (Luke 24:13). (Again: Duh!)
But Mary Magdalene remained at the tomb, crying, a little theatrically, like Little Bo Peep (John 20:10).
Two men in white raiment approached her. One of them said, "Woman, why are you crying?"
(I know what you're still thinking: Duh!)
"They have carried away my Lord," she said, "and I don't know where to find him."
These two "men" were Gabriel and a second archangel, named Michael. Meanwhile, a third man, who was feeling playful, sneaked up on Magdalene from behind. He, too, said, "¿Por qué llora usted?" [Why are you crying?] and "¿Quién busca usted?" [For whom are you searching]?" (John 20:11-12).
Mary Magdalene jumped up and turned around, and was about to shout an irritable "Duh!" when she knocked her alabaster bottle of spikenard to the ground. Fortunately, it did not break.
Thinking that this third fellow must be the cemetery's Latin gardener, Mary Magdalene looked him straight in the eye, and scowled, and poked him in the chest (he winced), and she said to him, angrily: "Listen, Hayzeus, if you have moved him to some other spot, just tell me where you have put him, and I will go get him" (John 20:13-14).
But it wasn't the Latin gardener! It was Jesus!
Mary wasn't just being stupid: Jesus really did look like a gardener. You may wonder how that came about.
Here's the scoop, and you can say that you heard it first from me, because this part of the story is omitted from the Gospels. When Jesus awoke from the dead, his only thought was to get out of that winding sheet, and then to get out of the sealed tomb; which was a job for a Houdini, or for an illegal alien locked in a cube van, but he did it. Then the sun started coming up, and here's Jesus, outdoors, in the flesh, no winding sheet, no nothing, just au naturel.
That is why none of the women visitors happened to see Jesus on those first three trips to the empty tomb on Easter morning: it was not the right time, or the right way, for Jesus to display himself. Shocked by his, well, scars, I looked the other way.
When he heard his mother coming – for she was a loud talker – Jesus ducked into the gardener's shed. Then kaboom-kaboom-kaboom, here comes the earthquake. Which left everything in a jumble. So Jesus being Jesus, he tidied up the shed. That's when he found a complete gardener's outfit – tunic, apron, gloves, and a rake. And he exclaimed: "¡Mi madre!" It was either wear that, or re-wind his loins in the mummy-wrap, which was still inside the tomb, behind the sealed door. But he could not keep standing about in his birthday suit, hoping that the disciples would come along with a fresh change of clothing, because those fellows were always clueless even when Jesus spelled out for them exactly what they needed to do. No way were the disciples going to think: "Jesus is due to rise from the dead! Maybe one of us should trot over to the cemetery, and take him something to wear!"
It was a pretty frosty morning. Jesus chose the gardener's outfit.
Magdalene–who knew Jesus' feet and shins more intimately than she knew his face, fell for the joke. But Jesus took care not to carry the prank too far. He knew when to quit. He said to her, in his own voice, "Mary."
And Mary cried out, in Aramaic, "O Rabboni!" (which means "O Teacher!" not "O Gardener!" So she knew).
This was the very moment that Mary Magdalene had been waiting for. She uncorked her alabaster bottle and made a lunge for Jesus' feet. Skipping aside, Jesus dodged her and said: "Don't touch me!" Then he hovered (John 20:16).
Jesus was not unsympathetic. It's just that the next-to-the-last thing he needed was to return to Heaven, after thirty years, smelling like a soap-and-candle boutique from having been doused with a fourth shower-bath of Mary Magdalene's infamous spikenard. And the very last thing he needed was to get alcohol-based ointment into an open scratch or cut. I mean, enough was enough!
Meanwhile, the real cemetery gardener, a man named Angelo, reported to Caiaphas's people that he had seen what happened at the tomb that morning, exactly as it went down. But Caiaphas paid Angelo a lot of money to say he was working in the cemetery Sunday morning when a crazy Jewish prostitute who smelled like spikenard came up to him and poked him in the chest and said, "Listen, Hayzeus, where'd you put him?" – which is how that whole "He really was the cemetery gardener, and not the risen Christ," story got going.
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 08:01 AM
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