Lucifer's True History of Everything
Apr 5, 07 08:28 AM
Previous Entry
Next Entry
First Entry
True Life of Jesus (cont.)
Jesus has sometimes been criticised for not sticking it out in the tomb a while longer. He had predicted he would stay dead for three days and three nights (e.g., Matthew 12:38-40). He was taken down from the cross at sunset on Friday. By midnight, his body was wrapped in a winding sheet and stored in Joseph of Arimathaea's tomb, with an exit scheduled for Monday evening. And less than thirty hours later, vavoom, he's gone! Then came that first predawn visit from his mother and Mary Magdalene, and the rest is history.
I may not be Jesus' biggest fan, but I say let the critics hang. Let them – not for 72 hours but for two minutes – nose the inside of a stifling, damp, cobwebby, maggot-infested stone tomb. Better yet, let them sleep in one. And then let them wake up dead on a stone slab, in the middle of the night, like Boris Karloff, in a crypt sealed up so tight you can't breathe, and it's so pitch-dark in there that you cannot even see the glow from your own halo.
Truly, it was no picnic for Jesus, not even after they took him down and put him away for the weekend. Especially then. You may call it “Holy Week.” That’s not what Jesus called it. I’ll tell you what Jesus called it. Jesus called it “Maundy Thursday,” “Bad Friday,” “Easter Sunday,” and Getmeoutahere Saturday.
I don't call Jesus' early-bird Resurrection a "mistake." I call it improvisational quick-thinking. I don't care if your name is David Blaine, if you were trapped inside that tomb, you would not have stayed one minute longer than Jesus did. For a moment, just imagine yourself inside that dark stone crypt with the risen Lord: here lies the body, just starting to stir. There’s you, a devout, born-again Christian—even so, I still would not be too surprised if you pounded lumps on him to be the first one out. And if you should ever happen to be trapped inside a small stuffy elevator with a stabbed-dead body during a power-outage, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.
After just thirty hours, Jesus' injuries had not yet had time to heal – but that, actually, turned out to be a big plus. It was the sight of those wounds that totally convinced grumpy Thomas, for example, that Jesus' literal physical body had literally passed through the stone wall of the tomb without exiting by the door. Later, when he showed himself to doubting Thomas, Jesus said, "Go ahead! Reach hither your finger, and touch my hands." So Thomas did that.
Then Jesus hoisted his robe. "Now reach hither your hand," he said, "and thrust your fingers into the spear-hole in my side, and be not faithless, but believe!" (John 20:27).
Now when Jesus lifted his robe to display a deep wound in his side where no wound should be, from the spear of Felix Fabius, several of the Eleven were totally embarrassed, not unlike the Washington press corps when President Lyndon Johnson hoisted his shirt to display the scar from his recent and successful cholecystectomy.
But it was exactly the right thing for Jesus to have done at that particular moment. Jesus did not borrow his "Check it out!" stratagem from President Johnson; he borrowed it from his mother, who had told him the story of her own similar "challenge of faith" to skeptical Salome, at the Virgin birth, as recorded also in the Gospel of James.
The device worked perfectly to restore the faith of grumpy Thomas, who jerked his hands behind his back and said, "My Lord!" and "My God!" (John 20:28). Thomas was aghast – for he knew Salome personally, and she had told him her own version of the same frightening story from thirty years ago.
No way was Thomas going to poke his fingers in there.
Jesus said, "Thomas, because you have seen, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and believed, anyway" (John 20:29).
And that saying cut Thomas's heart to the quick: for even though he went on to write a much-beloved holy scripture (the Gospel of Thomas, which helped Saint Paul and the Church patriarchs to establish Christ's position on "the problem with Jews"), poor grumpy Thomas never did feel as lucky or well-blessed as these people who can believe whatever the Bible says, without seeing any evidence that it might actually be true.
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 08:28 AM
Previous Entry
Next Entry
Who is Lucifer? Vote here
First Entry
