Lucifer's True History of Everything
Apr 10, 07 11:52 AM
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True Life of Jesus (cont.)
Following Easter Sunday, Jesus took a well-deserved, six-week sabbatical, during which time he mostly just relaxed. He read Scripture, took his mother shopping in Jerusalem, returned to Galilee and did a little fishing. He paid house calls on people he liked, and he pulled a few harsh tricks on people he did not care for, including Pontius Pilate (drove him insane by making him see blood on his hands), Judas (exploded him), and Caiaphas (setting him adrift at sea, in a leaky rowboat).
On 10 May, 31 CE, Jesus' disciples and supporters gathered at Mary's Place, in Bethany, for a Christian potluck, to celebrate the Resurrection. Jesus came, and he actually helped at the grill, frying fish. But before the guests sat down to eat, he made an announcement. He explained – in the Aramaic vernacular, so that everyone would understand, for once, what he was talking about – that it was time for him to pack it in and fly back home to be with his Dad (Luke 24:41-44).
To some, he said, "Fare thee well!" and to others, "Woe unto you!" There were hugs, kisses on the cheek (and for those disciples who felt uncomfortable with hugging, a gentle slap on the back). Also, of course, some tears. Looking Heavenward, Jesus then flexed his knees, and launched himself skyward, straight up through a cloud, and vanished from sight (Luke 24:50-51).
Thinking it would be fun to have a race, I, too, flexed my knees and jumped. With outstretched arms like Superman, I gave chase, calling out to Jesus, plaintively, "Come back to the raft, Huck honey!"
No, I'm just kidding about that part – "Come back to the raft, Huck honey," is not something I would ever actually have said about the Ascension. I was actually having a daydream more along these lines: "What if Jesus, on the way home, should happen to collide with an asteroid!" But almost as soon as that thought popped into my head, I felt ashamed of myself for thinking it.
As Jesus passed through a cloud and left Earth's atmosphere, and lit out for the galactic territories, he accelerated. By the time he passed the moon, he must have been doing the speed of light. No way could I keep up. Besides, it was a long trip to Heaven, and I would not have been admitted inside when I got there. So I returned to Bethany, where the disciples were still looking steadfastly up into the sky, and chatting it up with one another, in Mary Magdalene's front yard.
Beelzebub, in a newly laundered toga, had just joined them. He had come to Mary's Place to look for Magdalene, but he pretended now to be tracking Jesus across the sky. Always the joker, Bubba wanted to see how long he could keep the disciples looking up (Acts 1:9-10).
"Where?" said Simon Peter, straining to see what the stranger (Beelzebub) was pointing toward.
"There, nor'nor'west," said Bubba, pointing toward nothing at all except blue sky. "Don't you see him? No bigger than a bat! a bug! a pin! Wow, look at him go! He's really flyin'! Man, I've never seen anything like that before!"
Honestly, it was a cruel joke. I said to the disciples, "Men of Galilee, why do you stand here gazing up toward Heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into Heaven, will soon come down again, in the same exact way you saw him go up" (Acts 1:21).
"So that's it?" said Thomas.
I closed my eyes, and nodded.
Beelzebub did not speak to me for three days after that, because I spoiled his little joke of trying to give the Eleven disciples a stiff neck while supposedly watching Jesus orbit the Earth on his way back to Heaven.
"What do we do now?" asked Bartholomew.
The disciples began to go their several ways.
"I don't know about you," said Simon Peter, "but I'm going fishing" (John 21:1).
And that's how it ended – one of the Greatest Stories Ever Told (quite possibly, the third greatest, right after Lucifer's True History of Everything and Shakespeare's Hamlet).
– L.
Posted by Lucifer at 11:52 AM
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