In Matthew 26:2, Jesus mentions, just by way of making conversation, “Y'know what, in two days they're gonna come and crucify me,” and nobody says anything. There's no “Haul ass, bro, you got two days still.” Nobody offers to help. Nobody offers to let Jesus ride their ass (out of town I mean. Get your mind out of the gutter) There's no “We got your back, boss.” Managers at burger king can count on more loyalty than that.
In 10-12, he says some woman is preparing him for burial, how morbid is that? and nobody bats an eye. He says “Y'know, Judas is gonna narc me out” (21-25) and all his homies jump up and give Judas a major beatdown. Ha ha, just kidding. They would if these stories made any sense, but what these super duper loyal royal followers really do is go on pigging out. “Oh, wow, our bud here is going to turn you over to The Man and they're gonna kill you? Huh. Any more gravy?” Wow, who ever had such dedicated fans?
Now that their credibility is dead, buried, dug back up and cremated, the authors start with the real weirdness. How would you react if the host at a dinner party handed you something and said “Here, eat this, it's my body.” (26:26). I don't know about you, but I'd be looking for doors and things that can be used as weapons. Then he's “Everybody drink this, it's my blood!” Like, ewww, and he goes on raving about the covenant and his father's kingdom in heaven and sanity has just left the party. I bet the last thing Jim Jones' followers heard was something like this. Count me out. But in this alternate universe, they all just sing hymns and go for a walk in the park (26:30).
WTF is this? Character development, people. Motivation. Basic human emotions, at least. Or consistency. Consistency is good. Here's Peter, “Even if I have to die with you, I'll never … ” (26:35) who the hell cares? You just ignored him a half dozen times telling you he was going to get killed and your reaction was “pass the spuds”. Now you expect us to believe you're all “To the death!” Shee-it. Alice in Wonderland doesn't make much sense either, but it's way better'n this. I always scoffed when people told me this book was Great Literature (all those begats? hey, c'mon), but damn, if I'd written essays like this I'd still be held back in Elementary.
“Eat my body and drink my blood” like hell. Freak.
2 comments:
Even as a kid, when this part of the New Testament was taught, I always just figured Judas and the other guys were so deeply into the wine by this point that they were too groggy to pay attention to what Jesus was saying, even the cannibal part. Based on my own childhood experience of Catholic Grownups at Dinner, Jesus could have cut off his finger and handed it around as a snack and nobody would have reacted.
Makes sense. It doesn't say that was the *first* wine they uncorked. Could have been the 99th bottle.
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