What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? (14 page)

The walking-on-water event is so iconic that, in Central America, there’s an animal called the Jesus Christ Lizard because it dashes across streams on its webbed hind feet. It does not, however, perform exorcisms.

The Rock

With events picking up speed, Jesus does a little polling and asks his disciples who the people think he is. The people, as it turns out, aren’t too sharp. They figure he’s a reincarnation of the executed John the Baptist, or an Old Testament prophet like Elijah or Jeremiah. But Peter (originally Simon Bar-Jona) declares that Jesus is “the Son of the living God.” Fair enough. But Jesus offers a peculiar response to Peter’s confession:

“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.” [Matt. 16:17]

 

Oh, really?
God
tipped Peter off? I thought maybe he got a clue from Jesus walking on water, or calming a storm, or curing lepers, or raising the dead, or exorcizing those demons who shouted, “You are the Son of God!” Or how about the fact that the Gospel of John has the newly-recruited disciples declaring he’s The Messiah the moment they meet? Peter didn’t need a Ouija board to figure this out.

Still, Jesus is impressed by Peter’s insight, and he assigns him a special role. Jesus has begun to forecast his own imminent demise at the hands of his enemies. He says that, just as Jonah was in the belly of a whale for three days, he too will spend three days and nights in the heart of the earth and then rise again.

Technically, the whale story didn’t happen. First of all, according to the
Septuagint
(that Greek translation of the Old

Testament), Jonah was swallowed by a great fish, not a whale. There aren’t any whales in the Mediterranean (or great fish, for that matter) that could swallow a man. Furthermore, Jesus died late on a Friday and rose on Sunday morning. That’s one day and two nights, not three days and nights. This may be hair-splitting, but if you booked a hotel for one day and two nights and were billed for three days, you’d bitch.

Anyway, if Jesus is not long for this earth, it means someone will have to carry on the good work. So, according to the Catholic Church, he establishes…well, the Catholic Church:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven…”

 

[Matt. 16:18–19, Mark 8:27, Luke 9:18, John 6:67]

 

According to the Church, the “rock” in question is Peter himself, who will become the first Bishop of Rome—eventually known as the pope. The Church will own the keys to the kingdom; they’ll man the velvet rope. And the Church will be built upon Peter, both figuratively and literally. The Vatican is located on Peter’s alleged burial spot.

Protestants claim that Catholics misinterpret this line about “the rock” and insist it refers to Jesus, not Peter. After all, there’s nothing in the Bible that says Peter ever went to Rome or that he became a bishop. Those are Catholic folktales. They also note that Paul calls Jesus “the chief cornerstone.” [Ephesians 2:20] Hence, Protestant churches are built upon the rock of
Jesus
, which is why they don’t provide a priestly go-between for talking to God. It also makes it easier for some of them to call the pope the antichrist.

The Transfiguration

With all the questions about his real nature starting to bubble up, Jesus figures it’s time to let his closest followers know the full story. Peter declared that Jesus is The Messiah. To confirm this, Jesus takes him, along with James and John, up to a high mountain. There, his face and clothing begin to glow the way Moses did when he came down from Mount Sinai. Then, wouldn’t you know it, Moses himself appears, along with the prophet Elijah. And
then…

…a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

 

[Mark 17:5, Matthew 9:7, Luke 9:34–35]

 

It’s nice that we’ve gotten away from the water-to-wine parlor magic and are back to some old-fashioned, Yahweh-class special effects: glowing clouds, booming voices, and resurrected prophets. But if Jesus is God himself, then who’s the booming voice from the sky? Debates have raged for centuries over this point. The Catholic answer says that God is a Trinity—Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Three “persons” in one deity. Therefore he can be both in heaven and on earth at the same time. And you thought there was no logical explanation.

Son of Man or Son of God?

So who exactly is Jesus? Eighty-eight times he calls himself the “Son of Man,” which technically means any normal human being. The term shows up in a half-dozen Old Testament books, and it always refers to mere humans. But then, listen to the prophet Daniel:

“…there came with the clouds of the sky one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom…” [Daniel 7:13]

 

It’s a messianic vision of a human-looking figure that appears before God (the Ancient of Days) after an evil beast is defeated. But some folks have a problem with similes. For them, the Son of Man and “one
like
a son of man” are the same thing, and both are messianic. After all, it
sounds
a little like “Son of God.” So, when the Gospels have Jesus calling himself the Son of Man, it has a messianic flavor but it isn’t actually blasphemy.

In the Gospels of Mark
, Matthew and Luke, Jesus is rather coy about his messianic nature. But the author of John, ever the ardent mystic, writes about a Jesus who is a tad full of himself:

“I am the bread of life which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live for ever…” [John 6:51]

 

“I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” [John 8:12]

 

“I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” [John 14:6]

 

Jesus occasionally calls himself the Son of God, not so much in the messianic sense as in the loving-relationship-with-the-Lord sense. He’s beloved of God, but he never says he’s God’s
only
begotten son. The writer of John came up with that one.

Will it Play in Jerusalem?

After a few more healings, parables, exorcisms, raisings of the dead, and prophecies of resurrection, the story finally heads for the big town—Jerusalem. The Gospels have Jesus arriving one week before the Passover, and he enters the city exactly the way a Hebrew messianic prophecy predicts:

Lo, your king comes to you;
triumphant and victorious is he,
humble and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass. [Zechariah 9:9]

 

This is supposedly a prophecy of the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of an ass or a colt…or maybe both. (His disciples actually buy both, suggesting he entered like a stunt rider.) But let’s get real. Matthew says Jesus claimed to be The Messiah. Naturally, then, the story would have him entering Jerusalem the way the messianic prophecy predicts. It was self-fulfilling. He even had a choice of two messianic entrance scenes because, as we just saw in
Daniel 7:13
, The Messiah also comes “with the clouds of heaven.” Of course, that would have been pretty tough to pull off. It was easier for Jesus to rent a nag.

Moneychangers

No sooner does Jesus enter the city than he heads for Jewish HQ—the Jerusalem Temple. By this time, the thousand year-old shrine is a combination church, shopping mall, and campus quad where everyone meets to pray, trade, and chew the fat. When people come to worship, the rites involve sacrificing doves or donating other trinkets and doodads, which visiting pilgrims have to purchase. Hence, the place is surrounded by merchants and moneychangers. But the commercial aspect of things had apparently gotten out of hand. There was plenty of activity but not much God worship. This rankles Jesus, so he upsets the tables of the moneychangers, then rails against them for turning a house of prayer into a “den of thieves.” It’s a scene.

Actually, the infamous moneychangers at the Temple were not out to debase the faith. They aided pilgrims who came from afar to worship. Jews considered the use of Roman coins an act of idolatry because they featured the graven image of the emperor. The moneychangers would swap Roman coins for non-offending currency. They were actually preserving the sacredness of the Temple, not defiling it. Jesus, being new in town, may have gotten the wrong impression. Oops.

Jesus Junk

Of course, religious purists throughout history have always been quick to condemn the commercialization of their faith, whether it was Martin Luther arguing against the selling of indulgences, or present-day objections to Christmas becoming an Olympic event for your credit card. But gods have long been invoked to generate booty. Back in the Sinai, all the gold and fresh meat the Israelites could produce was kept nice and safe by the priests in the Tabernacle. Medieval popes drained the lifeblood of the peasantry to build churches, bribe kings, and finance armies. I once saw Pat Robertson brag that a poor, blind woman sent his ministry a check for her last $25—and the sonofabitch cashed it.

These days, Christianity seems especially prone to turning belief into ready cash. A quick Google search reveals so much Christian paraphernalia online, it makes the marketing of Starbucks look like your niece’s lemonade stand. The amount of royalty-free Jesus junk available would put the moneychangers to shame.

There are books, CDs, nightlights, lunch boxes (to keep your Eucharist fresh, I suppose), coloring books, graphic novels, clever T-shirts (“BODY PIERCING SAVED MY LIFE” heh-heh), dishware, bumper stickers, hood ornaments, puzzles, video games, and dust collectors of every sort, not to mention lots of Christian jewelry-some of which only God himself could afford.

Most of this stuff is aggressively tacky—good taste evidently not being among the blessings of the Holy Spirit. Examples:

     
   A windup Jesus action figure that reaches up to heaven.

     
  Jesus bubble bath. (Makes baptisms friskier!)

     
  Christian candies. (One brand is called Testa-Mints)