Jesus and the Media

It came to pass that Jesus was to appear at an informal meet and greet event in the centre of Jerusalem, where many local dignitaries and influential people were to attend.

However, of late Jesus’ appearances in front of other people had been poorly received.

So on the instructions of Peter, it was decided that Thomas was to pose as a member of the public and throw Jesus some softball questions, thus giving him the chance to appear sane and approachable.

And so on the day Thomas asked him, ‘good teacher, your relationship with God is clearly very important to you and you must spend a lot of time in prayer and contemplation. What then do you do in your spare time to escape the pressure of being the Messiah?’

And Jesus, already grinning with childish anticipation at the chance of sharing with others his tiresome hobby minutiae said,

In my spare time I enjoy making chutney, dancing by myself in a room of mirrors and watching my favourite film, Krull. I’ve seen it over 600 times and never tire of it. It’s often said that someone watching the same film over and over again is a sure sign of arrested development and/or latent pathological tendencies in need of prompt professional diagnosis to ensure the safety of the general public. But that is nonsense. I’ve talked about this with the countless small animals I’ve trapped and killed in my garden and then nailed to my bedroom wall, and they assure me that it’s all normal behaviour for a young man in his thirties who still lives with his mother. They also say that Krull is, like, totally the best film in the history of, like, ever, and that anyone who speaks a word against it is worthy of being stalked over a period of months and then bludgeoned to death with a fence post.

The event had turned into a disaster.


Peter, however, denied all responsibility for it.


Three times, in fact.

Parable of the Unwise Haberdasher

It was the day before the Sabbath and Jesus was in Jerusalem, where he had been attracting large gatherings. And someone in the crowd asked of him, ‘good teacher, tell us a parable that will help strengthen our faith and teach us to live a morally upstanding life.’

And Jesus replied, ‘my friends, I will do so. I will tell you the Parable of the Unwise Haberdasher.’ And Jesus comported himself with care and began to tell the parable.

A haberdasher has a stroke of good fortune and finds three sheets of fine material.

The first he sells to a young man who wishes to make a smashing pair of cargo shorts.

The second piece he sells to a rich heiress who wants to make a jacket for her ridiculously small dog.

The third piece he keeps for himself.

After laying it flat on a work table in his establishment and smoothing out the creases with a hot iron, he climbs upon the table, lifts up his robes and takes an almighty dump directly onto the material. Having done this, he carefully pulls the corners together to form a kind of sling, and then starts dancing and swinging the material around his head whilst reciting a strange incantation about brown cherubs.

He does this for about two hours.

But he’s so immersed in what he’s doing (he’s ‘in the zone’, as it were), he accidentally lets go of one of the corners and the contents of the makeshift sling go flying everywhere and make an awful, awful mess.

He looks in dismay at what he’s done and thinks, ‘why have I done this? The other two bits of cloth I sold and made a tidy profit, but this cloth I defecated on and waved in the air like I just didn’t care. Now I have a ruined cloth and my own shit to clear up. Dear God, I have been most foolish in what I have done and I repent of my actions!’’

God then spoke to him from his throne in heaven and said ‘My forgiveness is always available for those who repent. You are thus forgiven, my son.’

Having finished the parable, Jesus looked at the crowd. ‘This man had lost sight of what he was good at: selling cloth to his consumers and making a tidy profit. He’d forgotten this simple fact and instead did something weird with his poo. That was a mistake. But in doing what he did, he had obtained something special. He had obtained full forgiveness from God. That prize is available for everyone gathered here today. For those who have ears, let them hear.’

On hearing the parable and absorbing its contents, one group present said that if this one particular man deposited his faecal matter on expensive material, and then worsening the situation by accidentally scattering said faecal matter during some bizarre dance ritual, but in doing so attained forgiveness from the Lord, then all people must do exactly the same thing if they are to attain forgiveness as well.

But another group thought it important not to take everything in the parable literally. It simply warned against recklessly attempting something outside one’s area of expertise that would likely result in sinning. This is what the parable meant. What it did not mean was to go out and make some kind of workplace dirty protest in an effort to garner God’s forgiveness. That was just stupid.

In the end, the two groups could not agree on which interpretation was correct, so decided to have a war about it.

Thousands would die in a bloodbath over one man and his turds.

The Parable of the Dinner Invitations

 Jesus had attracted a crowd in Jerusalem. And he said to them ‘let me tell you a parable, and you tell me what it’s all about.’ And he told the parable:

A man wished to have a dinner party. He tells his servant, ‘take these invitations to my three best friends and come back with their answers.’

 The servant did as he was told and later he came back with the responses. He said, ‘my lord, your first friend he could not come, for he said he would be busy digging a trench on his allotment that day. Your second friend could not make dinner, for it clashed with his daughter’s bowls competition. And your third friend said he was unable to attend because he had recently had his knees amputated and therefore found it difficult to walk long distances.’  

In response to the news that his friends could not make the dinner party, the man had his servant thrown off a high cliff. He then sent gifts to his three friends thanking them for politely declining the invitations.

‘Do you see what this particular story means?’ asked Jesus.

One woman in the crowd spoke up: ‘sir, this story’s morals are atrocious. The man kills his servant, who was entirely innocent of any sin. What possible lesson could one learn from it?’

‘You see, it’s metaphorical’ said Jesus, who had anticipated the criticism. ‘God represents the man, and the servant is representative of humans. God generally wants to kill humans, because he hates them, and in this parable he does just that. What’s the parable’s lesson? The human race needs to buck its ideas up or God will kill them, by jiminy!

‘So who do the three friends represent in the parable?’ asked the woman.

‘I’m sorry?’ said Jesus.

‘Who do the three friends represent in the parable, the ones that refuse the dinner party invites?’

Jesus looked uncertain, for he had often overlooked that part of the parable. He was silent for a long period before giving his answer. ‘They’re space robots’, he said eventually.

The Apartment

was lying on an eighteenth-century fainting couch. They had seven such pieces of furniture dotted strategically around the apartment. I was grateful for this, as I usually felt nauseous when I saw them. Toby and Samantha that is, the couple who owned the apartment I found myself in. Samantha was fussing over my contorted body. I had my head between my knees and was mewling like an injured Prussian whilst rocking back and forth from my waist axis. I wanted to tell her that her actions were actually making things worse, but I couldn’t for some reason.  I raised my head and looked at her face. She seemed a worthwhile person. I wondered if I was in love with her, and that’s why I couldn’t say that her mere presence made me sick. I put my head back between my knees and thought about this concept for about 14 minutes. I drew strength from its paradoxical nature and felt slightly better.

Toby then rolled into the room like an egg. Although a young person, his face consisted entirely of jowls. Jowls. It’s as if they’d had a fight with his cheek and jawbones and the cheek and jawbones had not only lost, but had been so traumatised by the experience that they could no longer function as anything useful anymore, whilst the victorious jowls descended lower and lower until they resembled two empty scrotums hanging from each side of his face, like a grotesque pair of drop earrings.

Toby was standing over my body. He looked moderately concerned as he asked Samantha what was wrong with me. 

‘His intestines have gone to sleep.’

‘Ah, of course’ said Toby.

I was surprised at this swift diagnosis from a person untrained in medicine, as well the casual ‘matter of fact’ acceptance from Toby. In actual fact, it felt the exact opposite: my intestines were wide awake and looking for ways to leave my body. I groaned like Geoffrey Chaucer, or how I imagined Geoffrey Chaucer would groan after a night drinking strong ale.

‘Listen to him’ said Samantha. ‘He’s groaning like the Venerable Bede after eating chips.’

She’d misdiagnosed me again, but I let it slide. Toby suddenly crouched down to my bent over frame. I noticed distractedly that his jowls took slightly longer to reach the same level as the rest of his face. Some kind a lag effect, presumably. For want of anything else to say, I repeated this observation out loud to him. His slapped-arse-of-a-face looked sad, like Droopy Dog’s after being told his family had just died in a house fire. Frustratingly, however, it soon cheered up.  He went on to say that my rudeness – or was it candour? – was down to the delusion he thought I was suffering. This was not the case; although I was in physical discomfort, I felt shockingly lucid in my thinking.

Samantha and Toby clearly didn’t think so, as they were now talking about me as if I wasn’t in the same room as them. I heard them say I was socially and mentally retarded and incapable of sustaining a relationship with a real live woman, as well as being a compulsive masturbator and bed wetter. Most of these accusations were half truths at best. Granted, I often combined the masturbating and bed wetting, (two birds with one stone, etc.) but there was nothing compulsive about it. And all the other allegations are just hearsay.

I decided I had to do something to have them notice me. In keeping with the traditional etiquette of such a situation, I pretended to clear my throat loudly, hoping to alert them of my presence, and thus persuading them to discontinue their character assassination, which had now moved on to me deliberately pushing a shopping trolley into a toddler’s face in Waitrose. This, again, was another slander. What I’d actually done was push a shopping trolley over a toddler’s face in Waitrose. There’s a subtle difference, and they really should have acknowledged it. This is what happened: the child was lying in one of the aisles colouring in some pictures of tigers, and, feeling surprisingly confident, I tried to ‘bunny hop’ over him. I’d often practice this trick in my spare time, of which I had quite a lot. Unfortunately, I didn’t factor in the weight of my groceries in the trolley, and this meant I was unable to perform the manoeuvre. Consequently, the right front wheel and the right back wheel of the trolley ran over the child’s jaw, nose and forehead (in that order).
I looked back at what I’d done and felt a bit guilty. But I believed there was still time to retrieve the situation. Fortuitously, all this had happened in the stationery aisle, so I opened a packet of post-it notes, wrote down my details, and stuck it on top of the boy’s head. That way the owners could contact me to sort out any insurance issues or other problems. I then left the supermarket feeling quite altruistic.  

Later I realised that instead of writing my name and address on the post-it note, I’d actually drawn a picture of a duck. I don’t know why I did this.

I’d been narrating this episode out loud, in the hope that Toby and Samantha would acknowledge me. It didn’t seem to work, as they had now started to have sex. Toby mounted her like a sweaty warthog. Samantha looked like a praying mantis only bigger. I declared it weirdly anthropomorphic in my mind, and added an Attenborough narration for effect. I watched them for a while, and listened somewhat inattentively as Attenborough described cross-species coitus. There was then a disjuncture and things became quite turbid. When I looked again Toby was lying dead on the floor. Or perhaps he was sleeping. I couldn’t tell the difference.

Jesus and the Righteous Fish

A beautiful statement from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew 12:22:

A fish cannot climb a mountain, but it can build a base camp. From there it will make a plan of action to discard the trappings of wealth. On its deathbed, therefore, the fish can rest assured it has lived righteously and will receive God’s Kingdom, which for him will be an aquarium full of drugs, money and fish prostitutes. For those fish that can receive, let them receive.

Such wisdom.