Saturday, March 30, 2013

The Day After

I suppose Mary Magdalene stumbled into a bar and got drunk.  John was likely with her. Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea probably were too. After burying Jesus what else would they have done to drown their grief and sorrow?

I know we're not supposed to think such things. The church has whitewashed the story and made them all saints who never sinned. It just makes things up. Pope Gregory the Great said that Mary Magdalene was a whore when she actually wasn't. Like most clergy, he really wasn't that great after all. Almost two thousand years later the Church had to confess he had lied.

Mary was evidently the ring leader of the bunch and the four of them hung around to the bitter end, took the broken body down from the cross and did the best they could with an unplanned funeral.

It had all happened so fast!

Thursday night dinner had been jovial enough though Jesus certainly seemed preoccupied and distracted. Afterwards everybody went their own way and Jesus gets himself arrested. He's questioned, beaten and killed by mid-afternoon in less than twenty-four hours.

Now there was nothing else to do except try to console one another but as anybody knows who's just lost a loved one there is no consolation. So I imagine they got wasted.

The Gospel really don't say what any of them did so we're left to our own imaginations to guess. It was the Sabbath but I have a difficult time thinking they went to worship with the same clergy who'd brought the charges against Jesus.

The Apostles were all in hiding somewhere. John was the youngest of the bunch which is why he stuck with Mary at the crucifixion. None of the others wanted to take care of him so she did. Women always clean up the messes men make.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and they sure as hell didn't want him around because he'd been a friend of Jesus. He didn't have anywhere else to go either.

Joseph was likely flat broke after donating his grave so Jesus would have a place to be buried. Besides, Nicodemus was his friend, a fellow Black Sheep in the Pharisee family.

So they found a bar where it was dark and no one would think of looking for them. They didn't say much through the sniffling, tears and sighs.

They just drank and tried to forget how much it hurts.