Oh yeah. Jesus has a wife, oh yeah.
{Shrugs shoulders.}
Definitely, Ephesians chapter 5, and Revelations chapter 19, yeah yeah…
Ooooooooooohhhhhhhh! {Chuckles}
Oh…
Oh… {Widens eyes}
You’re serious then?
You mean to say Jesus has a wife, not in the sense that Christians have easily understood the marriage of Christ to the Church, who is his body?
You mean to suggest that some dubious document from some gnostic anti-body cult which vaguely refers to the term wife seems to suggest that Jesus literally had a wife that was not some allegorical reference but indeed some wife to Jesus of Nazareth?
Every Easter, or perhaps Christmas, the news media exposes some “earth-shattering historical revelation which threatens Christianity forever!” This one showed up randomly in the middle of September with no apparent Christian celebration, not even, you know Valentine’s Day, Halloween, or St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps the news media knows this is not quite earth-shattering, or historical revelation, or quite as threatening.
Perhaps even they can guess that it is not any of these things at all.
Another year goes by, and the Church shrugs another shoulder. Another dubious document or Dan Brown hot-selling fiction can’t manage to do what Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napolean, or even every corrupt Pope could ever do.
Lump this piece of news of Jesus’s alleged wife with everything trivial the news will turn to again with caricatures of Romney or Obama and all the latest Kardashian pics. Newspapers can’t even get half the trust of Churches and religious institutions in the public. Neither do newreporters get half the respect of clergy.
So we will be on another week of lovingly serving God’s People, while the news media is looking for another way to sensationally exploit facts and God’s people for our money.
In the words of Jon Foreman sings in the Switchfoot song “Selling the News”:
When nothing is sacred there’s nothing to lose, when nothing is sacred all is consumed.
Yet, let us say we could really get to the root of this secular obsession with uncovering the historical Jesus. If we could really attain this Jesus. Uncovering this Jesus from all the doctrine and divinity.
What we will end up with is another irrelevant archaic sage, who does not speak life today. Contrary to their aim, they will not manage to bolster any more authority in this “historical Jesus” but manage to strip him of any authority he had to begin with. It is a suicidal endeavor to say the least.
Most of all, in their little secular bubbles, they cannot touch the hearts of believers around the world who know and love Jesus. Jesus is alive, we say! The Resurrection is real! The Apostles were brutally tortured, and not because they concocted a story for their benefit. Far from it. They proclaimed a truth to their worldly detriment.
It would be silly to suggest that something we ever read in a paper, by some cold staid “scholars,” about some antique writing, would mean anything to us compared to our experience of the Risen Christ.
Thanks be to God, who has chosen us to wed as his Bride who is the Church, who is us!
Copyright © 2012, Mark Menegatti
Mark Menegatti
Brother Mark Menegatti is a Friar with the Order of Saint Augustine. He is a hip hop beatmaker & lyricist for the New Evangelization. Under the patronage of Saint Ephrem of Syria, he integrates theology, mysticism, and hip hop in his blog and in all of his music. He is currently in his fourth year of Theology in Chicago, and looks forward to ordination to the Priesthood. You can find his writings, theological reflections, chastity exhortations, and original music on his tumblr. He’s also found at Bandcamp music page, Twitter, and Facebook.
2 responses to “Better Than the News”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
[…] Better Than the News […]
[…] enough, my latest post at New Evangelizers deals with media and its losing of […]