In my sojourning through Holy Week, I really like this tweet:
— PHILO CHRISTIANUS (@pseudophilo) March 31, 2021
The tweeter, who is not someone I know as I know personally, nor have ever heard of, which is the way of things now, is presumably trying to relish some kind of gotcha. Those foolish people (even adults!) who only believe in literal things about the Bible, and don’t understand that it is all a metaphor, how wretched and stupid of them. Therefore, in the spirit of enjoying that the big boat in the Suez Canal, which was literally a boat blocking a whole canal and yet rapidly became a shipful o’ metaphors, much like how Jesus rising from the grave became the font from which all good metaphors flow, here are some of my favorite Literally True Passion Week Events That Everyone Thought Were Metaphorical Until They Became Real:
- A Suffering Servant who was not actually Israel but was actually The Servant who Suffered
- God Literally Becoming Incarnate and Rescuing Sinners with his actual Mighty Arm and actual Outstretched Hand
- The Sky turning dark at midday
- The Day of the Lord in general–wherein God’s wrath was poured out but on himself instead of us
- The Earthquake
- All the Daughters of Jerusalem who turned out to be actual women in Jerusalem and all the scoffers who showed up to actually scoff
- The people who got to see their Redeemer live and who took up iron pens
- The snake on the pole bit
- The way Jesus actually and literally gave up his body to give life to the world
- The Resurrection
So anyway, when you’re reading the Bible and thinking,’ this couldn’t possibly actually happen,’ maybe pause a minute and choke down your scoffing because I’m pretty sure that when Jesus comes back–“like lightning”–so that the only thing you see in the sky is him, it is not going to be a metaphor for anything but will be the actual apocalypse. And, when you start crying out for the “mountains to fall on you and hide you,” you might actually be crying that out and wishing you hadn’t tweeted quite so much.
Have a great day!
Photo by Austin Chan on Unsplash
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