Unrepentant

Astoundingly, there’s another radically different model of reality—not just utterly unrepentant, but totally rebellious—right in the Gospels, staring us all right in the face. Jesus’s Glorified Body. Jedi Jesus. Neo-Jesus. 

He Vanished out of Their Sight

The day Jesus rose from the dead—

Remember Neo at the climactic moment of The Matrix,
when he’s totally flatlined, a couple of bullets in his chest,
and Trinity says to him, “You can’t be dead,” and then
she kisses him, and then, “Now get up,” she commands him,
and totally impossibly, with nothing but his mind
—which is of course and always has been outside The Matrix—
he executes the most inconceivable, the most über of hacks
ever witnessed, and up he rises.

—the day Jesus likewise rose, the Gospel of Luke tells us, Cleopas and another unnamed disciple are on their way to Emmaus, a village outside Jerusalem.

And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

Luke 24:14

Jesus joins them and tags along—

But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

Luke 24:16

Clearly a Jedi mind-trick. “These are not the droids you’re looking for,” Obi-Wan says to the stormtroopers. And the one stormtrooper says to the other, “These are not the droids we’re looking for,” and the stormtroopers let Luke and Obi-Wan, C3PO and Artoo pass: for their eyes were holden. 

So Jesus plays dumb and asks, 

What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

Luke 24:17

Cleopas is dumbfounded.

Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?

Luke 24:18

Finally they reach Emmaus, and they ask Jesus to join them for dinner.

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and

—the Wachowskis, George Lucas couldn’t’ve staged it better—

he vanished out of their sight.

Luke 24:30-31

Jesus dematerializes right before their astonished eyes. Poof.

---

You no doubt remember the scene in Star Wars: A New Hope in which, after the Millennium Falcon gets caught in the Death Star’s tractor beam and brought aboard, Luke and Han…

Coming 22 October 2021