Verbal Spark!

There are some people who find it rather appealing to open up their mouth and lace their teeth with gold or silver. On the street they refer to it as “grillz” or a “grill.” Not my cup of tea, but we’re not all perfect or sane. In any event, wearing a grill in a place like Haiti can draw the wrong attention from the wrong crowd. It’s not the local youths who have them as such things are not practiced or even affordable there. Those who have them are usually deportees, Haitians nationals who never became U.S citizens and were deported back to Haiti either because they were convicted of crimes on U.S soil worthy of deportation (which can be just about anything nowadays) or because they were here illegally.

Deportees are not too welcomed in Haiti especially the city slums of Port Au Prince, Haiti’s capital. While there are other things that can expose a deportee, nothing is more telling than a mouth full of silver or gold. Problem is, some grillz are permanent fixtures and you need money to remove it, something most deportees do not have upon return to Haiti. This coupled with the fact that many are going back to a country some barely know or never even grew up in, their only link to it being the place where they were born. One particular grill wearing deportee was sent back to Haiti simply for driving with a suspended license and signing a false name on the ticket. After 9 months in jail he was sent packing back to Haiti with his permanent grill in place. To avoid personal danger there, he has to keep his mouth shut - literally.
There have been reports of grill wearing deportees being kidnapped and having their grillz removed one tooth at a time with a pliers to retrieve the gold or silver lining the teeth. It has become so alarming that some Haitians awaiting deportation who happen to wear grillz are having them removed before being shipped back to Haiti to avoid instant recognition. Haiti, a country mired in poverty and lawlessness is definitely not a place to advertise gold and silver every time you open your mouth.

The writer of the biblical Book of Matthew was a brave man. He wrote some things, that when looked at more closely, were rather audacious. With this being said, I want to ask a question on one of the Bible’s greatest mysteries.

In Matthew 27:52-53, we read that when Jesus died and also when he was resurrected, the bodies of ‘the saints which slept arose.’ Now not only is this little bit of revelation not in any other of the Gospels, but in the book of Mark (the oldest of the Gospels), the same surrounding account is told, but without any mention of what Matthew claims happened. In fact, if you read the account in Mark 15:38-39, Mark has the same verses preceding and after Matthew’s startling revelation, but does not say anything about dead people rising up.

This is Mark’s account compared to Matthew’s:

And Jesus cried out with a loud voice, and breathed His last.Then the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. So when the centurion, who stood opposite Him, saw that He cried out like this and breathed His last, he said, “Truly this Man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15:37-39)

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:50-54)

Luke tells the same account, but fails to mention what Matthew said about these dead people.

Here’s Luke’s account compared to Matthew’s:

“Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, “Father, “into Your hands I commit My spirit.”‘ Having said this, He breathed His last. So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, “Certainly this was a righteous Man!” (Luke 23:46-47)

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!” (Matthew 27:50-54)

The Gospel of John doesn’t even find any of this important to mention.

Now my question is, where did these dead people go? Matthew says they went into the ‘holy city’ (Jerusalem) and appeared to many, but we read nothing else about it anywhere else in the Bible. Did they die again? Did they eventually rise to heaven? Did they go back to their graves? What was the response of the people who saw them? To make the matter even more baffling, a few days later Peter preached his famous sermon on Pentecost and in all of his talking, trying to prove Jesus was the son of God and risen lord, he never once referenced the mircale of these dead people rising from their graves to bolster his argument and really bring home the point.

Ever walked into some banks and there are like eleventy billion people in line and one or two tellers to serve them? Not only that, as Murphy’s Law would have it, the two people being served have a laundy list of transactions they need to have done. But there’s more. Walking back and forth behind the one or two tellers at the counter are 17 other tellers just walking back and forth acting busy. Then, do you ever notice that one those two tellers always seem to get up to go ask the other teller a question, distracting him or her from helping the customer?

Well I think it is a plot. Let’s blame it on the devil. It’s a plot from hell to cause us to lose our blessing. There we are losing patience and mumbling cursewords under our breaths. You look around and the branch manager is looking at porn on his PC in his office, pretending to be engrossed in something deep - no pun intended. I say we go back to hiding our money under our mattresses.

Ok, so your parents could do nothing about your looks prior to birth, but they sure as hell could do something about your name. We have all heard or seen our fair share of strange names (well at least in our opinions).  You just have to shake your head.

Well there I am watching a recent football game featuring the Florida State University’s Seminoles and I hear the name of one of their players. His name is De’ Cody Fagg. Yeah, ya hoid me! Fagg’s the name.

I am sure the jokes can be plentiful at the expense of this young man’s last name. I mean, how do you introduce the Fagg family? Imagine the grief his future wife might have to endure. “Soooo, you’re married to one of the Faggs, right?” What about his mom screaming at him in the heat of anger - “You’re a real Fagg. Just like your daddy!”

One thing I do know though. If he plays his cards right, Fagg or no Fagg, he’ll be far richer than most of us stiffs when he inks some lucrative contract with a preofessional NFL team, but I can’t help but think he might still cringe when introduced in a stadium filled with thousands who will watch this Fagg prancing across an open filed where he will be slapped on the ass a few times and rubbing up against other men in the course of a game they call football.

So that co-worker brings her newborn baby to work and you take a peek and you are immediately shocked into taking a few steps backwards. You instanly realize God has a sick sense of humor. There, wrapped up in a nice warm blanket is a baby with a face only a blind person could love. So you try to play it off, even dropping a lie or two in regards to the baby’s appearance.

It’s really a fact of life, however. The cute, pretty babies will get more positive attention, probably be spoiled and probably given a longer leash. It’s definitely not fair, but it’s the world we live in.

Obviously some people do not take too kindly to another person basking in the pungent smell of their ripe, carrion smelling farts while within smelling distance of others. An example of this comes from North Platte, Nebraska where two men in a small holding cell got into a fight because one of the men kept ripping farts in close proximity to the other. Sheriff Jerome Kramer is quoted as saying:

“You just can’t get a reprieve from one another. “When you’ve got a guy causing problems passing gas, there’s no way to get away from the smell.”

No kidding! LOL!!!

While we can find a few examples of the audacious liberties of the writer of Matthew, considering it is the Christmas season, the supposed time of or at least time of reflection of the birth of the one called Jesus, taking a look Matthew 2:5-6 will suffice for now. There it is written:

“So they said to him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet:
‘But you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
Are not the least among the rulers of Judah;
For out of you shall come a Ruler
Who will shepherd My people Israel.’”

Many Christians are fond of telling the critic to take context (of their scriptures) into consideration, but as we will see, they need to realize that within their own “inspired” scripture the writer of Matthew paid little attention to context. He clearly had an agenda and it was to prove to his Jewish audience that Jesus was the anointed messiah of the Jews. He sought to prove this at all costs even if it meant making up stories (Matthew 27:52 and 53) r in this case, picking out pieces of scriptures to push his agenda.

To the Christian, the writer of the book of Matthew is quoting what is supposed to be a prophecy predicting the birth of Jesus. Fact is, he isn’t. This is what he wants the gullible to believe, that is, that Micah chapter 5 (where the quote is derived) is a prophecy predicting the birth and birthplace of Jesus. Upon closer observation, taking context into consideration and a little history, Micah chapter 5 was not looking 700 years into the future.

First of all, Micah was an Israelite prophet who lived during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, 700 years before the time of Christ. Hezekiah’s reign was marked by a serious threat from the Assyrians under the leadership of king Sennacharib who even went as far as beseiging the city of Jerusalem in an attempt to starve the inhabitants before taking the city. Somewhere in all of this or more like prior to this with the apparent news of the Assyrian advance on Jerusalem, Micah in the role of prophet, there to give moral support gives his famous prediction. His prediction was CLEARLY meant for the immediate future.

After making a clarion call for Judah’s troops to amass and then babbling off some vague open ended renderings common to “prophets,” he gets to the point. He foresaw a messiah arising from the family of Ephrathah, one who has ties to an ancient legacy. That he is NOT speaking of Jesus is clear from the fact that this hero would arise ‘…When the Assyrian comes into our land…’ (Micah 5:5) and He shall deliver us from the Assyrian,
When he comes into our land
And when he treads within our borders (Micah 5:6).