This is It - Episode 15: Passover

The time of Passover and unleavened had come, and when they were making sacrifice two students asked Yeshua, Where do you want us to prepare for the seder?

He told them, Go into town, and you will see a man carrying a water jug. Follow him, and where he goes in, say to the master of the house, ‘Our teacher asks, where is a banquet hall why I can eat seder with my students?’ He will show you an upper room, with a table made ready. There you can make preparations.

Later, Yeshua arrived with the twelve. They all sat at table.

Yeshua said, The time of reckoning is at hand. We have riled too many in power. One of you is going to hand me over to the authorities, one sitting among us now.

The mood of the room darkened, and all assembled took on grief.

But he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and he gave it to them saying, Take this, this is my body.And in that gesture, they remembered his talk about the leavening and stories about bread.

Taking a cup and giving thanks, he gave it to them saying, This is my blood, poured out for all. I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it, renewed, in the realm of the holy one. And with that gesture, they remembered his talk about the vineyard, the vine and the grapes.

At the end of the meal, they sang a hymn and departed toward Mount Olive. 

© 2020 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen and songsofasouljourney.blogspot.com

A brief note about my literary exploration of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth: I have undertaken this exercise having read, sung (in several languages), meditated and prayed on the contents of the Synoptic Gospels (as well as the Non-Synoptic Gospels) for at least 45 years. In that time, I’ve accumulated a bit of a library (which comes as no surprise to those who know me), and I try to follow modern scholarship. Here is a partial list of the authors and books that come to mind as I write these episodes:

Ballentine, Debra Scoggins, The Conflict Myth & the Biblical Tradition; Oxford University Press 2015

Erdman, Bart, various titles

Gaus, Andy, The Unvarnished New Testament; Phanes Press, 1991

Herzog, William R., Parables as Subversive Speech; Westminster John Knox Press, 1991

Louden, Bruce, Greek Myth and the Bible; Routledge, 2019

Tatian, Diatesseron; www.earlychristianwritings.com/diatessaron.html

Wajdenbaum, Philippe, Argonauts of the Desert, Routledge, 2011

Ward, Keith, The Philosopher and the Gospels, Lion Hudson, 2011

Yosef ben Maityahu (Titus Flavius Josephus), various writings

The World's Worth

“The world is my country; my religion is to do good.”

~Thomas Paine

The World’s Worth

There is no thicket of identities
in this ebb and flow of crowds;
one is at once unique,
while also each and every,
as in the sharing of aspirations,
as in the dreaming of dreams—
we’re all water walking or rolling upright,

moving vertically over a horizontal world,
various mixtures of stardust and desert sand;
but we have yet to fully embrace personhood
as the embodiment of democracy.
What message should we add
to that old corked bottle
we’ll cast onto the oceans of time?
What future there may be
will only be found
where the good person,
in communion with all
others of their ilk,
is the sole expression
of the world’s worth.

© 2018 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Teary Balm

The rains return,
a blessing and a communion
for all that is parched and scarred,
for the cracked and dry rotted;
the rains return, a teary balm.

Soft sprinkles gather
to dance on leaf and blade,
to explore forming buds and
unfurling fronds of fern,
reaching deeply into
and encouraging
the dormant
mosses.

Any accumulation
pours forth where it can,
settling accounts with roots,
pooling intimately and deeply,
rolling in ever widening waves,
with a depth of touch
and seeming awareness
of that most real commingling
that lies at the heart of being.

The rains return as teary balm
—for the earth and all dwelling thereon;
Holy rains, heal our parched and scarred,
heal our cracked and dry rotted,
heal us from the very roots
to the tips of each branch,
flow into the budding flowers,
and fill the wellspring of our awareness;
Oh, beautiful teary balm,
bring blessing and communion
to full bloom and being
in us.

© 2014 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen