“Pizzaonia Emerging” Courtesy of the Pizzaonian Art Institute, Abe Straction Curator
Brother Giovanni on “Hanging out with Jesus”
Some history:
Some history:
Sometime ago Brother Giovanni met a man who called himself Jesus. Many people do. What made this different is that they developed a close relationship by exchanging letters. While Brother Giovanni seems to believe this is “the Jesus,” he never says so directly. In the end, however, he clearly leaves it up to us to decide.
I am writing this now since my good friend, Brother Giovanni is again engaged in another round of conversations with his friend, Jesus. These conversations will soon appear in “The Pizzaonian.”
This has caused much controversy in Pizzaonia. Here are some previously published thoughts from Giovanni on the subject.
Brother Franco
Continuing the debate on “the Jesus letters” and the beat goes on….
Dear readers in Pizzaonia and other universes,
So much of the criticism about the letters from Jesus that are sent to me and published in “The Pizzaonian” stem from the fact that Jesus does not sound like Jesus – at least not like people expect him to sound.
I have always found this interesting since to my knowledge none of the critics have ever actually heard Jesus speak. So what is Jesus supposed to sound like? Actually, the answer is left to our imagination and, most importantly, what we need him to sound like. The fact that God or “Our Savior” could talk and sound like an ordinary human being is beyond the pale for most Christians.
Jesus, Ordinary? Can’t be. Here we can get into a bit of sacrilege as defined by orthodox theologians. How can an ordinary man be our Savoir? Well now knowing what he is, he can’t. But what about all of those years when he was in the process of discovering who he was meant to be. That very phrase “meant to be will raise some eyebrows.”
A couple of years ago, I would spend quite prayer time with Jesus, and an interesting thing began to develop. Aside from the obvious of knowing he is, from our Christian perspective, the Son of God, was it always that way for him? For me, aside from being “the savior of the world” this quiet and interesting and very human man began to emerge.
I know that many Church councils have met and debated over the years the nature of who and what Jesus is and what he knew about himself from the beginning of his life.
What we have left in very unctuous terms is defined as the risen Jesus. Very little is left of the normal, human Jesus that was, and is still here with us. It seems to me; we give lip service to the fact that he was God in human form, but there is that word again, God, which makes trying to grasp this itinerant carpenter who changed the world as a being like us virtually impossible to grasp.
What became important to me is for Jesus not only to be my Savior, but my friend. A human friend who talks with me and lives with me day to day and shares my experiences, and yes a Jesus that writes me letters from time to time to let me know what he thinks.
Brother Giovanni
Comments