The scene: Cana at high noon, when the day is just hot enough to make you want to explode. The event: the wedding of this guy to that girl. The problem: the bride's father's television psychic went off the air and didn't predict the amount of wine necessary. Luckily for them all, Jesus, Peter, Dick, Willy, etcetera are on hand with a miracle.
"I believe if you look into the water barrels over there," Jesus said, "you will find not water but instead a charming little wine, not too sweet. 12 BC was a good year for this particular red."
Sure enough, there was wine instead of water. The people were blown away. "Who are you Jesus?" they asked.
Jesus winked. "Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies. Wait until Easter and won't you be surprised."
With that, they left Cana.
It came to pass that there was a woman named Mary Magdalene, and she was of the oldest profession known to man, known being in the biblical sense, which is to say, she was a whore. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm just pointing out that she sold sex for cash. Come on, we've all done it.
Mary Magdalene heard of Jesus and when he was passing through her hometown, she hooked up with his party. She tried all her charms, because Jesus was getting famous and she thought he'd be the perfect man to save her from a life on Jerusalem Boulevard. Not that he looked like Richard Gere, but you just never knew. She tried batting her eyelashes, she tried wearing lingerie from Victoria Secret, she tried everything. Finally, almost out of ideas, she bought a bottle of very expensive perfume and sat down to wash his feet.
Judas flipped. "Why is that whore washing your feet with that perfume? You have enough cologne to scent the entire nation of Israel and we could have sold that perfume for gold. We could have had something to eat other than bloody fish and bread!"
"Judas," Jesus said. "You are doing well. Just neurotic enough to make it believable. But you see, yes she's a whore, but that's not bad. And yes we could have sold it, but I am the Son of God. I could feed us venison if I wanted to."
"We could have given the money to the poor then."
"There will always be poor. The Roman Empire is built upon the backs of poor people, and once the Republicans get into the White House, there'll be no going back. There will always be poor, and anyone who tries to sell a trickle-down theory of economics is full of it. But that's all beside the point. Mary is the only one of you who's even bothering to be nice to me. You all seem like you're just along for the ride, and for the love of God, I'm sick of it."
With that, Jesus left in a huff. The rest of the apostles, not knowing what to make of their master's hissy fit, went fishing. Not that they liked fishing, in fact, most of them were vegans anyway, but they did look smart cruising around the Sea of Galilee in their boats.
While they were fishing, Jesus appeared on the shore. He was still angry and because he was the Son of God, this anger manifested itself in a huge storm, that kind of summer storm when the sky gets dark in the space of seconds and the rain comes flooding down like some sort of ark-necessitating madness.
Then just to prove a point, Jesus proceeded to walk out across the lake toward the boat. Peter, seeing this, was amazed, because you see, even though Jesus had told his disciples their identity, they hadn’t believed him.
“Master,” Peter said, “can I walk out and join you?”
“Sure.”
Peter tried, but he started sinking immediately. Jesus came up to him and lifted him out of the water, and once they were both safe on the boat, Peter asked him, “Master, why didn’t I float?”
“Well, I hadn’t been wanting to tell you, but you have been putting on a bit of weight.”
Peter’s expression was wounded, and to make amends, Jesus snapped his fingers and the storm stopped.
“See? I am the Son of God. Not even Zeus could stop a storm with his fingers. My father trained me well.”