Scorpio Jesus

A Christology for October and November.

Scorpio is an archetype that’s tied to the stars. It’s a warrior archetype, an archetype of trial and initiation. An archetype of burning and rising, symbolized by an arachnid that becomes an eagle, that becomes a phoenix.

The story below is also an archetype, too, or a version of it, which originally appears to be tied to historical events. Here’s a Scorpio version of the story. It might be fun to listen to “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead while you read it, because that’s what I was listening to on repeat when I wrote it.

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Let’s agree about one thing: there was nothing holy about money-changers in the temple. A giant commerical spectacle splattered across the sacred, intimate act of bringing all of yourself — all of your tangled, gleaming, and murky self — humbly to God. To mercy. The most sacred place now a monument to explotation and greed.

The holiest place is a den of robbers.

That’s why he eventually goes to the temple, to Jerusalem.

“Is this not Jeshua, the son of Joseph, whose mother and father we know?” they have been saying. Among them, he is a young man. They think he’s a builder, a worker. They’re pushing back. Who does he think he is?

But he’s undaunted. He’s called people out of their lives. “Come, follow me,” he says. And they do.

“Stand, walk,” he says. And they do. On water, even. If they believe.

He’s comforted those those beyond comfort. He’s taught that the highest are the ones who serve. He heals. He bends to everyone in need. “Blessed are the meek,” he says. “And those who weep. And those who make peace.”

He’s taught autheticity. He teaches by example. He sits and eats with taxpayers. (This means he sits with everyone.) He sits and eats and drinks. This suggests there’s a fullness to his earth life.

People have criticized him for that. He says, “John came and didn’t eat or drink like you, and you said he had a demon. And now I come and I eat and drink and you say I’m a glutton and a drunkard who’s friends with tax collectors and sinners.”

But some people are into him. He’ll go and rest on a hill, and people will come to him. He’s raising an army, in a way. Mostly, his sword is made of words.

With his words, he calls out in the temples, because the temples are falling. Right in the gathering he’ll call out. Maybe over everyone’s heads. He’ll go to the temple and tell the priests the corrupt and hypocritical things they have done. “You do many things like this,” he says.

To the priests.

But you can get where he’s coming from. Around him, the stupid, self-serving pageantry is eating up the world.

You can get it, right?

(The

stupid,

self-serving,

pageantry

is

eating

up

the

world!)

His followers eat handfuls of grain, on the Sabbath. The priests are mad. He heals on the Sabbath. Then the priests are really mad.

“What’s more important?” he says. “A rule? Or a person?”

“By what authority do you do these things?” the priests ask, in front of everybody.

Let’s break him on the rocks of public opinion, they think.

“I’ll tell you by what authority,” he says. “If you tell me this. Was John was baptized by humans or by heaven?”

The people believe that John was a prophet. If the priests say he wasn’t a prophet, the people will turn against them. If they say he was a prophet, Jesus will say, “Then why didn’t you listen to him?”

So they say, “We don’t know.”

“Then neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’

They plot to kill him. Sometimes he nimbly escapes. “Destroy this temple,” he says. “And in three days I will raise it up.”

He goes to Jerusalem.

Let’s agree: to the extent that God wants anything, it’s easy to suppose that God didn’t want money-changers in that temple. The selling of animals for extravagant sacrifices wasn’t what the tabernacle was about. So, yeah, let’s suppose that he’s carrying the will of God when he goes to Jerusalem.

He’s a young man. And whoever he is, he’s bearing that will. Carrying that will.

And let’s imagine, too, that he already knows what’s coming. Why wouldn’t he? He’s going into the central site of the central city of his people — the temple; the triumph of Solomon, broken by Babylon and re-raised; won yet again by the Maccabees in miraculous, legendary defiance — the temple The temple. He’s going to the temple, to pick a fight. To raise a ruckus. To rouse the rabble, righteously.

What would anyone expect was going to happen after that? He’s been dancing with snakes for years, staying out of range of their fangs. But after this? Who will fight it, if they bite him?

Let’s suppose he might even know, already, how it will end. Really. Regardless of your faith, if a person went and did these things, as smart as Jeshua appears to have been — what would anyone like that have thought was going to happen?

Let’s suppose he knows.

There’s a music in him. And not a tune. It’s an infinite symphony. And it’s in the air, now. People have wanted it in the air, and now it is. It was in him, and it was in them. And now, through him, it’s out. He’s been planting a mustard seed — the plant that spreads in a thatch, far and wide. With his mind, heart, and movement, he’s been writing a story that eventually billions will heed.

And what’s going on in the house of God isn’t right. It just isn’t.

Let’s suppose that he knows exactly what’s going to happen. Including to him. Because it’s been wanting to happen, thirsting toward him, for years.

Let’s suppose he knows . . .

And he goes anyway.

Because it isn’t right. And the love of justice in him is immortal. And the infinite symphony in him is him, and it’s immortal, too. Whatever ends, whatever dies, these selfless loves are self-willing. What rises will be good, and true, and majestic, and pure.

Like a phoenix.