I am in the middle of a massive office cleaning and reorganizing project (yes, the procrastination continues!), and on Saturday I found an old piece someone had sent me on the Internet that I had downloaded and put up on my bulletin board years ago. The paper is crumbling, but it’s funny and I thought I’d include it here. So, in the spirit of blogging, I first did a google search to see if it was already up on the Net. It was — in several different versions. David Weinberger notes, in his book Small Pieces Loosely Joined, that the net can often be understood well using two metaphors — that of the database, and that of the joke (the latter being shorthand for the heavily context dependent way in which we construct our knowing). My experience with this piece suggests that Internet humor might also be an interesting way to trace hermeneutical stance.

Anyway, here’s the piece: Why Teachers Weep

Then Jesus took his disciples up on the mountain and gathered them around him. And then he taught them, saying:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,

Blessed are the meek,

Blessed are the merciful,

Blessed are you who thirst for justice,

Blessed are you who are persecuted,

Blessed are the peacemakers.

And Simon Peter said, “Do we have to write this stuff down?”

And Philip said, “Will this be on the test?”

And Andrew said, “John the Baptist’s disciples don’t have to learn this stuff.”

And Matthew said, “Huh?”

And Judas said, “When am I ever going to use this in real life?”

Then one of the Pharisees, an expert in law, said, “I don’t see any of this in the syllabus. Do you have a lesson plan? Is there an activity for each of the seven intelligences? Where is the study guide? Will there be any authentic assessment? Will remediation and extra credit be provided for those who did not meet class requirements so they can still pass?”

And Thomas, who had missed the sermon, came to Jesus privately and said, “Did we do anything important today?”

And Jesus wept.

It’s interesting enough for someone like me to trace the difference in the beatitudes between Matthew 5:3-12 and Luke 6:20-23, but how much more fun to note the differences in online versions! At PlanetMike you can read the parody with much less reference to updated teaching questions. (You can also find a whole list of fun humor with religious references if you backtrack on the URL to PlanetMike.) At a page connected to the Biology Dept. of Nebraska Wesleyan, you can find it minus the “blessed are you who thirst for justice.” A Danish family has it up with an additional disciple asking “could you repeat everything you just said?” And now I really have to get back to this essay I’m supposed to be writing….