Lee Sandlin
Reification - Belles Lettres
Reification - Belles Lettres
our motto.

There is no antidote against the opium of Time. — sir thomas browne, urn burial

realia.

The Gospel of Light

♦♦♦

     A harmless little amateur version of a text that has eluded generation after generation of professionals.

There was a man named Nicodemus, an Inquisitor, a ruler of the Jews. He came to Iesou by night, and he said:

Rabbi, we know you're a teacher who has come from God, because nobody is able to make the signs you make unless God is with him.

Iesou answered: You can't see into the realm of the stars unless you're born from above.

Nicodemus says to him, How can a man be born when he's old? Can he go back into his mother's womb to be born a second time?

Iesou answered:

You can't belong to the starry empire unless you are born both from the water and from the sky. What's born from the flesh belongs to the flesh; what's born from the wind belongs to the wind. You shouldn't be surprised that I say to you, you need to be born from above. The wind blows as it wills, and you hear its voice as it passes, but you can't say where it comes from or where it goes. This is how it is with the children of the wind.

Nicodemus said to him, How can such things be?

This was Iesou's answer:

You're a teacher of Israel, and you don't know these things? I tell you this: we speak what we know; we testify to what we've seen. But you won't accept our testimony. So if I teach you about the earth and you don't believe me, how will you believe me if I teach you about the stars?

Nobody knows what the stars are, except somebody who has come down out of the sky: a human child who belongs to the stars.

The star-child must be raised up the way that Moses lifted up a snake in the desert -- so that those who believe in him will live.

This is how much God loves this world: he has given it his only son, and everyone who puts their trust in him will live.

God didn't send his son to judge the world, but to save the world. Those who trust in him aren't going to be judged. Those who don't trust are already judged.

And this is the judgment: a light has come into the world.

***

The road he took went through Samaria. And so he comes to a town called Sychar, which is near the land that Iacob gave to Iosephus. There is a fountain there known as Iacob's well. Iesou was tired from the journey and he sat for a while beside it. This was midday, about the sixth hour. Iesou's followers had gone away into town to buy food. A woman came out to draw water, and Iesou said to her, Let me drink some.

She answered: A Jew asks a Samarian woman for water? The Jews have nothing to do with the Samarians.

Iesou answered: If you knew what God gives, and who is asking you, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

She says to him, Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where do you get this living water? Are you greater than Iacob, who gave us the well, and drank from it himself, with his sons and his cattle?

Iesou answered: Everyone who drinks water from this well will thirst again. But whoever drinks of the water I will give, will never thirst. The water I give will become a fountain within you, that will spring up into inexhaustible life.

The woman says to him, Sir, give it to me, so that I won't be thirsty any more and won't have to come here to draw water.

Iesou says to her, Go, call your husband, and return here.

She says, I don't have a husband.

Iesou says, You've said it well, that you don't have a husband. You've had five husbands, and the man you have now is not your husband. You've spoken truly.

The woman says to him, Sir, I can see now that you're a prophet. This mountain is where our fathers performed their ceremonies of worship. But your people say you can only worship in Jerusalem.

Iesou says, Woman, trust me, the time is coming when it won't matter whether you worship the father either in this mountain or in Jerusalem. Your people worship -- you don't know what. My people worship what we know -- the salvation of the Jews. But the time is coming, the time is here, when the true worshippers will worship in the air of truth. The father is seeking them out now to worship him. God is in the wind; those who worship him are going to feel the breath of God.

The woman says, I know one is coming who has been marked out by God, who's called the Shining One. When he comes, he'll explain all these things.

Iesou says to her, I'm the one explaining them to you now.

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