“What Jesus Meant” – A Train Story

This story begins in the home of many great stories: Borders. One fine day, the hero of our story was casually wandering through Borders on his lunchbreak, and stumbled across a book entitled “What Jesus Meant“. (Not literally of course, what with the book being on a table to stumble over it would have required an acrobatic feat of significant proportions). The aforementioned title was emblazoned boldly across the cover of this particular book, only obscured slightly by the price sticker pronouncing that this book could be purchased for the very reasonable price of eight dollars and ninety five cents.

Impressed by the audacity of the title, the abundant praise offered by intellectuals on the dust jacket, as well as the thriftiness of the potential purchase; our hero made an inspired decision to purchase “What Jesus Meant”, and went back to work. While the rest of his afternoon work was a little dull, he was rejuvenated by the prospect of discovering the treasures found between the covers of his new book, and so the hours went past at quite a reasonable pace until it was finally time for our hero to head off home. He strolled off towards Melbourne Central station, and let a very full train go past in order that he might be able to enjoy his literary expedition whilst resting his derriere at the accommodation of Connex trains.

Once he was comfortably seated by the window of his train, our hero immersed himself in the theological ruminations and exegetical insights of the writings of Mr Garry Wills, all the while with the relaxing tones of Glen Hansard ringing in his ears, courtesy of his portable music device. Althought the carriage was gradually emptying as commuters reached their destinations, our hero barely noticed as the passengers were exiting. As the train sidled up to Nunawading station, and the relevant travellers got up to leave their seats, he noticed a woman gesticulating in his direction, pointing towards the adjacent seat to that which he had perched his posterior. As our hero removed an earbud, he realised that the middle aged lady was in actual fact hoping to strike up a conversation about his book – the title of which was still boldly proclaiming to hold the key to “What Jesus Meant”.

“Fascinating title,” the lady probed. Our hero was caught a little off guard, but unflustered himself enough from the embarrassment of misunderstanding the woman’s intentions enough to reply truthfully:

“Yes, it’s a ripper”. He smiled quietly to himself as he prepared for an evangelistic retort which would leave him (were he not already washed by the blood of the lamb) and his fellow commuters earnestly seeking repentance and making their way to the nearest Billy Graham crusade at the earliest possible convenience. Our hero was a little unprepared for the answer he actually received:

“Have you heard of speaking in tongues? You should look it up”

I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant.