The Bible's vast trove of absurd content is rivaled only by the sheer number of people who have masturbated to hotel pay-per-view porn within five feet of said hotel Bible.
Every Sunday, a passage from the first four chapters of the New Testament, called a gospel, is read aloud by a priest. This man is required to take many vows to serve as a priest. As a result of his vow of celibacy, the priest's testicles serve only as fertile ground for carcinogenesis and Arabian goggles to place on the parish deacon's eyes while he's sleeping.
The required vow of celibacy was enacted because the Catholic Church thought that a priest's divorce presented substantial risk to its land ownership stakes. This risk avoidance was offset by the risks associated with placing sex-deprived men with the community's trust in close proximity to young boys.
This man's idea of interacting with the parish is having dinner with the front row altar-side season ticket holders. He is expected to convey how a translation of a passage written over 1000 years ago following a centuries-long game of telephone relates to your everyday experiences.
The priest's attempt at applying the gospel's principles to the present is called a homily and they are about as enjoyable as post-marathon nipple play.
The slow proliferation of comedic analysis since the Bible's first publish has allowed priests to pass the Bible off as a legitimate and relevant source of literature, despite falling short of the extinct dictionary and encyclopedia's Lil Jon & the Eastside Boyz low level of legitimacy and relevance. I can no longer stand idly by while the Bible goes unroasted amidst this golden age of comedy and over-analysis.
This is why I have chosen to write a verse-by-verse deconstruction of the gospel reading, to be read from the world's most shoplifted book during mass on January 3rd, 2016.
God's Baby's First Investment Pitch
1 When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of King Herod, behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem,
2 saying, "Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star at its rising and have come to do him homage."
–Matthew 2:1-2 The New American Bible, Revised
The story of the Magi is one that has been told throughout the ages. Three men were ordered to kill Anck Su Namun and High Priest Imhotep upon discovering their infidelity and subsequent murder of Pharoah Seti.
After the incident, these three men followed a bright star in the sky in order to deliver gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the king of kings. The maji hoped Jesus would grow up and use the frankincense and myrrh to develop a proprietary blend for His signature cologne. Jesus' omniscient business acumen coupled with smart investment of the maji gold in building inventory and targeted marketing strategies allowed Acqua to Wine Di Gio by Jesus Christ to make a huge splash on the then burgeoning fragrance industry.
The maji would use the profits from their equity stake in the massively popular fragrance to form a venture capitalist investment firm that accumulated massive income for thousands of years that would eventually fund the three movies that comprised The Mummy franchise.
Binge-Read Procrastination Techniques
3 When King Herod heard this, he was greatly troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.
4 Assembling all the chief priests and the scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.
–Matthew 2:3-4 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
King Herod had yet to read the Old Testament and his subjects were forbidden from discussing spoilers in his presence. This enabling resulted in an unpreparedness when confronted with holy prophecies that oppose a ruler's goals.
If King Herod had simply binge read the book of Exodus then he would have known that much like the Pharoah of ancient Egypt who attempted to prevent the rise of Moses and the Jews' exodus, his actions would fail to impact God's convoluted plan.
Instead, to prove that he was the one true ruler, he decided he was going to kill a baby. Herod hoped killing a defenseless newborn infant would finally make his dad proud enough to love him.
Priests and scribes whose bullshit teachings may be jeopardized by a holy bringer of truth met with King Herod to discuss methods of the super late-term abortion to take place. There they brainstormed dead baby Messiah jokes and devised their plan that would ultimately be about as successful as Oscar Pistorius' attempt to thwart home invasion.
King Herod's and Bill Clinton's Somewhat Comforting Consolation Prizes
5 They said to him, "In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it has been written through the prophet:
6 And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; since from you shall come a ruler, who is to shepherd my people Israel.'"
–Matthew 2:5-6 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
The priests and scribes in addition to feeding King Herod killer dead baby Messiah jokes, offered him solace in the fact that he was winner of the consolation prize of being King of Judea during the time of the Messiah.
Monica Lewinsky offered Bill Clinton similar advice when she told him that although he would never win three consecutive NBA championships, he got to serve as president during the Messiah of basketball's reign.
Exhausted by the first lady's refusal to give "first head," Slick Willy allowed Monica to display her oratory prowess, rivaled only by Hillary Clinton's use of 9/11 to justify campaign donations by the Wall Street that crashed metaphorical planes into the Twin Towers that were 2007's U.S. and world economies.
Relating to a Time of Flip Phones and Transportation via Camel
7 Then Herod called the magi secretly and ascertained from them the time of the star's appearance.
8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and search diligently for the child. When you have found him, bring me word, that I too may go and do him homage."
–Matthew 2:7-8 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
King Herod whipped out his Motorola RAZR, Judea's highest selling phone from 3-5 A.D., and hit up the three maji who were currently on their journey to diversify their respective portfolios.
Despite the desert's low bars, and the inconvenient design and poor sound quality of Balthazar's Nokia N-Gage, King Herod let the maji know to shoot him a text when they find the Messiah so he could pay homage to the little homie.
King Herod told the maji to "search diligently for the child" because of Herod's deep regret of failing to see David Copperfield during his last trip to Vegas, and he didn't want the maji to miss out on seeing baby Christ Angel mind freak because they were too busy hitting up all the casinos on the Gaza strip.
Jesus' Life, Love, and Showmanship are Everlasting
After their audience with the king they set out. And behold, the star that they had seen at its rising preceded them, until it came and stopped over the place where the child was.
–Matthew 2:9 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
Like most magicians, Christ never shied away from a chance to make a grand and brightly lit entrance. Jesus created a supernova from a nearby solar system's sun that resulted in hundreds of mass extinctions across that sun's dependent planets and a bad ass marquee for the stable that paradoxically implied Jesus' humility.
Investment Groups and Animal Poop
10 They were overjoyed at seeing the star,
11 and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
–Matthew 2:10-11 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
The maji were so blown away by the brightly lit star that they immediately snapped a group photo with Balthazar's Nokia N-Gage, but were saddened that they had no way to share the picture with their friends and acquaintances, so they approached the king of kings after woefully deciding that the experience might as well not even happened.
The maji then entered the stable and made their investment pitch to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the farm animals whose bowels had exploded with diarrhea upon witnessing the birth of the Messiah.
Mary and Joseph were so relieved to smell something other than the flood of livestock poop water and Mary's divine afterbirth that they stopped the maji halfway through their pitch and struck a deal with them.
King Herod: The Man of Our Dreams
And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way.
–Matthew 2:12 The New American Bible, Revised Edition
After the maji got bored of holding the baby and Mary talking about the birth in graphic detail, they decided to leave the next day. The maji had "been warned in a dream not to return to Herod." The three men, out of sheer obedience to things they don't understand, based a major life decision on a dream, like any sane person would do. This led the maji to travel away from King Herod trusting that God would never let anybody wander the desert for 40 years.
Don't Question Your Dreams, For the Holy Spirit Can Invade Your Neurons
This passage tells the story of three men looking to turn some gold into a large amount of whatever currency would overtake the inefficient exchange of precious metals and minerals. King Herod failed to see the consequences of killing God's baby son and failed to actually kill said baby. If one tried to extract a lesson from this ancient tale, it would be that dreams aren't just our brain's nonsensical attempt to interpret data that can in large part be based on our diet or state of hydration.
Much like the other bodily processes whose mechanisms could not be fully observed in biblical times, we must apparently accept the Bible's simplification of these processes, lest we fall to the same fate as the Babylonians who wanted to build a really tall building, and Adam and Eve who were created by God with full knowledge that they couldn't resist eating an apple from the tree of knowledge, but were still made to feel guilty about it as if God's plan allowed for multiple trajectories.