Motel of the Mysteries.
He is famous for creating bestseller nonfiction books that visually educate us on all sorts of things.* In Motel of the Mysteries, Macaulay uses fiction to poke a little fun at archeology and our modern world.
The set up: 2000 years from now most of the American continent is covered in a thick layer of petrified material. It has become one giant archeological site; people from across the globe try to piece together what life was like before the not-fully-understood catastrophe made it uninhabitable.
Macaulay uses humor to shows us how easy it is, despite best intentions, to get it all wrong. Absent any written record, there is plenty of room for misinterpretation. There are some pretty humorous parallels to Howard Carter's excavation of Tutankhamen's tomb. Every time something is discovered about life, before, it is assumed to have religious significance. And that's what happens when the ground gives way beneath an amateur archeologist. He drops several feet into what he concludes is a previously undisturbed "burial" chamber in one of the former civilization's mysterious "motels."
A great part of the fun in reading through Motel of the Mysteries is that, due to Mr. Macaulay's remarkable drawings, we readers recognize everything and know it is not what they think it is. Some of my favorites are the Sacred Urn (commode), the Sacred Point (foil seal on the toilet paper roll), and the "Plant That Would Not Die." We know, though, that it's just a motel room and that each discovered item is not something of religious significance.
If you have any interest in archeology —whether you read Michener's "The Source" cover to cover or are just a fan of Indiana Jones— you should find this an entertaining afternoon’s read.
And that brings us to this week's scriptures. Somewhat like Macaulay's future archeologists, we must decide what actually happened in the past. We read of a day many of us consider the most important in all of history, if not all eternity. It’s important we figure out what we are going to believe and why. History can be a messy process. Archeologists, scholars, and historians do the best they can with the resources available to them. Often, the only resources available are the reports of witnesses. In the end, though, it’s up to us to decide for ourselves how much of history we are willing to believe.
In the case of that long ago Sunday morning, we are lucky. Some people took the time to write down what contemporaries saw, thought, felt, heard, said, and did that morning. Sure, there are still many mysteries. But we can now be confident there really was a tomb ... and that it really was empty when they got there.
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*Books such as The Way Things Work, The Way We Work, Castle, and Pyramid
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Friday morning is Good Friday. Join us at DaySpring’s Lectionary Breakfast 8:00 to 9:00. Bring your favorite breakfast beverage to the Zoom call and enjoy an hour of scripture, discussion, and laughter ... a good Friday indeed.
Contact me for the Zoom link.
NOTE: Zoom allows you to mute the camera if you don’t wish to be seen and to mute the microphone if you don’t wish to speak.
Blessings,
Steve
SCRIPTURES FOR THE COMING WEEK
Find them on this Table of Easter Season Readings:
Easter (April 4, 2021)
Resurrection of the Lord
Acts 10:34-43
Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
1 Corinthians 15:1-11
John 20:1-18
Mark 16:1-8
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