I need a spoof of those card unboxing ads but it’s like Christian saints and the dude flips over getting a holographic St. Therese with a third class relic on the card.
In this Bible story (Matthew 15:21-28), Jesus is traveling abroad when a Canaanite woman runs up and begs Him to cure her daughter, who's being tormented by a demon. Jesus tests her faith, saying His mission is only to the Jews, not to Gentiles like her, but at her humility, persistence, and unshakable faith, He finally honors her and answers her prayer, and her daughter is immediately cured, presumably without Jesus having to go to her at all.
In this cartoon, we cut away from Jesus and the Canaanite woman to imagine the curing of the woman's daughter. In this cartoon, the demon leans over the tormented girl, whispering poison into her soul. Then the angels show up, dressed like mafia heavies. Gabriel, ever the spokesman, plays up the mafioso bit with all the quips, accent, and slang that he can muster. Meanwhile, Michael, ever the warrior, prepares for a very one-sided fight.
Gabriel starts by barging into the house and SAYING "knock knock" instead of actually knocking on the door first. This is a power move to assert dominance.
Gabriel tells the demon to pack up, make like a tree, and scramoose. There's a common idiom that goes thusly: "Make like a tree and LEAVE." It's a way to tell someone to go away while playing on the similarity between the words "leave" (like "go away") and "leaf" or "leaves" (like the green stuff in trees). Gabriel uses the first half of the saying but not the second, which messes up the whole point of the idiom. This is a power move to assert dominance. Because the idiom is so well-known, a subversion like this ends up being funny by cutting off the obvious, expected punchline, and replacing it with something unfitting and absurd. I worked very hard on this new joke, so please don't steal it and go back in time to use it before me so I look like I stole it. Thanks in advance!
"Scramoose" is a mix between "scram" (like "go away") and "vamoose" (like "go away") for double the "go away" action! This is a power move to assert dominance.
For those who don't know, "sign language" is a form of communication where people use hand gestures to represent letters or words. It's commonly used for the hearing or vocally impaired, who can't use normal spoken languages. Because sign language involves "talking" with your hands, in this cartoon, Gabriel uses "sign language" as a euphemism for "beating someone up." This is a power move to assert dominance.
In this Bible story (Matthew 13), a crowd gathers to hear Jesus teach, so He tells them a bunch of parables about the Good News and the Kingdom of God. He says He's teaching in parables because their hidden meanings will reveal themselves to those who are ready to hear, but conceal themselves from those who are not. In the first parable He tells, a sower (someone who plants seed) is sowing seed in fertile soil, but he's tossing seed so generously that some also lands on ground that's not ideal for planting -- places where it'll be eaten by birds, or unable to grow deep roots, or choked by thorns. When Jesus explains the parable later, He says the seed represents the Word of the Kingdom of God; the fertile soil represents souls ready to hear it, take it in, and put it into practice; and the other soils represent souls who are in some way deficient in their reception or dedication to the Word.
In this cartoon, Jesus tells the parable, which is somewhat summarized for the sake of flow. A man in the crowd listens and is confused by the sower's over-abundant sowing because, despite the fact that some of the seed lands on fertile soil, he's also wasting some on soil that won't properly receive it. Of course, with the knowledge of the meaning BEHIND the parable, we realize that the man is, without realizing, critiquing the real sower (Jesus) for wasting seed (the Word of the Kingdom through His teachings) on soil that won't properly receive it (the man, himself). It's terribly ironic, and that makes it funny. Do not question me.
