Jesus, a.k.a., Savior, Light Of the World, King Of Kings, and the Messiah by millions, was fired from his job as a carpenter, last week.

                 “Jesus was good at walking on water and all that kind of miracle stuff, but truth be told, he was a lousy carpenter,” says Rodney Smalls, Jesus’ supervisor.    “Truth be told, the only reason Jesus even got this job is because his father pulled some strings.”

                    Records indicate that God may have bribed union officials with gold, frankincense, and myrrh to get Jesus into the carpenters union.   God may have also used threats of eternal damnation as leverage to get Jesus his job.

                “I had to let him go,” Smalls says of Jesus.   “He was always calling out from work with various lame excuses like… he had to go down to Samaria to help the lepers on Monday.  Or like… he had to go down to Antioch to heal the blind on Wednesday.  And like the time he called out because he said he had to go to some church near the Shore of the Sea of Galilee to feed 5000 people with a slice of bread and a box of Pop Tarts.”  Smalls shakes his head, continues.  “And that was in the middle of our big townhouse project in Babylon.”

                      According to building inspection reports, most of the 2×4 wood stud framing that Jesus had completed was not up to code, and had to be redone.

                   “Okay, fine, so I reassigned Jesus to less technically demanding carpentry projects, like building birdhouses down in Babel,” says Smalls.  “Easy, right?”  Smalls frowns, continues.  “The building inspector goes in, cited us again because the birdhouses were nowhere near up to code.  Caused a spark with the electrical.  Caused a big fire.”

                        Now we know where all that extra fried chicken at the Last Supper came from.

                  “The last straw was when Jesus didn’t show up to work one day – no call, no show, no Jesus, no nothing,” Smalls says.   “And then out of the blue, Jesus shows up 3 days later with a note from his father that read:”  Please excuse Jesus’ absence from work.  He was crucified by the hands of the Romans, who were particulary cruel to him, especially Roman Polanski.   Please grant Jesus 3 days of FMLA and resurrection paid leave.