+Z’ev

Today’s assigned readings:
Genesis 4:1-16, Hebrews 2:11-18, John 1:29-42

One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).
John 1:40-42

I spend much of my blogging time recounting my past. Of course I remember everything perfectly. On Christmas Eve I reposted one of my favourite essays, the Composite Christmas Memory Medley. Everything in it is true: although none of it actually happened that way. It takes clips and bits of my childhood and my adulthood and combines them all in a mishmash of a story, a treacly-sweet memory compote designed to evoke in the present the Spirit of Christmas Past. Christmases are always so much better in the past! I left out the time that I accidentally opened my Father’s present under the tree, or the time I was throwing up. I totally left out the Christmas I spent with pneumonia or the awkward ones around the time of my Grandfather’s death. I just made it all up, like John Boy did when he wrote the original Walton’s Christmas. Years later we find that Earl Hamner (the real John Boy) didn’t even live on a mountain…

Like that pilot episode, my memories have been cast out into Electronica where they are now locked for eternity. My composite memories are forever gelled into something that would have been unrecognisable to the folks in situ but are easily recognisable to the folks who were there, but enjoy eating the same Memory Compote.

I love this story from the Gospel of John. It totally reverses the event we’ll commemorate later this week, the Confession of Peter.

In the reading for the feast (from Matthew), Simon suddenly announces that Jesus is the Messiah and Jesus names him Peter.

In today’s reading, from John, Andrew says to Simon, “Look, it’s the Messiah” and Jesus names Simon Peter.

It’s the same event described in two different ways: it’s not the “confession” but rather the renaming of Simon to Peter. In this one Peter is told Jesus is the Messiah by his own Elder Brother who figures it all out. In fact, Andrew doesn’t get to say anything else at all in the Gospels.

Neither story has to be true or false for the claim of Roman Primacy to be true or false. What they do seem to indicate - beyond true or false - is that our texts are based less on “Divine Revelation” than on personal remembrances, a Memory Compote crafted by the writer and a long game of telephone.

And as I’ve noticed a lot recently, much of our (Christian) telephone assumes that the first bunch of people, the Apostles, got it right.

Back in 1994, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson reposed. Many of his followers believe that he was the Messiah long sought for by the Jewish people. But most Jews - including some of the Rabbis students - rejected that claim. There are a wide spectrum of beliefs and reactions. And then there comes this quote from The Forward three days after the Rabbi’s death:

There are some in Crown Heights who say they don’t believe the Rebbe is dead, and others who say that his resurrection is imminent. Some of these resurrectionists, who critics within the movement say are straying far from traditional Judaism, have even taken to sleeping near the Rebbe’s grave in a Queens cemetery, hoping to be the first to see their Messiah rise from the dead.

What will happen in 100 years to this movement as the game of Telephone plays out? What memory compote will be constructed?

Much love,

Huw