Brahms or Oblivion
What a dumb thing. Wakened from sleep at three-twenty-something Monday morning by a dream discussing with some obviously bored person, reasons the Gospel of Peter was excluded from the New Testament canon of Scripture. Rather have had the sleep. Better, to have continued the preceding dream of a car in the garage out back, ὁ ἀναγινώσκων νοείτω, foolishness of an old man.
A passion narrative based, like the canonical gospels, on oral traditions, and said to date from the mid-first century, the Gospel of Peter is a fragment. Or perhaps this was the entirety of it, who knows: could its opening and closing be literary devices? Unlike the canonical gospels, which are anonymous (except see the secondary ending of John 21:24 ) it directly claims Simon Peter authorship -- which would explain its early acceptance by some.
After early acceptance, why would the Gospel of Peter eventually have been excluded from the canon? One reason could be because a criterion for inclusion may have been theological orthodoxy at the time: that the writing not contain heresy. The Gospel of Peter contains a couple of odd verses. “But he was silent as having no pain” (verse 10b). Also, “And the Lord screamed out, saying: 'My power, O power, you have forsaken me.' And having said this, he was taken up” (verse 19). The heresy would be Docetism, that he was not human after all but only seemed human, actually felt no pain on the Cross, obliterating our theology that he suffered and died for us. Verse 19 could be taken to mean that he did not actually die but was taken up directly; and further, that the physical Jesus was separate from the spiritual Christ and was left to die like any human while the Christ was lifted away. If those theological elements were not perceived in the first-to-mid-second century, they certainly would have been heretical to the framers of the Nicene Creed a couple of centuries later, decimating orthodox Christian belief. Peter also contains incredible legendary elements, including a talking Cross and a stone that rolls itself away. And it is anti-semitic in the extreme, perhaps reflecting later struggles between the synagogues and the developing church.
That mental twisting is what woke me this Monday morning. Sitting up on the edge of the bed and gazing out into the darkness over St. Andrews Bay, my next thought was to repeat for early breakfast what I had for supper. Linda found a jar of black caviar on the high shelf of the cabinet with my teas, so I had a Russian sandwich. One 40-calorie slice of wheat bread, smeared lightly with butter to hold the caviar, two plastic picnic spoons of caviar spread out evenly. Fold and eat. Delicious. Followed by a furosemide pill. For caviar, custom is to use a mother of pearl spoon because metal, silver, affects the taste. With no mother of pearl spoon, I use plastic. Works for me. So did the lasix: all night long.
My focused interest for this Easter Season continues to be death and our notions about resurrection and heaven. And how do I take it that the red Duesenberg is missing from the garage out back? What’s still there? A blue Oldsmobile actually. Get serious. What does all this have to do with --
Yesterday at HNEC we heard a superior sermon on the gospel from John 14 about the mansions: the Kingdom is here and now. Yes, I agree. Not a new idea, but to bear in mind. What am I hoping for, what is my hope for myself? Maybe, absence. Like wherever I was the morning of January 24, 2011 when the dreams I had prepared didn’t appear.
Of yesterday, the Holliday-Reedie concert was itself an hour in heaven. Just over an hour. I loved it all. The wee-waw-wee-waw-wee-waw in the John Williams piece will forever haunt my closeted German heritage, but I could go for An Evening with Brahms. Or longer: an eternity with Brahms could be what heaven actually is. No mansion, no cars, red or blue, Olds or Duesy. Silence. Out of darkness into the marvelous light. Brahms.
Music, or silence: I’m good.
W