Lecture 13 The Song of God: "Whom Do Men Say That I Am?"

[Rebbe]

The Song of God

A Fresh Appraisal of the Christian Doctrine of the Ultimate Destiny of Humankind:
IMCF Lectures on God's Universal Salvation

by

Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Rebbe



Copyright © BRI, 1996
Lecture Format © 2016
All Rights Reserved Worldwide

Originally Produced as a BRI Study Manual



LECTURE 13

"Whom Do Men Say That I Am?"
                                                             (Mark 8.27)

-1-

It was too late for Yeshu to back away now. The events he had set in motion were flowing on toward an inevitable orgasm of reality. He watched the flaming torches steadily moving through the trees toward his lair on Olivet, the fires flickering and darting with the slight breeze of the late Jerusalem evening. The disciples, his faithful talmidim, were slumbering together on the soft grass between the rocks in this their secret meeting place. Yeshu's long, callused but gentle fingers pressed intensely against both sides of his forehead and indented harshly with a rubbing motion in a dislocated attempt to lighten the ferocious pounding in his skull. Not singing this time, watching the steadily approaching torches close enough now to discern faces and to hear the snorting of Roman horses, the Messianic Pretender began to mumble from the Hallel,

"Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the Name of the Lord, Let the Name of the Lord be praised, both now and forevermore... The Lord is exalted over all the nations... Who is like the Lord our G-d, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth... Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the G-d of Yaakov... Not to us, O Lord, not to us but to your Name be the glory... Why do the nations say, Where is their G-d? Our G-d is in heaven, he does whatever pleases him!... trust in the Lord... trust in the Lord... he is their help and shield. You who fear him, trust in the Lord, he is their help and shield, For the Lord remembers us and will bless us... It is not the dead who praise the Lord, those who go down to silence. It is we who extol the Lord, both now and forevermore... I love the Lord for he heard my voice, he heard my cry for mercy, because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me, I was overcome by trouble and sorrow, then I called on the Name of the Lord: O Lord! save me!... when I was in great need, he saved me! Be at rest O my soul!... For you O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I believed!... I will lift up the cup of my salvation and call on the Name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord... Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints... I will sacrifice... to you and call on the Name of the Lord... I will fulfill my vows to the Lord... in your midst, O Jerusalem!... the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever... In my anguish I cried to the Lord, and he answered by setting me free. The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid, What can man do to me?... I will look in triumph on my enemies!... All the nations surrounded me... on every side... they swarmed around me... I was pushed back and about to fall... Shouts of joy and victory!... I will not die but live!... The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death... The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone... This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it! O LORD, save us... Blessed is he who comes in the Name of the Lord."

The frenzy of thoughts tumbling through the Messiah's brain disappeared abruptly with the sharp, sudden snorts and restless neighing of a stallion not sixty feet away at the edge of the orchard. The crunching of long grass beneath the feet of Roman sandals echoed crisply through the Jerusalem breeze, moving relentlessly closer toward the fugitive. A never-before experienced panic gripped Yeshu. His mental iron control and cool demeanour loosened unexpectedly and the pit of his stomach gripped as he felt he wanted to vomit. The lucidly flowing glory of the Davidic dream was now not uppermost in his thoughts. The intentional degree of obsessive, stringent plotting calculated to arrange events according to the dictates and demands of the Messianic prophecies, early in his ministry aimed at culminating in just this Moment, were shattered as the nightmarish realisation that his time had come began to penetrate his deepest psyche. He had prayed that he would not have to drink from his chalice of sour vinegar -- that the necessity to do so would pass. But now it was too late. The goblet was already at his lips. He swayed with the palpitations of his heart and cold perspiration broke forth. Fighting the urge to faint Yeshu scrambled stumbling to the rocks where his talmidim lay snoring into the dew-braced night air. Yeshu shook Kefa aggressively by the shoulders.

"Rise! Quickly! Let us be going! For my betrayer comes now!" (Matthew 26.46).

But it was far too late for anyone to alter the flow of history. The climax of the ages had found their centre stage in his love for Man. To this end had the Lord led Yeshu. To this end was he born. To this consummation, and for our salvation.

Sheer momentum carried Y'hudah the Sicarii forward as he walked with unconscious stiltered steps through the craggy crevices to the lair, at once familiar territory. The Lord elevated from his crouched position over the wakening Kefa and slowly, with an altogether natural and unintentional dignity, turned and faced his dearest friend. They had shared sweet counsel together. They had laughed and cried and fished and swum and boasted together. They had walked arm in arm to the Temple to rejoice and worship together. They had been, since children, inseparable. And Y'hudah was more than a mere student, more than an alert disciple. Sometimes the Lord had felt they shared the same body. But Y'hudah's impatience with Yeshu's apparent vacillation to declare himself King of Israel, when the Qumranic Zealots were now insisting, nay, demanding, an unreserved commitment, had run aground. Yeshu uncharacteristically seemed indecisive.

But why?

He had openly and defiantly ridden an unbroken colt of an ass into occupied Jerusalem, fulfilling an ancient Messianic prophecy, singularly signalling himself as the expected Messiah and startling the agitated troops of the Fifth Procuratorship of Judaea. And this was accomplished right in the face of Roman troops who were spurred and fueled as a consequence of the Fourth Philosophy's expectations of an imminent uprising in the very heart of Pilatus' territory. The Roman Governor was already tenuously strung like a stretched rubber band, steeled by bloody Zealot aspirations. He and the hardened troops at his command were ready, nervously seeking opportunity to release their pent-up aggression against these ungrateful Jewish subjects of Caesar's Pax Romana.

On the heels of his daring self-declaration as long-awaited heir apparent to the Davidic throne, Yeshu had launched an attack on the sacred Temple precincts with such unbridled fury that the Temple police stood in the wings and watched incredulously as it happened. The political power of the Sadducees had thus been successfully undermined. And in the shadows of Jerusalem, amid the joyous teeming Passover celebrants, the Revolutionary Front waited for Y'hudah's signal. But with the city in upheaval as the Zealots charged the Fortress Antonia the Lord Yeshu had retreated to his hideaway on the Mount of Olives, and Y'hudah had overheard him tell Kefa: "I am depressed. I am in low spirits." He had not confided his feelings this time with Y'hudah. He had turned instead to Kefa, Yaakov and Yochanan. So now he would force his darling into action. The restored Kingdom of David would now be a reality. The apocalyptic war of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness was about to erupt.

Y'hudah embraced his Lord and as Yeshu placed his arms about him in urgent tone and in sensitive response Y'hudah placed a swift kiss on the Messiah's cheek. He was surprised, caught off guard, when he pulled away from his reluctant Messiah, to feel something sticky on his face. Hesitantly he put his fingers to his own cheek and then stared dumbly at his hand. It was smeared with a thick gluey substance and it stenched of smeared perspiration and blood. In the flickering of the torches the Sicarii stared almost painfully into Yeshu's eyes. Torment stared back. Blood was trickling from swollen vessels in haMashiach's forehead, dribbling into the intensity of his eyebrows. Judah had only now noticed how frail Yeshu actually was. He was human after all. Arrested, the Romans led his King away. But amid the celebration of animated chatter from the Temple police Judah thought he heard his friend chanting something like "His love endures forever." But, then he thought he was probably mistaken.

-2-

The crucifixion of Yeshu occurred in two stages. The total experience according to Mark lasted six hours, from the "third hour" (Mark 15.25, about 9 a.m.) to around the "ninth hour" (Mark 15.34, about 3 p.m.). It is clearly the case that Yeshu was in constant communication with his God from the third hour until noon, the sixth hour. It was during this daylight portion of his agony that he interceded for his enemies (Luke 23.34) -- indeed, the very ones who had subjected him to such horrendous inhuman torture. At least four others died with him that day, two zealots under the same sentence of subversion and treason against Rome (Luke 23.40) -- only one of whom reviled the Messiah -- and two other revolutionaries (Mark 15.27) both of whom "also heaped insults on him" (Mark 15.32). However, darkness came over the Golgotha district from about the sixth hour (noon) to around the ninth hour (Matthew 27.45, approximately 3 p.m.). During the daylight period of three hours Yeshu fulfilled the burnt, meat and peace offerings which were according to Moses "a sweet savour to the Lord" (Leviticus 1,2,3). But during the latter three hours which swept Yeshu into the void of eternity, he was subject to a spiritual metamorphosis, becoming not only sinner in the sight of God, but the actualisation and personification of sin itself, fulfilling that which was typified by both sin offerings and trespass offerings (Leviticus 4,5).

Rav Shaul told the Messianic Community based at Corinth that Yeshu was "made to be sin" (2 Corinthians 5.21) "who knew no sin."

Yeshu had said as much himself. "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3.14).

Serpent and God at one in the crucified Man. The unity of the polarity of opposites in the Lord Yeshu. Heaven and hell melded into common unison: the illusory nature of Being. The uni-verse ("one song") brought back into oneness with and in its Creator. The Song of God.

-3-

"Eli! Eli! L'mah sh'vaktani?" (My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?)

It is impossible for any of us to love perfection. Human nature revolts at anything that is remotely pure. We proceed, rather, to violate it. Even as children of light, we tend to shy away from its penetrating brightness, its illumination of the dark. None of us love God. We can admire God. We can adore God. We can respect, hold in high esteem, and even appreciate God. But we cannot love Him.

It is ever and only Yeshu that we truly love. Yeshu, who became flesh and dwelt among us. This man we love. This man who claimed God was his Father. This man who claimed to be haMashiach. This man who took our sufferings into himself. Who bore our sicknesses and diseases. This man who writhed, and cried, and sobbed, and screamed, and yelled, and screeched silently into the heavens as the large spikes were driven mercilessly into his tender flesh in a bloodied orgy of violent mashing of sinew, torn and lacerated muscle, deviated skeleton and dislocated bone; this ugly creation of a pathetic bitter-sweet coitus of suffering, burning carcass and roughly hewn timber pulpit. It is this stark embodiment of godly imperfection that we love. It is the whimpering raped one, mouth tightly closed "as a sheep that is led to the slaughter" that we love, failing to bring a just curse or retaliatory accusation against either his perverse molesters or sadistic lictor. It is the tormented man looking back into the face of Y'hudah the idealistic Sicarii, with pity and compassion that we love. It is Yeshu who tempted Y'hudah that we love.

It is more than this.

It is the crucified Christ, wearing our face, that we love. It is the man stripped of his garments that we love. It is the Universal Man shouting his innocent nakedness to the wide world that we love. It is the white, cold corpse of the Son of Man that we love.

"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the kapparah for our sins" (1 John 4.10).

Reprobate Man.

Sinful Man.

Lost Man.

Sin Itself.

The World.

Us.

Yeshu.


-4-

It got darker. The clouds intensified. Yeshu was silent. Sand blistered eyes and cut into skin. The Jewish leaders and witnesses began departing. It was virtually over. God had not miraculously intervened to save this wild-eyed visionary who courted disaster, who played the prophet, manipulated men, and who deceived the masses.

The wind began to howl now. Some scrubby children hurled a few more rocks and stones at the hanging raw flesh. The swelling heart hiding behind a gaping rib cage was feebly trying to pump life back into the dying burden. A Roman soldier on horseback vigorously rode up through the deserting mob, drawing his lance. Yeshu looked up, psychically sensing his approach. The figure was a blur. Straining through matted dried blood, punctuated and bulbous eyes he looked upwards past a flapping red cape into the heavens, and tried to smile.

In his arrant sinfulness he saw the Father reaching out to embrace him, smiling warmly.

"It is accomplished."

As the lance thrust vertically at his tortured, aching body, a glimpse of light from the sun breaking through the gloomy greyness of the late afternoon, glinted on its sharpened edge.

The Father spoke.

"It's for the world," He said.

THIS CONCLUDES LECTURE THIRTEEN