“Here’s a piece to begin with. You remember young Heinz and Monika Teitel, who were here last night.”
I said I did.
“They’ve followed me through a complete course of lectures and so have heard at least once everything I’m able to say in public that I feel will be comprehensible. But you don’t become a Christian by hearing one sermon, you don’t become a Freudian by hearing one lecture, and you don’t become a Marxist by reading one pamphlet. If an outsider asks the Teitels something that goes beyond anything they’ve heard from me, they must refer the question to me. They know what I’m saying, but my message is not sufficiently theirs that they can generate answers of their own. For them, the mosaic is only a rough sketch.
“Frau Doktor Hartmann has twice followed me through my course of lectures and has attended many more such soirees as we engaged in here last night. If an outsider asks her a question that goes beyond anything she’s heard from me, she may try to deal with it, but when she reports her answer to me, she usually finds out that my answer would have been quite different from hers—sometimes even contradictory to hers. She too knows what I’m saying, but my message is not sufficiently hers that she can generate answers with certainty. She can see the general outlines clearly enough, but the image in the mosaic is still rather shadowy.
“Michael, on the other hand, has been with me a bit longer than Frau Hartmann, and if an outsider asks him a question beyond anything he’s heard from me, he almost never gets the answer wrong, though it will probably lack the depth and assurance that it would have if it came from me. The message is almost his, and the image in the mosaic is substantially complete, though still a bit vague, almost as if it were not quite in perfect focus yet.
“But Shirin has been with me longer than anyone, and if an outsider asks a question that goes beyond anything she’s heard from me, she’ll answer without hesitation. Her answer will not necessarily have the same emphasis as mine would have or be delivered in the same style or reflect an identical point of view, but it will have the same authenticity and power, because the mosaic image she’s referring to for her answer is as solid and well-focused as mine is. The message is he
rs entirely. It’s as much hers as it is mine. She is the message in the same sense that I am the message.”
B paused as if for a response, and I told him that I understood what he was saying but wasn’t sure why he was saying it.
“I’m giving you a second look at something I talked about at our first meeting,” B said. “When Jesus departed, he left no one behind who was the message.”
I managed to suppress an urge to blurt out a “Wow,” but wow was certainly what sprang to mind. This was undeniably true—not in any sense a condemnation, but undeniably true. Jesus left behind no one who could speak with his authority, no one who could say “This is what’s what.” There were very elementary questions the apostles couldn’t answer with confidence, like: To what degree were those of the new dispensation bound by the laws of the old dispensation? You can hardly get more fundamental than that. In fact, it was St. Paul—a man who had never even seen Jesus—who ended up saying “This is what’s what” with more authority than anyone else could muster. More than John or Peter or James (as far as we know), Paul was the message. But even with the writings of Paul and all the evangelists, it still took three hundred years of Christian thought to reconstitute Christ’s message—to piece together the hints, reconcile apparent contradictions, cut away heresies and lunacies and irrelevancies, and organize it into a self-consistent, coherent creed that more or less everyone could agree on.
Even so, I told B that I still didn’t quite know what he was getting at.
“Last night I talked about changing minds. I said that if the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds. Not by programs. By people with changed minds.”
“I remember.”
“What you’re here for today is to have your mind changed.”
I looked at him blankly.
“Right now, Jared, what message are you?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“When Jesus departed, he left no one behind who was the message. None of the apostles was his message. You understand what I mean by that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not in the same condition as those apostles. Are you?”
“No, I guess I’m not.”
“Are you or aren’t you?”
I’m not.
“Christ’s message is yours, isn’t it? If I ask you whether premarital sex is right or wrong, you won’t have to call Fr. Lulfre to find out the answer, will you?”
“No.”
“If I ask you whether suicide is right or wrong, you won’t have to consult the scriptures, will you?”
“No.”
“You possess these answers as your own. These and ten thousand others like them.”
“That’s right.”
“Then I’ll ask again: What message are you?”