Infancy Gospel of Henry Rutgers

As many of you know the buildings of Rutgers Church are undergoing long-deferred and desperately needed repair work. This summer, most of the work was done on and around the roof. Quite often we are faced with unpleasant discoveries of rusted beams, collapsing ceilings and crumbling walls, but occasionally we come across some spectacular surprises. For instance in this last week of astronomic summer we made an epochal discovery. Coiled up in an unused pipe behind the water tower was another fragment of the long-lost Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. Here is my first tentative transcription:
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Now this Jesus, when he was a little boy, like two or three he was, his grandfather Jack kept a vegetable garden just behind their home. And he toddled all the time behind his beloved grandpa. One day Jack went to his garden to pick up snails from his lettuce and strawberries and he just kept crushing them under his feet. And Jesus is behind him and snapping his fingers, and making them whole again right behind his sandals. And Jack is like, “Are you kidding me? I could not believe this!” and “Don’t do it!” But snap, snap, snap, he restored every single one of them together with their shells and tentacles and even slimy paths. “We are not going to have anything from my garden this year, this little rascal loves pests better than my strawberries!” Announced Jack at home. But overnight Joseph had a dream, the angel of the Lord gave him some clear instructions and in the morning he made a nice wooden box with a mash over it. Snap, snap, snap Jesus brought out all the snails from grandpa’s garden into his box and kept them there in a snail-zoo, feeding them with some odd lettuce, cabbage and turnip leaves, and releasing them right before the autumn hibernation. That is how Jesus saved snails and at the same time everyone could enjoy strawberry ice cream and green salads that summer, and next year Mary learned to make delicious escargot to keep the infestation under control, while Jesus grew ever taller and more mature in spirit.

    This story clearly does not contain any genuine historical gospel text as anyone can see - strawberries were not cultivated in the biblical times and escargot was never kosher!* What we have in front of us is a fragment of an infancy gospel which only attempts to look like authentic Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers** while it is ignorant of contemporary Jewish customs. But this verdict does not mean it is completely devoid of any meaning. Just like other stories about infant Jesus our fragment is not genuine material, but it still highlights some authentic and very important biblical themes: God has a week spot for all the creatures who are being labeled pests; God strives and struggles for all creatures who are being crushed, God has a deep interest in preserving the broadest diversity of life. 

     Join us for Sunday Worship to celebrate this Mystery of Divine Compassion.


*And beside these facts the language is not in a nice and clear KingJamish (proper NewYorkish biblical dialect) like the rest of the Bible but it is just a mere Old Vernacular Highschoolish (Native Medieval SchoolEnglish).

** Some older reports on fragments of the authentic Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers can be found here, here and here.