Who is Jesus Christ for us today? That question haunts the Christian Church in every era. It confronts preachers every week, presses each of us every day. If we confess a living God who was alert not just to the times of ancient Palestine, but is engaged with the twenty-first century, vulnerable not simply to the pain and dislocation of tribes and nations two thousand years ago, but vulnerable to the pain and dislocation of neighbors and nations today; if we trust in a God and a Christ involved with us as all parents in the well-being of their children, then we find ourselves asking in these times, in our life, in my life: who is Jesus Christ for us-for me-today?

I

Now Mark himself, writing in turbulent times forty years after Jesus died, finds his own little Jewish Jesus-movement community battered by a disdainful majority in the Synagogue and bloodied by the hobnailed boots of the Romans. Facing these violent threats, Mark wonders if, in menacing and venomous times, love really does count for anything? He wonders, along with his Christian brothers and sisters, amid the chaos and oppression his new church faces, if he dare risk hope. In behalf of his despondent community Mark asks: “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”

And Mark couches that question in the passage we read a few moments ago. Remember? Mark shows us Jesus in retreat with his friends at Caesarea Philippi. He asks them, “What does the world think about me? How do they identify me? Who am I to them?” And it turns out his friends cough up the latest gossip. “We’ve heard you described as another John the Baptist,” they say. “Some people see you as the forerunner of a new age-[if you will excuse the contemporary allusions this morning]- they see you are the forerunner of a new age when political soft money, religious exclusion, and human identity rooted in blood and soil disappear from the face of the earth.” Or again, they answer: “We’ve heard you described as a new Moses-[and again, please pardon the more contemporary allusion]-a new Moses, the leader to return character to high places, relieve the tax burden, save the schools, and protect us from rogue missiles. And yes, others rumor that you’re a new Elijah, the one who tells us the Arctic’s melting ice cap, the Antarctic’s vast Ozone Hole, the lethal atmosphere in Houston or Los Angeles, prove irrelevant because the world is due to go up in smoke pretty soon in any case.”

Jesus hears these answers. Ponders them. Then he puts the question directly to his disciples. As Mark’s grammar has it, “And you, yes you, who do you say that I am?” Peter, who in the New Testament represents everyone of us, Peter replies for the whole group, “You are the Christ . . . The Christ!” says Peter.

And Jesus replies, “Peter, you have the designation right. Do not whisper your insight to a soul. But get ready. Prepare yourself for the worst. We head now to Jerusalem. We’ll be labeled criminals. Condemned. Tortured. Executed. ”

“Hello?” cries Peter, aghast. Condemnation? Torture? Execution? For the Christ? Peter rebukes Jesus. Now this verb “rebuke” in Greek strikes harshly. It denotes fury, intensity, ferocity. We see Peter seizing our Lord’s shoulders, shaking, shouting, “You go to Jerusalem? You suffer? You end up on a gibbet, a joke, a flop? Jesus, you sound like an idiot! You’re the Christ of God. The Christ comes not to suffer, but to reign; the Christ comes not to stumble and die, but to fulfill our fondest dreams. Our road to Jerusalem leads not to defeat and failure, but to the Divinely ordained triumph we’ve all been waiting for.”

And in turn, Jesus rebukes Peter. We see Jesus trembling, bellowing, turning his back on Peter-the body language, vivid, explosive, Jesus exclaiming to the surrounding crowd, “Out of my sight, Peter! For what you say is not only wrong; it is laced with deception and corrupted by evil. You have things upside down and backwards. You can expect no missile defense system from me. Take a poll, run a focus group and you’ll discover nothing but gross unpopularity. From me you may expect no more than a life surrendered to love, chewed up and spat out by the powers that be. What I offer today is a death given over to you and to others in an effort to heal the human family.”

II

What goes on here? What is Mark trying to tell his beleaguered and troubled Christian community? What is he trying to tell us? How does he answer the persistent question amid the hostile world, “Who is Jesus Christ for us today?”

Mark says something here we dare never forget: the true Christ of our God does not conquer, but suffers amid the human condition. The Christ of God does not end-run our world’s hostility and pain. If we truly believe that Jesus bears a new kind of world, if we believe Jesus ushers among us a world where we human beings treat one another with compassion, service and forgiveness, if we truly believe Jesus as the Christ bears this ultimate loving presence in our world, then all of our structures bent on winning and holding power, on accumulating authority, on seeking prestige, must reject Christ’s new world. You see, the world Jesus Christ embodies turns upside-down and inside-out the very things we tend to treasure most. It reverses the way we clamor to the top of the heap. It threatens to break down the way we order our churches. It shows our economic systems, whether capitalistic, socialistic, barter-you name it-to be entirely inadequate to the realities of justice. Christ’s new order dissolves our hierarchies based on gender, or race, or bloodline, or education or class credentials. It extends the human community beyond our usually limited horizons, including those we generally consider outside, beneath, apart from full human dignity: the homosexual, the physically stricken, the mentally or emotionally challenged, the economically unsuccessful. The new world Jesus bears will be rejected by what we consider to be the very best of our human creations because it confronts with a radical alternative our vaunted and passionately clung-to way of doing things. Our churches and corporations, our nations and creeds will resist and finally repudiate Christ’s new world of grace and peace for the sake of preserving their own existence. What!? No more Bishops? No more corner office? No more social register? No more Generals, CEOs, trial lawyers, legal proceedings? No more Senior Ministers? The very best we produce is challenged by the new reality brought into our midst by Jesus Christ. It is not an extension of the best we can do, not the fruition of our most creative efforts: not a bigger, better, Old South; not a richer, more prestigious Harvard; not a more technologically sophisticated Mass. General; not a more efficient and secure Fleet Bank; not a more driveable and courteous Boston, or a world with fair trade, and the rule of law. Not in the least. (Though I might lobby for a more courteous Boston.) What Christ brings us judges the best we can assemble, and in order to protect ourselves from the presence and the power of Christ’s new reality we seek to rid ourselves of it. We may even decide to crucify it.

Now friends, mark this well, for here is the most profound and trying and mysterious dimension or Christhood for this or any other day. The new world born by Jesus Christ does not-does not-resist our crucifying it. It does not fight back. It does not run roughshod over the failed choices we make. It does not threaten, or intimidate, or marshal its forces to conquer the worst we can do.

The new reality of grace and peace brought into our midst by Jesus Christ accepts-accepts-and succumbs to our rejection. The new world born by Jesus Christ allows itself to be crucified, defeated, strung up by our fear, our self deception, our pride and privilege, thereby itself embracing, confirming, undergirding, sustaining and identifying with you, me and our very humanity.

How? How is a suffering, humbled Christ a key to our fullness as human beings? Well, you see, the Christ Peter wants-the Christ you and I usually hope for-is the one who will stand up to the powers of death; one who will raise a fist or an army in the face of injustice and oppression. The Christ is One who will intervene and put a stop to the likes of crucifixion. We want a Christ who will force the Tutsis and the Hutus to knock it off; who will weed out racism; who will shape up Barak and Arafat; a Christ who will lower Boston housing costs; increase oil supplies; overhaul our marriages, get our love life on track. We want a Christ who will blow through the barriers we build between ourselves and our God. Now that’s a God!! That’s a Christ!! But for all that, as magnificent and redemptive as that may sound, such a Christ would not finally capture our hearts. The world might get cleaned up, the Israelis and Palestinians lock in an embrace, Belfast Catholics and Protestants establish a joint church; we might be overcome by a dazzling Divine whirlwind setting things right and putting us all in place. We might be redeemed by a blast of divine power. But that is not the style of this Christ Jesus and the world he bears among us. No imperial invasion, but arrival among us of vulnerability, of weakness, of surrender-a reaching out from soul to soul, wound to wound-a revelation of the heart of the universe capturing our hearts.

III

And after our hearts are captured? After we surrender to this wounded, infinitely compassionate Christ, what then? Then comes our responsibility, our discipleship in this troubled torn-up world cut from the mold of the Cross. Remember? “If anyone would come after me let them deny self (which means to put ourselves in the hands of different ownership), let them deny self, take up their cross and follow me.”

Take up your Cross? Follow me? We had better be clear about this in a culture where religion is becoming increasingly cited as some psychological prop, fuel for self esteem, a promised road to contentment, serenity and success. That is not the way the New Testament sees it. The way of Jesus Christ points toward Jerusalem, toward trouble, danger, risk, toward participation in human life at such depth and with such vulnerability that like love in any situation, our being wounded is inevitable, our crucifixion a possibility.

What might such a life in Christ look like today? Well, on the wall just to the left of my word processor there hangs a little signed picture of a modern day disciple: Desmond Tutu. He spent the last year at Emory University in Atlanta, and recently returned to Soweto publicly saying “So long” to his versatile, high profile public life. I ran across a little statement of his the other day, something he wrote in 1980 as he prepared to face South Africa’s prime Minister and argue the case against apartheid. He tells the Pretoria Press Club that he will not compromise with apartheid as do some other religious leaders, Black and White. He reminds his hearers that it seems all right to be a political bishop if you support the apartheid status quo; you will face condemnation as a political bishop if you resist apartheid. And then Bishop Tutu says, For many whites I am regarded an irresponsible, radical, fire-eater who should have been locked up long ago, banned, or had something equally horrible happen to me. I receive some quite hair-raising letters and telephone calls. My main sadness is when my family becomes the target of these obscene and demented calls. Then I get really angry. (But). . . as a family we know that there is some cost in being involved, as most Blacks and some Whites are, in the liberation struggle to make South Africa free for all her children, Black and White. . . (Over the years I find that) in the perception of most Whites in South Africa I am an ogre- something they will use to frighten their children into obedience. I am, so they say, really a politician trying hard to be a bishop, and I manage with consummate skill to hide my horns under my funny bishop’s hat and my tail tucked away under my trailing cope. . .

Bishop Tutu makes some further remarks about apartheid as blasphemy, the rendering of false loyalty to the state and closes by saying,

Apartheid is a system which is not only unjust, but totally immoral and unchristian . . . It is an evil system and it is at variance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That is why I oppose it and can never compromise with it- not for political reasons, but because I am a Christian.

So who is Jesus Christ for us -for you, for me-for our church today? Is our Christ like Peter’s: popular, successful, a winner? Or is Christ the One who says that to bring about healing in our broken world we must go to the most wounded of settings, there, ourselves to risk putting ourselves on the line because, as Desmond Tutu so simply says, because we are Christians? God grant it may be so.