Reliving The Passion #18

Mark 14:61–62

He was silent and made no answer. Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?”

And Jesus said, “I am; and you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.”

Oh, what a message comes in the timing here! And what a caution to Christians who want a hero for their Christ!

Only now, finally, does Jesus publicly claim the office of Messiah. Now! Why, any fool could choose a better time than this, right? Wrong! Anyone who did would be a fool indeed, for he would pervert the character and the intention of the Christ.

Now is the best time. Now is the Christ’s time, because this is the Christ: a prisoner and a failure.

From the beginning of his ministry, Jesus charged those who experienced his power to say nothing about it. Wonders and miracles, evidently, were not the central purpose of his coming. They may have been signs pointing to the Messiah; but they were not the definition of the messianic office.

And when he was at the height of his ministry (as the world assesses height, as the world assesses greatness) he demanded that no one say he was the “Christ.” When he was dazzling crowds, confuting enemies, causing shepherds and lepers and kings to ask, “Who is this man?”; when masses were “astonished beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well, the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak!’”; even when Simon Peter explicitly confessed, “You are the Christ”—Jesus commanded them “to tell no one about him.” Apparently none of this was the real work of the “Christ.”

Even when Peter, James, and John saw his celestial glory in the transfiguration—saw Jesus revealed as the fulfillment of the whole Old Testament—he told them to shut up.

The world would have misunderstood the glory.

The world might have expected a warrior-king, someone triumphant in its own terms. A winner, you know. A number-one, against-all-odds, pride-inspiring, tear-in-my-eye, flat-out, all-round, good-guy winner! A hero.

Only when that characterization is rendered absurd and impossible does Jesus finally accept the title “Christ.”

Christian, come and look closely: it is when Jesus is humiliated, most seeming weak, bound and despised and alone and defeated that he finally answers the question, “Are you the Christ?”

Now, for the record, yes: I am.

It is only in incontrovertible powerlessness that he finally links himself with power: “And you will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of power.” Because any display of messianic power is far, far in the future—in his and in ours together, on the last day. The last day of the world, not today!

This, then, is the Christ that Jesus would have us know and accept and (O Christian!) reflect:

One who came to die.

One who, in the assessment of this age, failed—an embarrassment, a folly, a stumbling block. An offense!

One crucified.

Here in the world, the Christ and his followers hang ever on a cross. The cross is foremost, because a faithless world cannot see past it to the Resurrection.

And even for the faithful the cross must always be first, because the Resurrection is only as real (both in history and in our hearts) as the death is real.

What then of our big churches, Christian? What of our bigger parking lots, our rich coffers, our present power to change laws in the land, our political clout, our glory for Christ, our triumphant and thundering glory for Christ? It is excluded! All of it. It befits no Christian, for it was rejected by Jesus.

If ever we persuade the world (or ourselves) that we have a hero in our Christ, then we have lied. Or else we are deceived, having accepted the standards of this world.

He came to die beneath the world’s iniquity. The world, therefore, can only look down on him whom it defeated—down in hatred until it repents; but then it is the world no more.

Likewise, the world will look down on us—down in contempt until it elevates the Christ it sees in us; but then it won’t be our enemy any more, will it?

Christ Crucified—

When I was offended by you—by the miserable figure you cut in this world and by the humiliation you require of me—then I was offended by the cross. It had become a scandal to me, a stumbling-block; and I was conformed to the world.

Forgive me! Let your forgiveness transform me, so that I am like you, and that I like to be like you!

Amen.