Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age. James Carroll

Peter’s point of view. We will see more of this below.

      But, in fact, the author of Mark is necessarily anonymous, and the community for whom the text was written is uncertain.⁵⁵ The Gospel was written in Greek, but internal evidence suggests that the writer was a Palestinian Jew whose first language was Aramaic. He was probably a resident of Jerusalem. Reading the texts in the light of what was befalling Jerusalem just then, it makes sense that those being addressed were actively involved in the trauma. If one assumes that they were Jesus people clustered in Galilee, at remove from the defense of Jerusalem but still at the mercy of Roman forces as well as roving bands of Jewish Zealots, the vividness of Jesus’ description of trouble takes on a compelling edge. For those people were, above all, in the tormented thick of the complications that went with both the Roman assault and the vengeful punishment inflicted on noncombatant Jews by fellow Jews engaged in the fight.

      “Alas for those who are with child and for those who give suck in those days!” Jesus laments. “For in those days there will be such tribulation as has not been from the beginning of the creation which God created until now.”⁵⁶

      If the Gospel of Mark represented the point of view of Peter, it is exceedingly unlikely that it would have portrayed Peter as it does. While effectively pictured as the one on whom Jesus most depended, Peter is also rendered as vain, buffoonish, impulsive, sadly lacking in courage. Peter is honored to have been given his special name by Jesus: “Simon whom he surnamed Peter.”⁵⁷ But the resounding affirmation that accompanies that name change in the later text Matthew—“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church”⁵⁸—is nowhere in evidence in Mark. Peter, with James and John, is the special witness of the Transfiguration: “and there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking to Jesus.” But Mark’s Peter is immediately shown to misunderstand the meaning of this fleeting epiphany, for he responds by saying, “Master . . . let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” The author of Mark comments, “For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid.”⁵⁹

      It falls to Peter to answer the momentous question posed by Jesus: “ ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Christ.’ ” But no sooner has the apostle put this astounding understanding into words than he mortally offends Jesus, who has just forecast what is coming, for Jesus is soon to face suffering and persecution. Peter, who will have none of such tribulation, either denying it or wanting distance from it, “took him, and began to rebuke him. But turning and seeing his disciples, he [ Jesus] rebuked Peter, and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.’ ”⁶⁰

      Then, in the thick of the suffering Peter wanted nothing to do with, he is, again with James and John, privileged, nevertheless, to be invited by Jesus to share in the moment of greatest anguish: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death,” Jesus confides, an extraordinary admission. He asks the three to “watch” with him, but then, “he came and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, ‘Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?’ ” Twice more, Jesus returns to find Peter and the others sleeping. “And he came a third time, and said to them, ‘Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? It is enough.’ ”⁶¹

      If Peter fell asleep three times, that was nothing next to the threefold betrayal that came then. At the Last Supper, in response to Jesus’ prediction that “you will all fall away,” Peter arrogantly declares, “Even though they all fall away, I will not.” Jesus’ response is the most drastic personal statement in the entire Gospel: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Truly, I say to you, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.’ But he [Peter] said vehemently, ‘If I must die with you, I will not deny you.’ ”⁶² And then, of course, with exquisitely belabored detail, Mark renders the three denials of Peter—“I do not know this man of whom you speak”—as the worst blows struck against Jesus. When the cock crowed a second time, Peter “broke down and wept.”⁶³ As a matter of narrative gravity, these denials weigh more than the betrayal by Judas.

      All of the intimate friends of Jesus are portrayed in Mark as unreliable, doltish cowards. As Jesus hung on the cross, none of his chosen inner circle were present, only “women looking on from afar.”⁶⁴ The Gospel of John, written three decades after Mark and in different circumstances, describes a poignant post-Resurrection reunion of the Lord with his dear friend Peter, where the threefold betrayal is reversed as Jesus asks Peter three times, “Do you love me?”—a beautiful ritual of forgiveness and reconciliation, of which we will see more. But Mark offers no such consoling denouement. Instead, Mark ends with the breach between Jesus and Peter, and the others—except for the women—entirely unhealed. This Gospel seems to have as its central subject the abject failure of the friends of Jesus to support him. What is going on here?

      Mark’s overwhelmingly negative portrayal of Peter has not been highlighted in a Church that subsequently mythologized Peter as a first “pope.” Texts from other Gospels—especially Matthew’s resounding “keys of the kingdom” commission—are preferred. When Mark’s negative portrait of Peter has been directly reckoned with, the usual explanation has involved early Church rivalries, as if the Christian community based, say, in Syria and associated with the apostle John, or in Asia Minor and associated with the missionary Paul, was out to discredit the community most associated with Peter, whether Jerusalem or Rome. The denigration of Peter, in that case, would undercut the prestige of the community attached to him—rather like cities competing for the Olympics.

      But if we keep our focus on the Roman War as the defining key to Jesus actually, there is a far simpler explanation for this frankly shocking portrait of Peter as a cowardly, unreliable man. If the Gospel of Mark was addressed to a frightened, demoralized collective of Jesus people holed up in Galilee, to people threatened on all sides by marauding Romans, revenge-seeking Jewish Zealots, or Jews associated with rabbis who insisted that acceptance of the false Messiah Jesus threatened the survival of what remained of Judaism; and if those Jesus people, additionally, bore the burden of guilt at their failure to join in the anti-Roman resistance, or were tempted to believe the accusations of cowardice hurled at them by their fellow Jews; and if they had even lost faith in their Lord, whose rescuing return had yet to come about—well, what in the world would good news look like to such people? In this context, the message of Mark was straightforward: Do not feel guilty because you have faltered in the faith; do not feel disqualified because you have lost hope; do not count yourselves lost—because look! The most intimate friends of Jesus behaved in exactly the same way, including, especially, the exalted Peter, whose name everyone reveres. What you need to hear in this time of grotesque tribulation is that Jesus extends his call not to heroes but to cowards, who fail him. An honest reckoning with such failure is the starting point of discipleship.⁶⁵

      In reading the Gospel of Mark, or hearing it read, such people would have had their fears transformed, for this Gospel’s very subject is the flawed condition of all. Peter’s rejection of the suffering and persecution that Jesus knows awaits him would have rung with pointed resonance for people who were—even as they read this text—themselves facing just such suffering and persecution, and wanting no more of it. Indeed, they would have taken special note of what Mark describes as following directly on the rebuke of Peter for his rejection of the Lord’s suffering, where Jesus called “to himself the multitude with his disciples and said to them, ‘If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.’ ”⁶⁶

      Recall that as this verse was written, ten thousand crosses were ringing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That is what the Christians in Galilee would have known, and that is what would have defined their dread. The cross was no mere religious symbol to them, as the author of Mark knew very well when he put that word in Jesus’ mouth. Mark’s readers were themselves already undergoing what, in the Gospel, Jesus predicts for them, and that alone would have offered consolation. Their suffering itself was a way of drawing close to their Lord—“you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.”⁶⁷ While such words did not relieve their suffering, the words changed its meaning.

      Yet in Galilee, perhaps the violence of Rome was not what threatened