“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 most, nor was assault from parties of fellow Jews. What threatened most might have been the Jesus people’s own sense of unworthiness in the face of what they suffered; how it generated disputes among themselves; and how it made undeniable the recognition that, in the terrible context of omnidirectional wars—fratricidal and imperial both—they had failed and failed again. Instead of standing up to Rome, they hid. Instead of standing up to their fellow Jews, they equivocated. Perhaps they informed on one another. Became collaborators. Ran off to caves in the desert. Or committed suicide, or helped others to do so. Perhaps they betrayed members of their own families, as Jesus himself foresaw: “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death.”68
They looked out for their own skin. They behaved as beleaguered, terrified humans always do. They were sinners, and knew it. To that condition, the Gospel spoke directly. Peter was a sinner. And he was their hero. The Lord knew precisely what sort of man Peter was, and chose him anyway. More than that, Jesus loved him. If flawed Peter could answer the call to discipleship—this was not Mark speaking, but Jesus himself—so could they.69
The mass violence inflicted by the Romans in 70 demanded this text. The catastrophe, centered on the destruction of the Temple, was forcing the Jesus people to look back on their memories, prayers, collected sayings, and stories in a new light. So illuminated, the people saw themselves as never before, because, as never before, they saw their Lord. Mark was first to shine that particular light on the figure of Jesus. It was light cast by the fires of war.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
—L. P. Hartley1
His followers, all Jews, gathered after the death of Jesus to recall what they remembered of him. The men may have been given mostly to text study, searching their Bible for images and ideas that explained his significance. The women may have mainly given expression to lamentation, through the singing of psalms that had particular relevance to what Jesus meant to them. These resources became ritualized, and informed the composition of stories and hymns. As Jews, in a profoundly Jewish mode, they interpreted their present experience by means of past traditions.
Through all of this, slowly but surely—reinterpretations of interpretations—a new literature was created. It was a version of what Jews had done before, going right back to the primordial work of the editors and redactors who, as we
