Clergy and Educators

"Who Do You Say
That I Am?"

Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." Thus
does the RSV (Revised Standard Version) -- for years the Bible translation commonly used in church worship services -- render the question and response in Mark 8:29. The same exchange in the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version), which years ago supplanted the RSV as the lectern Bible in many churches, is only slightly different: Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah."

The alteration of one word in the translation of a
pivotal verse in Mark's Gospel reflects a growing tendency among Christians to replace the Greek title "Christ" with its Hebrew or Aramaic equivalent "Messiah." The impetus for this shift in translation may be in part
a well-intentioned attempt to return Jesus of Nazareth to his first-century Jewish roots, but there are those sensitive to Jewish-Christian issues who view this messianic language as misguided and dangerous.

The communities that produced the books of the New Testament were convinced that the new age in which creation would be completed had begun with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because the documents that came out of these communities expressed the faith convictions of the people who
wrote them, it is difficult to determine with any certainty whether Jesus' disciples called him the Messiah, and it is considerably more difficult to ascertain whether Jesus thought of himself in that role. The historical record
does indicate, however, that Jesus was crucified as a messianic pretender: He was charged with being "King of the Jews." Easter seemed to shine a new light on Pilate's charge, though, and the disciples came to believe that Jesus was indeed Israel's Messiah.

Throughout the history of Christianity, although every theological explication of what the title "Christ" means has been incredibly complex and wonderously rich, the actual identity of "the Christ" has never been in dispute among Christians. In Judaism's long history, explications of what the title "Messiah" means have been just as complex and rich, but they have also been enormously varied. More to the point, the identity of "the Messiah" has been ever-changing. Different varieties of Judaism have each had their own understandings of messiah and their own candidates for the job, including the variety of Judaism that arose in the first century of the Common Era as the Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Jesus move-ment. Unlike other varieties of Judaism, however, before very much time had passed the Jesus movement had ceased to speak Hebrew and Aramaic and begun to speak Greek. Its adherents were no longer Jews, but Gentiles. And they did not have a Messiah whose primary task was to "restore the kingdom to Israel" (Acts 1:6); they had a Christ whose all-important task was (and is) to redeem the believer from the death of separation from God, to confront him with God's claim on his life, and to sustain him with the promise of God's life-transforming love.

It is this difference in function between the Messiah and the Christ that accounts for the Jewish "no" to Jesus of Nazareth. He did not restore the kingdom to Israel, therefore Jesus was not the Messiah. The difference
in function is also the reason why Christians should seriously consider abandoning "Messiah" as a title for Jesus. Hope for the restoration of the kingdom of Israel is not the hope that animates Christian faith, the hope incarnate in Jesus Christ. The general concept represented in Judaism by "the Messiah" is neither relevant nor essential to Christianity and can be meaningfully applied to Jesus only be being redefined. Our failure to acknowledge, or even to realize, that Christians transformed this concept significantly in the process of wrestling it away from the Jews is one of the foundation stones in the wall that separates us from one another.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, Americans came to realize that the biblical passages that support slavery are wrong. In recent decades, as we have become increasingly sensitive to gender issues, we have also come to realize that the patriarchal language of the
Bible is wrong. It is time now for Christians, standing
in the presence of our Jewish brothers and sisters, to realize that using messianic language to speak of Jesus is wrong. The Resurrection showed him to be something quite different from the Jewish Messiah. Jesus did not restore Israel's kingdom; he taught us about God's kingdom. The Jewish "no" to "Messiah" Jesus should serve to remind us that Jesus did not inaugurate the messianic age of universal peace and harmony: Creation continues to groan for its freedom. But "Christ" Jesus, by his words and actions, has shown us the way that creation's freedom may ultimately be achieved.

For us Christians to try to return to our origins by
calling our Lord Jesus "Messiah" makes as little sense
as it would for Americans to try to recapture the
colonial spirit by substituting "King" for "President." Nor
is it morally defensible for us to step so lightly over the forced baptisms, pogroms, and ghettos that litter our path back through twenty centuries to our Jewish roots. "Messiah" will always be a foreign word to Christians, a word that is shot through with Jewish nuances that we cannot comprehend and do not need, yet lacks the nuances embedded in "Christ" that our spirits whisper and cannot do without. "Messiah" is a word whose misapplication to Jesus of Nazareth has given rise to "Messianic Judaism," which is neither Judaism nor Christianity, and which poses a danger to both. The threat of luring Jews away from the ways of worshiping and serving God prescribed by Torah may be of little concern to many Christians. But when, as happened in the late 1990s, a man known as the "Messianic rabbi" proclaims, "I am not Jewish, but my messiah is," and then convinces a number of Christian congregations in his area of New York City to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ during Passover instead of on Easter Sunday, Christians should pay close and thoughtful attention.

The greatest of the spiritual dangers hiding in the uncritical use of the title "Messiah" in reference to Christianity's Lord is the sin of supersessionism: To
use this title is to claim that, like all the other promises of God to Israel, God's promise of a Messiah has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. To usurp this title in a post-Holocaust world is to plunder the spiritual wealth of Judaism in a way far more subtle but no less arrogant than the ways in which the Nazis plundered the material wealth of the Jewish people. Such spiritual arrogance is hardly worthy of the followers of a man whose love manifested itself above all else in humility.

You may wish to read a review of The Rebbe, The Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference.

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