Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2008, Page 31

Indeed, sometimes I have wished that above all Christian leadership — and
not simply above the ministry of the bishop of Rome — there might be a
metaphorical dome, inscribed like that in St. Peter’s Church, containing TU
ES PETRUS, ET SUPER HANC PETRAM AEDIFICABO ECCLESIAM
MEAM, but also containing, in facing and equally sized letters, VADE
POST ME SATANA, SCANDALUM ES MIHI. In any case, I do wish
that such might be the inscription in the actual dome in Rome! Using
only the first words does not accurately present the fascinating and essential
dialectic of the narrative. But I also think that, in a certain sense, the four
Gospels already inscribe this paradox above any leadership that proposes
to be seriously and faithfully Christian: such leadership is potentially both
Rock of building and Satanic stone of offense and stumbling. And I also
think that in a time of serious suspicion of any authority at all — a time
like ours, always asking the late-modern questions — “Who says so? On
what authority? And who is profiting from this authority? What is the
hidden power?” — in such a time, this deep Christian acceptance and
critique of leadership is an important gift, requiring as it does that the
exercise of leadership in the Christian communities always be self-critical
and continually transparent to its purpose.
Let me say more.
Consider especially Mark, the book that seems to have invented the
genre “Gospel,” most likely sometime between thirty to forty years after
Jesus was killed. In that book, the community that is imaged seems to be
a counter-cultural community that meets in houses, continues the meal
practice of Jesus, welcomes outsiders and sinners, and understands itself as
seeing the Crucified and Risen One in the “Galilee” of its life together and
the “Galilee” of this very book being read to them. At least those traits of
the community — seeing the Risen One in their midst in the words of the
book, continuing the meals of Jesus, welcoming outsiders — are traits that
the Gospel book itself seems to be urging for the community, this Gospel
book’s agenda for ongoing reform.
A further trait so urged is this: in the community the “messianic secret” is
now to be spoken aloud, just as the Gospel book itself is doing. This mystery
is the hidden lamp that is now to be put on the lampstand, the secret that is
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