This question is asked by many Christians, male and female, who up to now have been silent but who today think about who Christ is for them: a black, a yellow, a liberating, a comforting Christ, and they want to find an answer by themselves and no longer want to be given the answer.

This question is asked most of all by women who in the two thousand years of church history have stood in the shadow of fathers and brothers and husbands, women who have become accustomed to keeping silent when it had to do with theological questions and for whom the patriarchs and church leaders gave the answers.

Today all over the world women are looking within their different social contexts, from their different forms of living and everyday experiences, for answers of what Christianity means to them.

This morning we want to think about who Christ is for us by looking from different cultures and churches but most of all from the different perspectives of the genders and their life experiences.

(Jürgen)

As God created the humans in the beginning, God created them "male and female" (Gen. 1.27) and at the end when God's spirit will come to all flesh, "your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Joel 2.28).

The "whole gospel for the whole world" - this can only be seen with female and male eyes. understood only with female and male hearts and attested to through a new community of women and men.

For too long we have heard only half of the gospel, that is with the male half of humanity. Today it is important to understand it fully in the fullness of the feminine and masculine creation of humans and with the fullness of the Spirit which comes to sons and daughters. It therefore goes without saying that men and women confess their faith together and interpret the gospel together. If the truth is to be credibly testified, then it must be made known from the mouth of two witnesses. This is an old rule. As Jesus sent his disciples out for the first time, he sent them into the villages and towns of Israel "two by two" (Lk 10.1). Today it should be that woman and man together testify their faith.

(Elisabeth)

We want to listen to one another. We do not want to be afraid of differences but rather respect our different histories. We do not want to play off the eloquence of one against another whose style of speaking is still unpolished. We want to become interested in and curious about the stranger. And we shouldn't immediately ask about unity but rather, first of all, about the richness and the diversity of our faith. Through this, we want to see the Bible anew as it is seen out of the perspective of women and men.

But next we want to ask each other: who are you? We want to introduce ourselves, where we come from, how we live and how we feel this morning in this big group. We want to take away a bit of the strangeness and to come a bit closer. My suggestion is that in each group women begin to introduce themselves!

The secret of Christ

(Jürgen)

The Bible text from which the question comes "Who Do You Say I Am?" is found in the gospel of Mark (Mk 8.27-35).

1. Our story deals with the question "Who is Jesus?" on different levels: in what the people say, in what the disciple Peter says, and in what Jesus himself says. It is located in the gospel of Mark exactly between the miraculous healings of the ill and the no less amazing kingdom of God parables of Jesus before that, and his way to Jerusalem, to his sentencing and his death on the cross at Golgotha afterwards. Up to then he was a miracle-man to whom the suffering people brought their sick. After this hour, he became the man of sorrow who shared the suffering of the people up to torture and to murder. Before that he acted, afterwards he was acted upon. It is actually a turning point in his life when this question about himself takes Jesus by surprise.

Was it an honest question or did he want to have his disciples just guess? Was it his own question or was it only a "multiple choice question?" Because we think we know so much about Jesus and know so many of his titles from church history, we often think Jesus himself could have also known who he was, and should have been clear about himself. But according to the presentation of the gospels this is obviously not the case. The mortal Jesus does not know himself. He is a secret to himself. He only came to know himself in the leading of God's Spirit and in the echo of faith of the people. According to the presentation of the gospels, he lives in a remarkable openness toward his future. Of course, these gospels present his life story in light of his end on the cross and his presence in the Spirit by virtue of his resurrection. For this reason, they place on his life such a secret which one calls the "Messianic Secret" and presents Jesus so that he remains a secret to himself up until his revelation on the cross and in the resurrection.

But they could not have said this of him if the memories of him had not confirmed it. We, therefore, assume that it is Jesus' honest question about his secret and not a guessing game. Jesus is just as dependent on the recognition and the confession of the people as on the faith of people in the healing of the sick. He is dependent on recognizing himself with the eyes of the people, the male and female disciples and with the eyes of God, whom he in a childlike manner calls "Abba". He also needs our recognition today because there is from the beginning this intimate reciprocal action between Jesus and faith, between the Spirit of God and the child of God out of which the healing of this sick world comes forth. Our faith is certainly an echo of the tone which emanates from Jesus.

But echo and answer belong to every good piece of music, especially when the concert is not yet ended and we don't know the end. It is, therefore, for Jesus and for all that he stands for of important meaning, who we say that he is. We ourselves are a part of his history with this world, we are players, not spectators. What answer do we give Jesus? How do we participate in his healing of this sick world?

2. We mostly answer like "the people", literally, "the humans." For the people who heard Jesus' message and saw his healings of the sick, Jesus is "something like" John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets. After the murder of John the Baptist, Jesus came forth with the same message as John. The memory of John is, therefore, still alive. Elijah, according to Jewish expectation, was to return before the end of the world. Who proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom of God must have held themselves for one like Elijah. To say that he is one of the prophets, gives Jesus a high rank but takes away his individuality. The people judge Jesus according to the analogies of their experience. All of us do exactly the same: when something new surprises us and makes us uneasy, we look for something comparable out of our experiences. Agatha Cnristie has her "Miss Marple" solve the most mysterious criminal cases by having her "remember" the old stories of her village St. Mary Mead. Why this "omnipotence of analogy" (E Troeltsch) in our recognition? Because all recognition is a recognition and because "likes can only be recognized by likes" as Aristotle already said. When today we hear of Jesus, we also have no trouble to form a picture of him. According to our memories we call him a "religious founder" like Buddha or a "prophet" like Mohammed or a role model of humanity like Confucius or a revolutionary like Che Guevara. We make a picture of him for ourselves according to our ideas, but the picture resembles less of him and much more of ourselves. We affirm ourselves in him but not him in ourselves. Through such ideas we put up a wall between us and Jesus and recognize almost nothing of him. If likes are only recognized by likes, then there is nothing new under the sun. If the law of analogy holds true for all knowledge, then we are incapable of perceiving something which is different from ourselves. We only recognize what affirms us. If likes are only recognized by likes, then one must ironically say that likes are also indifferent to likes. Only the new and different is interesting. But we can only perceive something different when we are ready to change ourselves and our ideas. We can only perceive something new when we allow ourselves to be renewed. It is not the question of what our pictures make of Jesus but rather what Jesus makes out of our pictures. This is the first reason why Jesus dismisses what the people say about him.

3. The disciples who experienced him close at hand say more. In their place, Peter answers solemnly: "You are the Christ." With this, he takes up the central figure of hope of Israel: the messiah-king will liberate Israel and bring Israel home. The messiah-king will bring from Zion law and justice to all nations. The messiah-king will bring humanity to peace with nature. God's kingdom comes into our disorganized world through the messiah-king and will create all things anew. As Israel herself is God's "first born son" among the nations, so is the messiah-king God's son and brother of all people. "Son of the living God" - this addition of Matthew's only names the God-related side of the messiah-king who will deliver the world.

Jesus does not deny this title but he places it under secrecy: the disciples are not to call him this now. Why not? The following discussion with Peter makes it clear: Jesus does not give his own answer to the question about himself through another image or an even better title, but rather through the prophesy of a course of events which he will experience. He calls himself "son of man", but does not stress this, and announces suffering, rejection and death which the son of man will experience. This is not the triumphal procession of the messiah-king which Israel hoped for, but rather the way of suffering of God's servant.

Peter wanted to be on the victor's side with his Christ confession, for this reason he "threatens" Jesus and wants to persuade him away from the way of suffering. The rock on which Jesus, according to Matthew, wants to build his church proves to be sand on which one can build no house. The "prince of the apostles" even turns into satan for Jesus, that is, he once again brings up the temptations which Jesus had overcome in the wilderness before his mission. Therefore Jesus chases him away: "You are not on the side of God, but of men" (Mk 8.33).

What wishes are hidden in our confession of Christ? "With Jesus you are always on the winning team" says a YMCA advertisement in the USA. Christianity is the religion of the successful, western world. This attracts many people in Asia. In Europe, it is said that Christianity is the history of freedom and leads the people to ever greater progress. Must our salvation history, since Emperor Constantine "won" in the sign of the cross, not be a history of missionary success and of cultural superiority? Ecclesia triumphans is not only to be seen in Rome but also in Geneva and in Seoul. "You are Christ": is this a confession of God or a confession of satan for us, or is it always both, tangled in the motives, ambiguous in the intention?

What does Jesus himself say. Who he is? Not what our Christ title makes of Jesus, but rather only what Jesus makes out of this title can give us certainty in faith.

We turn around once more and ask. Not the wishes of Peter but rather the experiences of Jesus are decisive. Who do you say that I am? Jesus fills the idea of Peter with his own story.

Who do you say that I am? He does not yet know, but his own story of his life and suffering will be the answer.

This confession of Peter should actually make us insecure. Can we affirm anything at all? Can we give any answer? Can we say anything about who Christ is?

The confession of Martha

(Elisabeth)

"Who do you say that I am?" In our story Jesus asks his disciples this question and Peter answers for them: "You are the Christ, the son of God" or "the son of the living God."

Where were the women? Many women today, many women Christians in all the world are asking this. Were they counted among the disciples and did Peter also answer for them?

Were they a small group who dragged along with the group of Jesus but for the most part had the task of providing care and financial support for the group of Jesus' disciples? Then they certainly would not have been asked such an important question. Then they would not have had any voice nor any right to voice their opinion. In our first parish, the community preacher of the town said to me that as a woman I only had the right to ask but not to say anything theologically binding.

Today we know that not only men but also women followed Jesus. Jesus had not only male disciples but also female disciples. It was a woman who showed him the way into suffering and into death and annointed him king and prophet. It was a woman who made him into the saviour of the Gentiles and today she counts as apostolic "first mother" for all Gentile Christians. It was a woman who as the first one heard the message of the resurrection and received the task of passing on this message. What would have happened if women in the church had actually kept silent? The church would not exist.

We know, moreover, that there were not only the twelve male apostles but also female apostles and that the early church attempted to be a community of men and women beyond all patriarchal structures. However, a patriarchal crust accumulated over the history of Christianity and has been hiding the beginnings from us.

Also from our story we can no longer gather if women were there, if Peter spoke for them or if the writer of the story already thought that women were created for other tasks. But we know another story from the gospels where a woman renders a confession to Jesus Christ, and I want to place it beside our first story: it is the confession of Martha (Jn 11), and we find it in the story of the resurrection of Lazarus: "You are the Christ, the son of God, who came into the world." Up to now, this has received very little attention within Christianity just as women have also received very little attention.

Some years ago, however, the American New Testament scholar Raymond Brown made it clear that this confession is very similar to the well-known confession of Peter and comes very close to it. But it was spoken by another person - Martha. Most likely it had the same meaning in Johannine communities as the confession of Peter had in other communities. Peter should not be defamed through this, but he should be seen as one among many others. The predominence of the twelve apostles should be stopped and other persons surrounding Jesus should be considered equal to them. The vitality of the church is not due to a hierarchical authority but to a charismatic efflorescence. While there were communities in which Peter counted as the one who had given the highest confession to Christ, there were other communities, like the Johannine, which connected such memories with the figure of Martha. Through this research we gain a new view of the variety in the early churches and most of all, become aware of the meaning of women in the church, in community leadership and theology! A view which leads us away from the official authorities and men and teaches us to see women anew.

However, we gain, most of all, a new view of a woman - Martha who, in our Christian tradition, has been made into the good housemother, a tradition which goes back to the well-known story of Mary and Martha, whose house Jesus visits. There Martha is the good, devoted woman of the house who cares for the well-being of the guests, who asks her sister Mary to help her instead of only listening to Jesus and who, for this reason, is reprimanded by Jesus: "Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her." Martha, a tragic woman figure in our churches who must care for the necessities of life and doesn't find any recognition. In Europe, one named the servanthouses of the diaconical institutions after her. One forgot the other Martha story. The story of her active, persistent, lively role in Lazarus' resurrection. But one forgot, most of all, her confession of Christ which stands on equal rank beside the well-known testimonies.

When we look at it closely, then it is even a confession to Jesus which goes a bit beyond the well-known confessions of the New Testament. A bit which is remarkable. A bit which challenges us women to listen to the women of the New Testament once more: "I believe," says Martha "that you are the Christ, the son of God, he who came into the world."

Christ, the son of God - this is the consistent witness of the New Testament. We find it in all gospels. We hear it from Peter's mouth and the other disciples. We find it as the essential content which the gospels want to give us. The stories are written - as it is said in John - "that you believe, Jesus is Christ, the son of God." However, in the confession of Martha there is a peculiar addition: "Christ, the son of God, he who came into the world."

Does this have a meaning and if so, what does it mean: does it have something to say which is different from the well-known confessions?

Who do you, Martha, say that I am?

At first, we want to look again at the context of the story in which this confession is made. The three siblings, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, live in the village of Bethany. They belong to the closest confidants and friends of Jesus. When Lazarus is seriously ill, the sisters send word to Jesus, that he should come and make him well. Jesus, however, makes them wait. Only after Lazarus dies, does Jesus set out and is met on the way to Bethany by the always quick, active, effective Martha with the almost reproachful sentence: "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." But then she still adds an almost insane hope: "And even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus answers: "Your brother will rise again." And the quick Martha reacts just as quickly with a "catechism phrase" "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day." But Jesus' answer is that he himself is the resurrection and the life and that whoever believes in him shall never die. Already here is the eternal life. Already here all hopes are fulfilled in faith. Does Martha believe this? To this she answers with her peculiar confession of Christ: "I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God, he who came into the world."

The situations of these two episodes of confessions are very different:

There Jesus was the one who was affected, who wanted to have information about himself and about the relationship of his disciples with him.

Here a woman is the one who is affected, who is deeply shaken and hit by the death of her brother. Her confession is not abstract nor neutral. Nor does she see herself on the side of the victors. It comes out of deep mourning and abandonment, out of the break with all hitherto existing life relations, out of separation from that which made up her personal and perhaps also economical security.

There the disciples are pulled down out of the exultation of the community of God onto the way of death and of the cross, out of the hope of successful life onto the way of the cross and of the failure of personal expectations.

Here Jesus consoles the deeply affected woman confronted by death with the overwhelming affirmation that he himself is the life and resurrection. He does not promise her suffering but rather life, not death but rather resurrection, not hope in the life to come but rather fulfilment in this life.

Here the disciples answer with the confession that he with whom they experience the beginning of a new age is God's son. Here the woman answers with the same confession of Christ. Only she pulls in the son of God, God's self, very deeply into this world: "You are the Christ, the son of God, he who came into the world." The Christ gains color, form and earthliness through her. The Christ becomes very concrete and corporeal.

"He who came into the world..." What is so special about this sentence? The well-known theologian Bultmann helped me to understand this addition of Martha's. Bultmann says that this title: "he who came into the world" next to the other two titles: "Christ" and "son of God" is the most "significant" one because it "most clearly declares the breaking in of the other world into this world." The title is lacking in all other confessions in John and it is also not to be found in the New Testament in this connection. He who came into the world - this is now a frequent statement of Jesus' about himself in the gospel of John. He is the light which is coming into the world: "I have come as light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness" (Jn 12.46). Those who see will become blind and the blind will see (9.36). "For this I was born, and for this 1 have come into the world, to speak about the truth" (18.37). "I came from the Father and have come into the world" (16.38). The world, the cosmos has a double meaning here: it is object of God's love and receiver of God's revelation, and it is at the same time the power which rebels against God and is rejected. "He came to his own home, and his own people received him not" (1.11).

The woman takes up Jesus' witness about himself and with that comes into an immediate nearness to him which no other witness of Christ has since achieved. The contrasts which she addresses with this could not be greater: on the one side God, on the other side the ambivalent cosmos. God delivers Godself. The light shines in the darkness. God becomes involved in this world. Martha says this sentence when she experiences Jesus as the one who is light in the darkness, who gives life in death and the pain of death: warmth, closeness, hope. She does not say this sentence when everything is in order again and the brother is alive again. She says it when nothing like Jesus' presence is light for her in her own darkness. Nothing is thought abstractly, otherwordly, victoriously. No heavenly solution is aimed for. Martha names the conflicts which humanly seen are incompatible: God and the world, the other-world and this world, the healing power and the deadly power.

But in her experience of the nearness of Jesus, the other-world has already broken into this world. "You are the Christ, the son of God, he who came into the world."

We know Martha from the Bible as the sober, pragmatic one, as the one who takes initiative in the kitchen and in life. "He already smells", she says in respect to the four-day old corpse of her brother. Martha can, therefore, name the paradox in a uniquely sober manner, that God became human, that the other-world has broken into this world, that the old has passed.

It is - as Raymond Brown said - a woman "to whom the miracle of Jesus is revealed as the resurrection and the life." Is this a coincidence? I don't believe so. Christ, the life, reveals himself to women who give, maintain and pass on life.

We have become acquainted with two confessions from two different situations. We should not place them against one another but rather next to one another. We should take their representatives seriously and acknowledge them in the variety of the richness of our tradition. But most of all, we should take the repressed women's tradition, the situation of women, the experience of women seriously and allow them to challenge us.

Martha has been forgotten and forced into the kitchen. Hardly anyone knows the Johannine story and its confession. Peter made history, church history and is even known to every atheist. If the church is a community of women and men, then it should not only be understood "in the spirit" or eschatologically but rather concretely. Then this means that we learn to listen to the voices of women, the old and the new, the housewives and the church women, the laywomen and theologically trained women.

Group Discussions

What do you know of the women of the New Testament? What roles do the women play in your churches?

The Location of the Confession of Christ

(Jürgen)

Jesus' own answer to the question of Christ is not a theoretical but rather a practical answer. We find it on the way of his passion. Therefore, he answers the "Messianic secret" with his announcement of suffering. Those who want to know from now on who Jesus truly is, must go with him and on this way they will experience who Jesus truly is. "No one is able to truly recognize Christ exept if he follows him in his life," said the radical Anabaptist Hans Denk during the Reformation time. This is not a moral law but it wants to say that we then properly recognize Jesus when we live with him. In the living community with Jesus, we learn to understand him, not only with our minds but also with our hearts, not only with mind and heart but also with all of our experiences in the joys and the pains of life: We recognize and we believe, we feel and we taste his community in our life. One can name this the wholistic knowledge of Christ. Christology and Christ-praxis become one. The confession of Christ and following Jesus come together. They not only fuse when we suffer for the sake of faith, but indeed when we begin to live in faith. In such life experiences which we have in the community of Christ, the wishful images which we make of Jesus and which we articulate in the Christ title collapse. We experience him as the brother who goes with us and takes us with him along the way of life.

Let us look once more at the gospel of Mark. There Jesus forbids his disciples the Christ title which Peter has just offered him but he publically teaches that the son of man must suffer much, then he will die and be resurrected to eternal life. He turns not only to the male and female disciples, but also to the poor people - ochlos in Greek, miniuna in Korean - and calls volunteers to follow him:

"If someone wants to follow me..."

(Elisabeth)

"You are the Christ, the son of God, who came into the world." So answered Martha.

But what does this mean for us today?

What does this mean first of all for women? What does this mean for those whose life, person and situation we have barely recognized in the church, except in the necessary services which have kept the churches alive: serving, cooking, cleaning, helping, caring, voluntary positions.

I want to begin with the curious addition of Martha: "Who came into the world." Which world is this? It is not the world of the pulpits, podiums, offices and conference tables. It is not the world of the male colleagues, of the brotherly church and of the church-leading boards. It is not the world of the gowns and the internationally uniting, masculine jackets.

It is the world where life is given, maintained and passed on. And this happens in clinics and kitchens, within poor conditions and in crowded public housing apartments, with the struggle for a handful of rice, with standing in line for food and with the daily struggle against disorder and dirt. This happens in aprons, housedresses and jeans which have become dirty. This happens mostly invisibly and almost always without pay.

The world of women today is also the world where physical violence, rape, incest is suffered much more than we imagine. Where state industrial power holds women in low-wage groups, makes them unemployed faster than men, drives them into the street and prostitution for their daily nourishment and makes them into goods which they must sell. It is the world of silent humiliation that women are created second class and to be the man's helper so that many remain dependent and helpless their entire life and are treated like children. It is the world of loneliness and isolation in which many must raise their children by themselves while the lifestyles of marriage and family are encouraged by society and expected by the churches. It is the world where women today all over the world and in very different forms fight for their notions of life, for the daily water and the daily bread and their self-determination and self-responsibility. It is the world where women suffer not only because of their faith but also because of their sex.

But it is also the world where women today are arising from death, contempt, non-existence, discovering their powers, using their heads and demanding their human rights in order to make this world more humane.

Who is this Christ?

(Jürgen)

Who is this "son of man" with whom Jesus identifies himself? Why must this "son of man" "suffer so much" in this world, as it says here. I believe that with this "son of man" (according to Dan 7) not a private person but rather a corporate person is meant. It is the "humane human" as created in God's likeness: the child of justice and peace. If this truly "humane human" comes into an inhumane world of violence and injustice, then this human must "suffer much" because this human will experience the contradiction of this world on him or herself. The "son of man" has actually already suffered since the beginning of human history: he suffered as Cain murdered his brother Abel; he suffered as God's people of Israel were oppressed and persecuted. The son of man suffers wherever humans are humiliated, insulted, oppressed and exploited. Jesus takes this fate of the son of man in an inhumane world upon himself. Therefore, those sufferings which we call the "sufferings of Christ" do not remain limited to Jesus alone: also the "sufferings of Israel", according to the letters to the Hebrews 11, are a part of the "abuse suffered for the Christ." And the sufferings of the poor and sick people - are they also not part of the "sufferings of Christ?" According to the image of the great world judgement in Mt 25 the "son of man" is present among us in the "least" of his "brothers and sisters." Jesus has not come into the world of the victors. He went to the victims and became a victim himself in order to redeem the world. I understand this to mean: by the way of his passion Jesus brought the humanness of God into this inhumane world, the peace of God into our conflicts, the justice into our misery. He suffered injustice and violence in order to redeem humanity from injustice and violence and to lift it up in the humane kingdom of the son of man.

(Elisabeth)

Christianity has become the religion of the successful western world, but for only very few women. For many, it has come as the religion of freedom but it has, however, not made them free. For many women this Christ today is no longer the victorious hero at whose feet the nations should lie as the missionaries long preached. He is also no longer the emperor-like king to whom everything is subject - as the western Christian ideology long maintained. He is also no longer the Vatican man from whom the masculine Roman Church rulership is derived.

He is for the women who have not become wounded by the masculinity of the church, the human whose humanness was so long hidden under his maleness. A human who knew how to be happy, sigh, experience pain, was tired and hungry and could be annoyed. A human who was insecure and who was challenged as we are. A human who doubted God and was never perfect, detached, complete. A human who matured and grew. The most important thing that women have discovered is that he was a person who needed people and whose lifework can not be conceived without them. This Jesus had conflicts with people, he was disappointed with people, but he grew and matured towards his lifework through people. And it was most of all the women who stood at his side at the turning points of his life. Humanness is unimaginable without relatedness.

This Jesus who understood himself as one who creates a new world in labour pains, who understood himself in his work and in his life as a woman in labour, today gives women courage to accept their being women and to bear their lives for life in the struggle for daily life, the life of the children and the elderly.

"I believe in the wholeness of the Redeemer," - many women Christians think and speak this way today. Jesus was whole - a whole human - and frees us to also become whole humans. He frees us to be woman and man who are to live equally beside one another and together with another and share the tasks in family, church and society. You are the Christ, the son of God, who came into this world so that this world does not remain as it is.

Following Jesus

(Jürgen)

Jesus also speaks of the self-denial and the carrying of the cross in following him. I have barely had personal experiences with this, but we all also participate in the collective experiences of the community of Christ with its martyrs. The cross was the answer of the powerful ones in Jerusalem to the message and the life of the humane, God-corresponding human Jesus. Execution was the answer of the dictator in Germany to the opposition against injustice in which Dietrich Bonhoeffer participated. Murder was the answer of the death squadrons in El Salvador to the way Archbishop Arnulfo Romero went with his people.

It would not be good if we were to repress these dangerous memories. I believe that they, like Jesus himself, have become a seed of hope. Because the end of the son of man is not death but rather the resurrection and the life and the kingdom that will have no end. We can, therefore,, look at his suffering as a redeeming suffering because it redeems our world from the shadows of injustice and of violence. And also the suffering which people experience in his community, is it not a liberating suffering?

Those who follow Jesus and strive to advocate human rights and human dignity in this world will also experience something of the suffering of Christ. They will "be rejected", says Mark.

Let us take an easier word: along the way of Jesus we will have to be prepared for contempt from other people. Each person depends on the respect of the others because one always sees oneself also in the eyes of the others. What happens in my country when we expose ourselves in the question of peace or in the question of justice for the third world? No one would be persecuted and locked up in our country for this. Nor must one fear for one's life. But suddenly one is isolated by the silence of colleagues and neighbors. Nasty slander is spread behind one's back. One is looked at as an "idiot" or as a "traitor" to the interest of one's own nation. One learns that one is on a list of the secret police as a "dangerous person". Then the telephone is tapped, the mail is censored, etc. In some cases it starts with not so dangerous personal pressures, in others it ends with dangerous measures. What begins with disrespect can, as we know, end with destruction.

Does one meet Jesus in such experiences? I believe so, because then we take part in those "sufferings of the son of man" for the sake of God's humanness and become certain of his closeness. I know that people in protest of the nuclear weapons at the barbed-wire fences of weapon depots have again learned to pray and to believe. One feels the presence of the living God very clearly in the presence of inhumane means of mass annihilation. What does this mean for me? Who do I say that he is?

For me, Jesus is the brother who came into my world. When I was at my end and wanted to give up, he came into the misery of the prisoner-of-war camp in which I sat in 1945 and found me and led me onto his way.

Jesus has become the carrier of an unlimited hope for me, who lifts me up when I am cast down and gives me new courage when I have lost heart. With Jesus I have always felt something of the Spirit of the living God, of the Spirit which makes alive, the Spirit of the resurrection.

(Elisabeth)

In the past church history and history of humanity, women have suffered more than shaped life, more passively endured than self-confidently influenced, exercised more self-rendering than self-responsibility. If women today come out of their kitchens and churches, if they want to show themselves and their experiences in church and society, then they must first of all learn a bit of self-love from the gospel. "To take the cross upon themselves" - this might mean for many women to take themselves as important and valuable, to put aside self-contempt, to become independent and solitary. Only as humans of their own can they also bring something of their own into the community of faith. For this, women need images of God in which they feel themselves strengthened. We are filled to the brim with masculine images of God in our church and speech with masculine images of God: Lord, king, judge, ruler, creator. Images of an almighty man. Today we have rediscovered the many forgotten feminine images of God in the Bible: God as mother, as woman in the pains of birth, as wet-nurse and midwife, God as woman who must settle the daily chaos and picks up, and through this comes across the precious coin. God as hen that takes her chicks under her wings, God as mother eagle. Women who give, maintain and pass on life need new life-giving, living images of God which accompany them along their way. They need images of God against the world of violence and destruction which they experience around themselves and among women. They do not need images of heros and victory phantasies. God sits there crying - as one woman wrote it - because the beautiful carpet creation which she wove with so much love is destroyed, torn into pieces. But as women in their very personal lives must go on, work on, hope on, so they also do not stop with God's death but rather see God ahead of them who wants to weave new life patterns and invites us to sit next to her and to weave the carpet of the new creation with her.

This is the belief in the living God as Peter confessed it which is not limited to traditional images and names but rather fills God's life with ours and our life with God's life.

The living God whose child, Jesus, was the humane human and who engages himself in this world of violence, exploitation and isolation.

The other world has broken into this world. With Martha we are called to believe in the resurrection and the life here and to work and to weave on it. With Martha we are called to no longer allow ourselves to be comforted by far-off times. With Martha we are referred to the tree of life, our only hope in which all crosses of this world begin to sprout again.

The churches base themselves on the Peter Confession and we cannot reverse the wheel of history. But we want to take the Martha Confession and the Martha Story seriously in our churches. This confession does not speak of sinner and winner. It speaks of us as belonging in the closeness of God, in the closeness of life, and that we participate in God's life, and that this is not victory and power but rather this participation constitutes our life. Sin is, therefore, not only personal failure but rather is not to participate in this life which occurs in daily life on this earth:

Life in its manifold and endangered forms, the survival of the earth, the life of women, children, plants and animals on the one side - and death and nothingness on the other side.

"Who do you say that I am?" - Groups

(Jürgen)

There are different ways, different cultures, different life situations. There are two genders, and we are to perceive the variety of the Christian faith.

But we should not remain in simple pluralism, but rather become attentive to where one faith oppresses another, where a human hinders another in being wholly human, where a Christian, male or female, hinders another, male or female, in being God's whole and good creation.

(Elisabeth)

But there is only one Christ out of whose life all of us gain power. We carry on his life today in that we do not set our own experiences as absolute but rather always create new space among us for his life, his story, his death and his resurrection. We create this space where we listen to those who up to now have had no space for that and whose place, right and voice belong in our churches.

We say with our life who He is: The son of the living God, as Martha and Peter say, who in and through others always gives us new life.