Who Are You?

Matthew 16:15 NIV

 "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"

Who Do You Say He Is?

Last year I coached the Little League Baseball team of our youngest son and the only reason I did it was because the league was desperate for more managers.  I had the youngest of the teams in our division and had no experience ever coaching baseball.  No one thought our team would be any good…least of all me.  We held practices and the kids worked hard and miraculously we won our first game and it happened to be against the best team in our level.  We then won the next game and the next game and the one after that and suddenly everyone in our league began to take notice of us.  Parents I did not know were talking about me and our team and before games people would walk up to me and congratulate me for our team’s success.  One of the grandparents of a player of ours one evening walked up to me and made this funny comment.  Our team had won all six games we had played thus far and so it became somewhat legendary what we were doing.  “Everyone is going to want a pastor to coach their team now”, he told me.  I just laughed and wondered if that were really the case.  Did all these parents really want a pastor in charge of their kids?  Did they want me coaching their children?  What was I to these people who barely knew me?  Was I coach?  Was I pastor?  Was I parent just like they were?  Was I a strange guy who has a loud voice?

Our tendency, before we get to know someone is to objectify that person.  He is a policeman.  She is a doctor.  That one is a waiter.  Those are students.  They are Malaysians.  He is good looking.  She is smart.  There are a thousand different categories we use to objectify people.  Because it is difficult getting to really know everyone we come across, it is much easier for us to shelve them all into mental spots of categories so we don’t have to bother with their humanity.  We all do this at one level or another.  It is why racism is found in every region of the world and the reason totalitarian governments and feudalism and caste systems can survive.  It seems like the internet for all its good can perpetuate this approach to people.  You are what your comments are rather than a real person who lives a life of trials and celebrations and mundane chores.  It is human that we don’t want to be known as a category of a person.  We want to be ourselves…unique, this one and only this one.  We know how complicated we are…how changeable and multi-faceted.  I am not a tall, white pastor.  I am me.  You are you.

Our Lord addressed this concern with His disciples.  He wanted to know what sort of impression the disciples thought  He was leaving upon the world…what was the category people were using to describe Him.  He asked them.  "Who do people say I am?" (Mark 8:27 NIV)  The responses were varied:  John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  The people believed He was a spokesman for God; that was clear.  Jesus wanted to know what His friends thought of Him.   "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" (Mark 8:29 NIV)  Now this question is well phrased and gets at the heart of the matter.  He does not ask, “What do you say I am?”  That is a question that would lead them to objectify Him.  What sort of category do you place me?  Jesus didn’t want that.  The crowds who kept track of Him were doing that.  Jesus wanted His friends to personalize Him.  “Who do you say I am?”  Now this is a critical question to be asked!  Who is Jesus?  Not what is He?  That is a lazy way of considering Him.  Who is He?  It takes real mental effort to get at that.

I wonder what others besides the disciples would have said about who He was and is!  There was an older man who had been crippled thirty-eight years.  Day after day he reclined beside a pool that many thought had magical powers to heal.  You had to be the first one to get into the water after bubbles mystically appeared on the surface or it didn’t do anything for you.  At least that was what was thought.  Here he waited for his chance of having his legs healed but nothing happened.  No one helped him get into the water just as the bubbles floated up to the top.  He was all alone is a sea of destitute and handicapped people.  One day Jesus arrived and the crippled man had no idea who he was.  When Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk, the fellow did and low and behold he could stand when he tried and he could walk.  It seems that he never bothered to thank Jesus for what He had done for him; never even seemed compelled to find out who Jesus was.  I wonder how this guy would have answered Jesus question, “Who do you say I am?”

The Temple in Jerusalem had several sections, each designed to give specific groups of people an opportunity to worship and pray and talk about God.  It worked well with the sections for Jewish men and perhaps even Jewish women but it was a train wreck where non Jewish people were to go to pray.  The area had been turned into a bazaar.  Goats and sheep and breads being hawked all about.  Money changers worked deals for out of towners who needed Jewish shekels to give their offerings.  When Jesus came into the Gentile section of the Temple, He was appalled by what He saw and threw a fit.  He overturned tables, chased away animals and created a ruckus.  He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.  And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'?   But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" (Mark 11:15-17 NIV)  What would the merchants and priests in the Court of the Gentiles that day have replied if Jesus asked them, “Who am I?” 

Pilate could have been asked this question.  “Pilate, who am I?”  As Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus, using brutality to get at Him, Jesus might have been a “what” for Him.  Yet as He watched Jesus get beaten without begging for the guards to stop, refuse to give a defense for Himself when the priests and their cronies made all sorts of bizarre accusations against Him, did not plead for Pilate to let Him go, Jesus must have at some point become a person to Pilate.  Pilate’s wife came to him, imploring Pilate to release Jesus because of a dream she had about Him. This must have shaken him a bit and pushed the Roman governor to look at Jesus more closely.  When Pilate finally sent Jesus off to be flogged and crucified, I wonder what his answer to Jesus’ question would have been.  “Who am I?

When the Lord suddenly appeared in the room where Thomas and the other disciples were, just seven days after He was raised from the dead in a new resurrected body, the thought must have crossed Thomas’s mind for a split second, “Who is this?”  Quickly he regrouped after Jesus got his full attention.   A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!"  Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." (John 20:26-27 NIV)  Thomas immediately blurted out to Jesus, "My Lord and my God!"  (John 20:28 NIV)  This sudden apprehension of Jesus is shocking and disconcerting when like Thomas, we have it.  If He is your good friend, that is one thing.  If He is an absent father who doesn’t pay attention to your, that is another.  If He is a critic who finds all your faults and puts you down, that is still something else.  If He is weak and incompetent and has nothing to offer, then that is even another way of deciding.  If though, He is your Lord and God, you must consider the ramifications of that.

No one can talk you into this; it requires the revelation of God to make it clear.  There isn’t a pastor or book or video that can convince you of this that Jesus is your Lord and God.  Only the Father in Heaven can make that certain but once He does, once you come to that conclusion, you must act upon it.  You must make a clear break from every other loyalty that keeps you from Him as your Lord and your God.  At one time you were happy to follow Jesus.  It was easy then because you were fascinated by Him.  Now though it is hard and life has taken a toll on you and there Jesus is before you, calling to you to come after Him.  Is He still your Lord and God?  Does He still have your absolute loyalty?  Can He do with you as He wishes, take you where He wants, give you whatever task He decides?  Until you make this dramatic shift in your will, that Jesus Christ is your Lord and your God, nothing much will happen with you.  You will get along; you won’t however be joined with Him in His great mission.  But once you do decide He is your Lord and your God, He will align you with Him so that you will be in step with God and part of what He is doing in this world.