Thursday, February 26
Now it happened as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him; and he asked them “who do the people say that I am?” And they answered, “John the Baptist; but others say Elijah; and others, that one of the old prophets has risen.” And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered “the Christ of God.”
—Luke 9: 18-20
Several years ago, many people wore bracelets asking them to consider “What would Jesus do?” It was a good attempt to get to the heart of our daily walk with God. But from the very beginning, I had somewhat of an allergic reaction to these bracelets. I kept thinking something was wrong—it wasn’t that the bracelets seemed inappropriate, but rather that there was something wrong with the message.
In reflecting upon today’s lesson, I realized the problem: instead of asking us to consider what we should do, the bracelet should have asked Jesus’ question: Who do you say that I am? Jesus is concerned with who we were created to be not merely what we were created to do.
Most of us in this contemporary age do not consider questions of being, the hard question of what it means to be a child of God. But it strikes me that at the core of the Gospel, at the core of the good news, the question of being is central. “Who are you” is directly related to “who do you say that I am.”
Who you are in the depths of your being is the most important and accurate image of God’s grace in your life. If you can discover the person God called into being from your mother’s womb, if you can be that person and only that person without all the trappings that life attempts to throw upon you, then you will not only be you, you will also reflect God in all that you are.
Gracious God, help me ask more than what Jesus would do, instead, guide me to the harder question: Who am I?, and in that place of wondering help me discover who I say Jesus is, as well.
