WHO DO YOU SAY I AM?

Jesus is Lord!” “Jesus is the Messiah!” “Jesus is my personal Lord and Savior!” We see those words written on subway walls and tenement halls, to steal a line from Simon and Garfunkle. We also see them written on rocks along the highway, on placards at football games, and on billboards next to buildings. We hear people say those words on television, in church and standing on the street corner.

And Jesus would have none of it. “Don’t tell anyone who I am,” Jesus said to the disciples; ordered the disciples. “You know who I am. That’s enough for now.” And it was, for that moment. Yet I don’t think Jesus would say it any differently today. Telling everyone who Jesus is is the easy part. It’s really no big deal. The harder part and the bigger deal is to live what we say, who we say, Jesus is.

It is fine to tell the world that Jesus is our personal Lord and Savior. We can even purchase space along the highway to profess our beliefs on billboards. We can buy expensive seats at big-time games in order to hold up a placard that will be picked up by the ubiquitous television camera. But nobody really cares what we say we believe or who we say Jesus is. What they really care about is what we do about what we say we believe about Jesus.

What does it mean to us and to everyone we encounter when we say that we believe Jesus is the Messiah? What does it mean, not theologically or in words, but what does it mean in our relationships one to another, personal relationships? How is that belief lived out as we encounter others on our daily journeys? At the point in the Gospel story where Jesus told the disciples not to say anything about who they said he was, Jesus’ admonition was correct: they still did not know what that meant. They thought it meant that they would become very powerful people. They thought wrong.

Sometimes we also think wrong. Sometimes we think that believing in Jesus will make us powerful, bring us material possessions, wealth, prestige and all the trappings of the good life – just as the disciples supposed it would bring them whenever Jesus the Messiah came into power, worldly power. Sometimes that is still the message that is conveyed by all those signs and words and professions of faith. It was then, still is and always will be the wrong message. The only real message is the cross, quite the opposite of what we might think, what Jesus’ disciples thought.

In a sense, they learned the truth of what it meant to follow Jesus and they learned it the hard way: by living out their faith in Jesus. That was the only way for them and that has been the only way for us, if we must admit to that truth. It is not easy being a follower of Jesus: turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, forgiving those who have harmed us. The list is long and we know it.

If we truly believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, we do so by living out that faith in him by our very lives, not so much in word but always in whatever we do so that others make come to know our love for Jesus through our love for them.