“Who are you anyway?” the angry man yelled at me. He’d heard me scolding his son who was riding his bicycle through the playground of the St. Michael Lutheran Summer Tutorial Day Camp in the East Mount Airy section of Philadelphia. Younger children were playing there, and, as Camp Director, I was getting pretty fed up with neighborhood kids using our property as their BMX track and endangering the safety of my campers.
I thought, “What do you mean asking ‘Who am I?’ It should be obvious. I’m an adult and your son’s a kid and he has no business doing what he’s doing. I have every right to chastise the little miscreant.”
But I didn’t take into consideration the fact that I was a white dude in a shirt and tie in a predominantly Black neighborhood. When I thought about the rather acrimonious encounter I’d had with this angry father, I realized “Who are you anyway?” wasn’t intended as an insult to impugn my right or authority. It was actually a legitimate demand that I identify myself.
The next day I saw the father out in his yard. I went over and apologized to him, told him who I was, and explained the difficulty the camp had been having with neighborhood bike riders. We ended up shaking hands and he promised to tell his son not to ride on St. Michael’s property when the younger kids were there.
So who are you anyway? Who do you think you are? Who do people say you are? What gives you identity? Who are you in your soul?
The gospel lesson in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 16, Year B (Mark 8:27-38) has Jesus asking this question about his identity. When the disciples answer him, it seems like everybody has some idea of who this weird rabbi from Nazareth is or is supposed to be. There are some pretty interesting guesses, but they’re wrong. Finally, the Holy Ghost whispers into Peter’s ear, and he blurts out, “You’re the Messiah!”
Then Jesus does whacky thing. He tells the disciples to keep his identity under wraps. Why? I always figured it was because nobody really understood what being the Messiah was supposed to mean. Jesus would rather be just an obscure itinerant preacher from the sticks than have everybody and their Uncle Ralph hail him as something he never had any intention of being.
Who is he? He’s the guy who is going to hang on a cross. He’s the guy who is going to be the object of hatred and scorn. He’s the guy who will watch as, within the space of a few days, all his acclaim is stripped away and he becomes someone the folks will be happy to do without. He’s the guy who is going to look like a failure, a blasphemer, and a self-deluded whacko.
Of course, Peter isn’t having any of this because he doesn’t get who the Messiah is supposed to be any more than anyone else does. Jesus has to take him to task for this, which, I imagine, didn’t make Peter feel very good. Still, the world’s ideas of glory, prestige, honor, and whatever are not who Jesus is. To follow Jesus means to give up your own idea of what’s important. It’s about giving up your identity. Jesus, in this text, actually asks us to give up our souls.
Now, I’ll grant that this may sound a little counterintuitive. The New Revised Standard Version Bible translates the Greek word psyche (yuch) as “life.”[i] You might figure from this that Jesus is telling the lads they’d better be ready to die for him—and that’s probably true. The word can mean physical life. But: it can also mean inner life or our inmost being. So, Jesus might be asking us to give up our sense of self-identity or our idea of ourselves. He’s asking us to surrender all that we value—or hate—about ourselves for his sake.
If someone were to ask me today “Who are you?” I’d happily and proudly tell them I’m the pastor of Faith Lutheran Church of Philadelphia. I must confess I’d be pretty self-satisfied saying that. But it’s starting to dawn on me that there’s more of my active ministry life behind me now than ahead of me. Who will I say that I am when I no longer do what I do? I must confess I’m not looking forward to asking myself that question.
But then I can look to Jesus—the one who let all his identity go when he hung on the cross. He was anointed by God, not for praise and position, but for sacrifice and loss. Jesus knew we’d all suffer and face some loss of our inner selves. He came to guide us through our delusions into the truth. To answer the question, “Who are you?” might mean answering the question “Who is Jesus to you?”
The old hymn says:
Forbid it, Lord that I should boast
save in the death of Christ my God.
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
Know who you are, my friend. Thanks for
reading me this week!
[i] In
the good old King James Bible, the translators translated it as “life” in verse
35 but as “soul” in verses 36 and 37. It’s the same word.
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