Who am I?

In this episode, I invite you to reflect deeply on your personal relationship with Jesus. Drawing from a journey to the foothills of Mount Hermon, I explore the pivotal question Jesus posed to his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” This reflection encourages you to consider how your understanding of Jesus has evolved over time and to articulate your faith authentically. Emphasizing the dynamic nature of faith, I discuss the challenges of discipleship, including embracing suffering, and urge you to seek a deeper, more intimate relationship with God. Join me in this engaging and transformative journey of faith.

00:00:00  Have you ever been stopped on the street, either by, say, a marketer asking your opinion about a particular product or issue, or maybe it’s someone taking a survey, or maybe occasionally you run across the film cruiser or something like that, just trying to get the vox pop. You know, there’s these the opinions and expressions. What do you like at responding to to people when they ask you questions? Just out of the blue, you know, it can be a bit tricky to to find something, you know, sensible and intelligent and, and make you look way better than you probably are. In fact, we get something like that in the gospel today where Jesus takes his disciples a long way away. This is another road trip. We had a bit of a road trip last week, and we get another one this week. Going to the very north of Israel, up to the foothills of Mount Hermon, the only mountain in Israel that is permanently covered in snow and it’s the source of the River Jordan.

00:01:07  There are these springs there at Banias, down to the foothills of the mountain, and this big kind of rock, rock wall. And out of that there are various springs are there, and the water begins to flow. But it’s also a place where there’s lots of pagan kind of cults associated with these springs and with this place. And so it wasn’t the kind of natural place that a good Jewish rabbi would take his good Jewish disciples along the way, you know, to a very pagan place where there was all kinds of of worship that wasn’t about the worship of the one true God. So it was an interesting place there to ask this question. I mean, the easy one. First, what did people say about me? Who do they say that I am? You know, it’s easy to quote someone else, but the next part is a bit more challenging when Jesus turns to each one. And it wasn’t just to the group, but to say to you. What about you? Who do you say that I am? And it’s can be challenging kind of thing to answer, to ponder.

00:02:18  Well, where am I with God? How do I make sense of what God is for me? You know, we can quote the catechism. We can just steal Peter’s answer and and quote it. But I think Jesus wants us to respond in our own way and to kind of ponder upon, well, how would I have answered this question when I was a seven year old? I’m sure I would have just given the answers that our parents and teachers had kind of taught us to give. But what about when I was a teenager? What about in my 20s? What about when I was perhaps a little bit older than that? How has that answer perhaps changed over time? Or is it just one of those things that you’ve never really had to kind of stop and think, well, how would I describe the place of Jesus in my life? How would I talk about him to somebody else? How would I kind of offer some sense of of where Jesus is in my life and what he means to me, how I make sense of that, how I kind of articulate that.

00:03:27  But I think it is a crucial thing for every single one of us to take time to answer and remember that Jesus is not a white European. He is a middle eastern man. He is very utterly Jewish. He was way shorter than I was, probably, you know, about 165cm, about five foot four, rather than my slightly higher height than that, you know, dark complexion, thick curly black hair, probably not the long flowing locks that we’ve often pictured within him But that man, as he stands before you, as you’ve come to pray, as you’ve come to offer your hearts to him. How do you respond to him? How do you actually encounter him when you go to pray? I mean, it’s one thing just to say prayers, but we’re invited into a friendship, into a relationship with God. So how do we respond to him in that way? One of the wonderful things that I’ve encountered in 12 step programs is that there is kind of this, this wonderful way of talking about God.

00:04:41  And God is a crucial part in recovery programs. But rather than defining God, they invite people to believe in the God of your own understanding. And that can feel kind of very loose and kind of all over the place, just a bit a bit floppy for our sense. But it’s there’s something quite wonderful about that, of being invited into a relationship where I can kind of ponder, well, what does God mean for me? How have I encountered Jesus across the course of my life? And how is that changing? How can I grow in my friendship? How can I grow in my relationship? How can I make more sense about the way of God and what he is inviting me into? When Jesus begins to to say to me, look, the way that this is going is going to be the way of suffering. This is going to be the way where I will experience untold suffering and all kinds of torture. As I take up the cross as the the system inflicts the worst of their punishments against me.

00:05:51  But on the third day that I will be raised to new life. The disciples didn’t seem to really hear that last part. And when Jesus says that the way of discipleship, the way of friendship, the way to serve and to live for God is going to involve the way of the cross. How do we respond to that? How do we make sense of that within our own lives? How do we fit that within our usually pretty comfortable way of living? What is it that the Lord might be asking of us by way of responding to that love, to that graciousness, to that forgiveness, to that mercy that he has so readily poured out upon us? What does Jesus ask of us? Will we like to attempt to exercise him? That’s what the Greek really means when it says that he began to remonstrate with Jesus. The Peter was essentially rebuking Jesus, trying to drive out this demon of suffering, because Peter clearly wasn’t ready to experience that as part of his call to discipleship. Well, how do we respond to that same call? How do we make sense of what Jesus is inviting us into today? Because that question of who do you say that I am is at the very heart of what it is to be a faithful follower of Jesus and how we respond.

00:07:16  How we offer ourselves in answer to that question lies at the heart of who we become as the faithful followers of Jesus. So let’s indeed allow the Lord to take time this week to sit with us, to look at us, to walk with us. Whatever way you want to imagine that. But take time individually, just one on one with Jesus. So let me look at you to let him love you, to let him invite you into freedom, into life, but then to hear him ask that question of you. But you, who do you say I am? What have I become for you in your life? How do you respond to me? And then just take time sitting with the different ways that that might be expressed today. And let’s pray and hope that we can express that in a more faithful way, a way of greater discipleship, a way that embraces his cross, a way that longs to experience that suffering, to walk with him and to find the joy and the wonder that comes from embracing the cross in our lives.