Who am I?

I really enjoy questions, problems and puzzles with definite answers.  I don’t particularly care how difficult the problem is to solve, as long as its solution is well-defined, specific, and precise.  Jigsaw puzzles, crosswords, Sudoku, Ken-ken, let me at them.  But give me one of those soft, touchy-feely questions and I’m looking for the nearest exit.

So someone asks me who I am and I say “Norman Roos.”  Oh, they say, that’s just your name, that doesn’t tell me who you are.  Okay, I say, I’m a teacher.  No, that’s not enough, that’s just what you do, who are you?  Ugh, self-reflection – the ultimate touchy-feely!   Is there any answer that is good enough?  Where’s the door?

Even though I’m out of my comfort zone, St. Paul insists that I know who I am.  And he also insists that my answer to this question is determined by my answer to the question of who Jesus is.  My very salvation hangs in the balance.  I can’t look for the door on this one, for the door I duck out of leads to hell.

Well, that puts today’s Gospel passage under a bright light, doesn’t it?  Jesus is asking his own disciples, as he is asking you and me, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter seems to have the right answer, but if we can shed 2000 years of hindsight, we realize that Peter’s answer doesn’t really cut it - it’s ambiguous, open to many interpretations, some of which can lead us astray, one of which leads to salvation.

Peter claims that Jesus is “the Christ,” equivalent to the Hebrew word messiah – the anointed one.  For the Jews, two kinds of people were anointed ones, kings and priests.  The kings ruled over the people, the priests ruled over the temple and its sacrificial rituals, connecting the people to God.  Which one is Jesus, either, both, or even more?

King is an easy one.  Of course, Jesus is my king.  I want to obey him, I want to be judged righteous by him at the end of time, I pledge my loyalty to him.  But is that all he is to me?  Who do I become if I simply see him as my king, my law-giver, my judge? 

St. Paul knows, because St. Paul lived this life.  As a young man, called Saul at that time, he was a devout Jew, a Pharisee dedicated to strictly following the law given by God to Moses and the people on Mt. Sinai.  He was very proud of his obedience, but also judgmental and vindictive against those who opposed the law, or who simply didn’t follow the law as closely as he did. 

I become this same person when my focus on Jesus is simply obedience to laws of my king.  Unfortunately, I’m not even as good as Paul was at following the rules, so I’m easily frustrated by my failures and shortcomings.  My consolation is to claim that others are obviously a lot worse at this than me.  They commit much greater and more plentiful sins than me.  I may not be quite good at this, but they are the truly evil ones.  In sum, I become petty, judgmental, legalistic, self-righteous, and exclusionary.  This list goes on but it’s not a pretty picture.  It is a picture of hell.

What about Jesus as my priest, the holy one who connects me to God?  Jesus is certainly that.  Yet, when I limit my idea of Jesus to this, I become passive in my relationship to God.  After all, Jesus, my priest, takes care of that.  All I must do is show up, say the right prayers, offer my tithe to the Jesus the priest, and all is well.  And if Jesus has the God-thing covered, I can devote myself to making this life as comfortable for me and mine and I can.  I can even equate my worldly, material success as a validation of my God’s good graces.  If I’m doing well, it’s because I’ve accepted Jesus as my go-to guy with God.  I’m a bit confused when I’m not doing well.  I then look out for those who seem to have cheated me, who wish to take what I have, or wish to hurt those I love.  I become sanctimonious, greedy, selfish, and vengeful – another ugly picture, a picture of hell.

So who is this Jesus for me?  He is king, yet he does not simply give me laws, he lives the law that I am to follow – a law of love.  As he loves me, so I should love others.

He is my priest, yet not a mere connection to God, but he is one with God, offering his own life as sacrifice that I might be saved, that I might spend eternity in the presence of my all loving, God.  He calls me to follow him in love and to follow him in sacrifice, picking up his cross. 

He gives me the power to do this by being present to me in a very real sense every time I participate in this great celebration of thanksgiving – the Eucharist.  The sacrifice He made for us 2000 years ago transcends space and time to become present for me and for you this very day on this very altar.  And He promises to be with us until the very end of time.

When I see Jesus as my God, my Lord, my Savior, and the source of all my hope and my love and my strength, I am changed.  St. Paul tells the Galatians as he tells us that all the artificial divisions we cherish and live with – ethnicity, there is neither Greek nor Jew; gender, neither male nor female; social status, neither slave nor free – are irrelevant if we know that Jesus had sacrificed to save us all, simply because of who we are, created in God’s image, loved by God so much that he gave his only Son to us.  Our anxiety is transformed into peace, our fears into joy, greed into generosity, pettiness into kindness, violence into gentleness, hatred into love.   Led by the Spirit, our lives bear the fruits of the Spirit.

When I know in my heart that this is Jesus, I can answer confidently when asked who I am.  By God’s infinite and divine grace, in union with every other human being, I am a loved child of the all-loving God.

It is enough.