427 Your Identity Check

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Your Identity Check”, originally shared on August 20, 2026. It was the 427^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   An identity check is a process for proving that you are who you claim to be. Today, we’re going to find why Christians couldn’t possibly pass that test.

   “If you were put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” It’s a well-worn rhetorical question that has been used by Christians to challenge and encourage themselves for many years.

   Jesus asked his disciples a similar question, “But who do you say that I am?”

   It’s a good question. How would you answer it?

   We sometimes say, “That’s a good question” meaning, “I don’t know.” 😊

   You may have heard the old joke about a little boy who goes to his father and says, “Dad, how do airplanes fly?” “I don’t know, son,” replies the father. Later, the son goes to his father again and asks, “Dad, why is the grass green?” “I don’t know, son,” replies the father. Sometime later, the son goes to his father again and says, “Dad, why does the ocean make waves?” “I don’t know, son,” replies the father.

   “I’m sorry for bothering you with so many questions, Dad,” says the son. “That’s OK, son,” says the father. “You won’t learn if you don’t ask questions.”

   “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” is a pretty good question. “The Son of Man” is a reference to Daniel 7:13-14, and it refers to a divine figure coming from heaven to receive an eternal kingdom at the end of the age. Who is he, or will he be? It’s Jesus, fully God and fully human being.

   It’s a good question because it asks the disciples to think about who Jesus really is.

   Dr. Isidor Isaac Rabi, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944, credited his mother for helping him build his scientific mind at an early age. Every day, he said, when he came home from school, she didn’t ask him what he learned that day, but she would ask him, “Did you ask a good question today?”

   “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” is a good question.

   “But who do you say that I am?” is a great question, but it’s harder to answer truthfully because we want to believe that we have the answer. We don’t.

   I’ve been trying to learn Mandarin Chinese for several years and sometimes, when I manage to blurt out something intelligible, native speakers complement me. But I think that their expectations are generally pretty low. I’m sure that those compliments are mostly like what is said about a dog that dances on its hind legs. It’s not that he does it well, it’s remarkable that he does it at all. 😊

   Some people had lowered their expectations for who Jesus was, as well.

   Jesus and his disciples were in Caesarea Philippi, a city outside of Jesus’ country that functioned kind of like Santa Barbara does in our area.

   Jesus asked his disciples who people were saying that Jesus is.

   They shared the things that they had heard, things that indicated that people had relatively modest expectations for who Jesus was. Then Jesus asked a follow-up question. A really great question.

   It happens in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches this coming Sunday, Matthew 16:13-20.

   It starts with Matthew 16:13-16,

¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

   Jesus’ disciples had been following him around for a while. That question must have occurred to them. Maybe they were afraid to say what they were really thinking for fear of being disappointed, so they lowered their expectations with the answers that they had heard.

   We live in a time when, just as in Jesus’ day, the world has lots of opinions about who Jesus is, and most of them are wrong.

   C.S. Lewis, in his book Mere Christianity, said,

   “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

   Peter answered Jesus’ question plainly, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (!)

   But that’s not Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question. That’s an opinion, one that could be interpreted in many ways, as we will see in the next verses.

   The answer to this question is not a noun. It’s a verb. It’s an expression of a relationship. It’s an active presence. It can only come through us from God.

   Jesus had asked the disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”. That’s a meaningful answer!

   The Gospel of John is full of Jesus’ “I am…” statements, like “I am the vine”, “I am the good shepherd”, “I am the door”, and “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”, and they all point to his being God.

   Answering that question is not about Jesus, it’s about us.

   Several years ago, I worked out at a local health club. Sally had fallen out of the habit of going, and she was thinking about going back to working out again. She asked me what the women were wearing there at that time.

   I said, “I don’t know.”

   “You mean that you’re there several times a week and you don’t know what the women wear?”, she asked.

   “No,” I answered.

   She said, “You don’t know what women are wearing at the gym.”

   “I don’t care what people wear at the gym,” I said. “I just go to work out.”

   She paused a second, smiled slightly, and pointed at me saying, “That was the right answer!” 😊

   Peter also had the right answer!  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  That is the answer that is not his answer.

   That answer cannot be revealed by sinful humans. It can only be revealed by God. It is not an answer we can know, it comes from a living relationship with God.

   Then, Jesus gets specific about Peter, and about us, the Church, in Matthew 16:17-20,

¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

   Jesus tells Peter that there is more to Peter than his life experience, and that there is more to the Church than its appearance. That there is power and authority in the Body of Christ that is beyond time and space. That’s a lot to unpack! 😊 Let’s go.

1.    Peter didn’t figure out who Jesus was, and no human being told him. Instead, God revealed it to him.

2.    Peter’s name is “Petros” in Greek. “Petra” is a Greek word that means “rock”. Roman Catholics believe that the Roman Catholic church is built on the person named Peter, who was the first pope. Protestants believe that it was the faith given by God to Peter (Petros) to see who Jesus really was that was the rock (petra) upon which Christ would build his Church.

3.    Peter would be given the keys to the kingdom of heaven. That’s why we hear all those jokes about St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

4.    And, related to being given those keys, Peter and his successors and those who are ordained, would be given the power to forgive sins, as Roman Catholics believe, or that authority would be given to the Church to declare the forgiveness of God to those who repent by pastors, as Protestants believe.

   There. All unpacked!

   And then, weirdly, Jesus tells them this at the end of our Gospel reading for this coming Sunday, in Matthew 16:20,

²⁰ Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

   Jesus isn’t making a suggestion here. Jesus orders his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the One, the Messiah.

   Why? It’s a question that’s so old that has a name, “The Messianic Secret.”

   Jesus was the anointed deliverer that God’s people, the Jews, had been waiting for for around 1,000 years. No one wanted to say it. False Messiahs had come before. They didn’t want to get their hopes up by admitting it. But Peter did, and there it was. Peter answered the big question.

   And Jesus sternly told the disciples not to tell anyone about him. Why not?

  Why not have his disciples tell everyone about this good news as quickly as possible? Why not hire a PR firm to do the marketing? 😊

   Maybe Jesus didn’t want to be seen as a celebrity, but as the Savior.

   Maybe Jesus didn’t want to attract the attention of the Roman occupying empire. Yet.

   But this is the best news in the history of the world. How could anyone keep that a secret? Well, apparently, it’s not as hard as one might think. 😊

   I read a story once about a preacher who had delivered a sermon on the struggle of serving God in the world in the army of the Lord.

   Afterward, a man came out of the worship space to shake the preacher’s hand and he said, “I too have served here for many years in the army of the Lord.”

   The preacher said, “Really? I don’t remember seeing you at worship before today, or in any of our community activities or ministries.”

   The man leaned forward and whispered, “I’m in the secret service.”

   I think that Jesus didn’t want people to believe in Him just because of the show.

   I think that He wanted people to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and of faith in Him because of what He was about to do, the love that he was about to show by giving his life on the cross for the redemption of the world, validated by his taking his life back again and rising from the dead. It’s like learning Mandarin.

   When I speak Mandarin to a native speaker, they sometimes look at me like I’m deranged because they do not expect the Mandarin language to be coming out of a Westerner’s mouth.  

   When they do realize that I am speaking their language, they relax a little bit, and sometimes they’ll respond in Mandarin. And often they are generous with their compliments.

   But sometimes, they’re insulted because they think that I don’t think that they know English.

   And often, they don’t want to speak Mandarin. They want to practice their English with me, a native English speaker. 😊

   It is the same way when we begin sharing our faith in who Jesus is with friends and relatives, even strangers.

   When we first start to share our faith, people sometimes look at us as if we are deranged. The good news sounds like crazy talk to those who are perishing. But, when they hear a little about Jesus, he sounds like a nice guy, or a positive influence. But that’s all. And maybe they will even compliment us on our Jesus.

   But sometimes they are insulted and ask who we think we are to judge them, or to believe that we know the truth and they don’t. And sometimes they want to convince us that they are OK just as they are and don’t want to know who Jesus is.

   Who do you say that Jesus is? The answer is not the answer. The answer is the personal relationship. The answer is knowing and being known by God, God in Jesus Christ. Jesus is our Savior. Jesus is the answer.

   “But who do you say that I am?”

   Answering that question is just as important today as it was when Jesus asked it of the first disciples.

   There are no answers without questions.

   One of the most important things I learned in college was to be fearless when it comes to asking questions. Ask them, and don’t be concerned about where they will lead. They will always lead to the truth, if you’re willing to keep asking.

   Error doesn’t come from asking questions. It comes from coming to the point were we can’t answer a question and then assume there isn’t any answer. People who say they believe in science, not in God, are especially guilty of this.

   We need to keep asking. When we do, we will always come back to God, the Creator of all that exists, including reality itself. We need to learn to be fearless.

   “Apologetics” is a branch of Christian study that comes from the Greek word “apologia” which is a speech in defense of something. It’s about answering people’s questions and objections. It’s playing defense.

   I occasionally receive short apologetic videos on hot-button issues in the Christian life from someone without a name, whose videos are sent from “Wdysia”, short for “Who do you say I am?”

   “Who do you say I am?” is the question.

   But there are also limits to asking questions. We can’t just ask questions just to avoid maturity and responsibility. We need a ready defense that is not based on what we know, because if someone can talk you into becoming a Christian today, someone else can talk you out of being a Christian tomorrow.

   That’s why the message of Jesus isn’t “learn more stuff” but “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” (as in Matthew 4:17).

   The Christian life is less about information and more about transformation!

  You’ve probably heard about the long lines and cancelled flights at our airports today because there aren’t enough laborers like pilots and ground workers and other people to staff all of the jobs needed to move large numbers of passengers from one place to another.

   I remember hearing about an airport where a flight had been cancelled, and all the passengers were instructed to go to another gate and be registered for another flight.

   There was a long line, but it was moving, and people were being patient and were being served, and the single clerk at the desk was doing the best that she could.

   At one point, a man came charging up to the counter from the back of the line and interrupted the woman behind the desk.

   He said, “Look, I need to be on this plane. I need to be sure that I have a seat. I have a very important meeting at a very specific time. I need a ticket now!”

   The clerk said, “I understand that sir, and you will have a seat on this plane. But you’re going to have to be patient and wait your turn, like everyone else.

   The man said, “I don’t have time for that. I need a ticket for this flight, and I need it right now!”

   “Yes sir, I’m sure that’s true,” said the clerk. “But you’re going to have to wait in line.”

   The man glared at her and said, “Do you have any idea who I am?”

   The woman picked up her p.a. system microphone and announced to the terminal, “Attention Terminal Three, Terminal Number Three. There is a man at the ticket counter who does not know who he is. If there is anyone in the terminal who can tell him who he is, please come to the ticket counter in Terminal Number Three.”

   The man turned beet red and turned around and walked back to the end of the line.

   We are Christians because we say that “You are the Christ” about Jesus and we believe it from our true selves. But we are sinners. We can’t do that by ourselves.

   Instead, God transforms us. We are a new creation. We are the people of God. Our identity comes by the grace of God. As Jesus told Peter, he was blessed, “’For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

   Do you know who you are? Yes. You do know who you are, because you know whose you are. You are a made-new power-filled child of God.

   We can’t pass God’s identity check, but we do because of God at work on the cross and now within us.

   Use the gifts that God has given you to share the Good News of Jesus Christ that you have first received from God in the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

   Get out of the secret service, and share that Good News today.