This is kind of a follow on from my previous post but is also firmly based on my preparation to lead worship on Sunday based around Matthew 16:13–20 and Romans 12:1–8. In general I’ve ceased to be surprised when my musings turn out to be useful preparation for preaching, however, this week, drawing multiple threads from recent posts did catch me out a little. It begins with the stand out question in this weeks Gospel reading:

“Who do you say that I am?”

I think the answer we give often says more about us than it does about God. It reflects somthing of our worldview the way we see and talk about God  is shaped by our experiences, assumptions, hopes, fears and the traditions which have formed us.

Peter gives a rather good demonstration of this.

Jesus first asks what other people are saying about him. The disciples offer several answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets.

Then Jesus turns the question towards the disciples themselves: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It sounds decisive, as though Peter has finally understood who Jesus is, Peter seems to have recognised something important about who Jesus is, yet it soon becomes clear that this understanding is very much shaped by his own expectations of what the Messiah should be like based on his own life experience and hopes as well different Jewish expectations around the Messiah. Ideas of restoration, liberation, kingship and God’s intervention were all part of the world in which Peter lived. So when Peter says Messiah, he is not using an empty title but one that carries a multitude of potential meanings. So when Jesus began to talk about suffering, rejection and death, Peter was quick to object. Whatever Peter imagined the Messiah would be, this apparently was not it. Peter’s answer tells us something about Jesus, but it also tells us something about Peter.

The thing is Jesus didn’t allow Peter’s expectations to determine what his ministry should look like. In fact he didn’t seem particularly interested in fitting anyone else’s expectations. Throughout the Gospels he unsettles ideas about power, leadership, holiness and belonging. He eats with people others avoid, places children at the centre of conversations about greatness, touches those who have been excluded, challenges religious authority and refuses to use power simply to secure his own position. Peter has recognised Jesus as Messiah, but Jesus still has to challenge what Peter thinks Messiah means. He didn’t allow Peter’s expectation, or the expectations of the religious and political leaders to dictate his identity.

Who gets to tell us who we are?

Perhaps part of the reason this grabbed my interest is that questions of identity have been keeping me busy for some time. One of the first posts on this blog was called Behind the Mask. It began with a somewhat similar question.  “Who is Paul Coleman?”

At the time I had recently received my ADHD diagnosis and was begining my exploration of ordained ministry and as such was beginning to look back at my life rather differently.

I found it much easier to answer the question by describing what I did. Jobs, qualifications, relationships, interests, church roles and responsibilities all gave me something fairly concrete to say. But I was less certain how much any of them really answered the question.

Other people also contribute to the stories we tell about ourselves. I remember finding out that a teacher at my secondary school had greeted my younger brother by saying that she hoped he was nothing like me. Years later, a manager told me that if I was any more laid back I’d be horizontal. He wasn’t being complimentary, although I have since claimed it as a badge of honour. Neither comment defined me, but both became part of a much wider collection of expectations and judgements through which I learnt something about how other people saw me.

Roles can shape us in a different way. I have spent a lot of my adult life understanding myself through being an academic, a historian and later a curator. Those aren’t simply jobs I have done. They have shaped how I think, the questions I ask, the way I approach evidence, and quite a lot of how I understand myself.

I also rather like being **Dr Coleman**. I have a small internal argument with myself when a church calls me Mr Coleman, even though I have probably asked them to. In reality, I would much rather they just called me Paul, but if we are going to use surnames then, yes, I am quite attached to the Dr.

There is something slightly ridiculous about that, but it also says something about identity. The doctorate represents years of work and has become part of the story I tell about who I am. Being a historian and a curator have done something similar. They have not simply given me titles, they have formed me. So perhaps the question is not whether our roles shape us. Of course they do. The question is what happens when they begin to carry more of our identity than we realise, or when the job changes, disappears, or no longer fits quite as neatly as it once did. But what happens when a job ends, a relationship changes, our health shifts, or we discover something about ourselves which causes us to reinterpret parts of our past? What happens when things change? 

That has also made me think again about my recent post asking whether neurodivergent adults are only welcome when we mask. There I was thinking mainly about the expectations churches place on people. If we spend years adjusting ourselves to fit what other people seem to need or expect, it can become difficult to work out where those expectations end and our own sense of self begins. Unmasking hasn’t helped me develope a nice neat answer to that. I’ve not uncovered some finished version of myself that was there all along, waiting to be found. If anything its made it more complicated. However, it has made me more aware of how much who I am has been shaped by relationships, work, experience and the roles I have occupied. Some of that I value and want to keep. Some of it I am still questioning. And some of it I am only now beginning to recognise as something I learnt because it helped me fit. And I suspect this probably shapes the way I approach Jesus’ question too.

What does our answer reveal about us?

None of us comes to Jesus without a history. We bring the churches which have formed us, the theology we have inherited, the hymns we have sung, our family experience, and all the other things that have happened to us along the way. Our experiences of authority, welcome, rejection, suffering, love and belonging all affect what we notice when we read the Gospels and what kind of Jesus feels most familiar to us.

Someone who has experienced exclusion may be particularly attentive to the people Jesus chooses to eat with. Someone whose experience of power has been damaging may hear language about God’s power very differently from someone whose experience of authority has largely been safe. Someone whose family life has taught them to expect acceptance may encounter Jesus differently from someone who has spent years wondering whether they really belong. So when Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”, I am not sure we can answer without also revealing something about ourselves. The titles we reach for, the stories we emphasise, and the kind of power or salvation we imagine all say something about what we have come expecting to find.

Of course there is a danger in simply creating a Jesus who confirms what we already think. Peter seems to offer a warning against that. He brings his own expectations of Messiahship to Jesus, but Jesus does not allow those expectations to determine who he is or what his ministry should look like. Perhaps part of following Jesus is being willing for the Jesus we encounter to unsettle some of the answers we thought we already had.

What does our worship say?

This connects closely with what I have been writing recently about worship. I have been asking what the songs we sing say about the kind of God we worship, and preparing Sunday’s service has made me realise that Jesus’ question sits underneath much of that concern.

Who do you say that I am?

We answer that question in worship, often without really noticing that we are doing it. The language we use about God, the songs we return to, the prayers we pray and the stories we emphasise gradually build up a picture of who we think Jesus is. Words such as power, victory, kingship and salvation are not necessarily a problem, but they do carry assumptions with them. What do we mean by power when we look at Jesus? What does kingship look like in the life he actually lived? What kind of salvation are we expecting?

Peter’s problem is not that *Messiah* is the wrong word. He has recognised something important about Jesus, but Jesus still has to challenge what Peter thinks that word means. I wonder if some of the language we use in worship needs to be treated in the same way. We can sing familiar words quite sincerely while carrying ideas about God which sit less comfortably with the Jesus we encounter in the Gospels.

Worship also does more than reveal the picture of God we already have. It contributes to forming it. The songs we sing repeatedly, the prayers we hear and the stories we return to become part of the way we understand God, and that understanding inevitably begins to shape the way we understand ourselves and the communities we are part of.

For me, this is where Romans 12, the other reading for Sunday, becomes particularly interesting. Paul moves from worship into transformation, talking about the renewing of our minds before describing a community made up of people with different gifts who belong to one another. There seems to be an assumption that encountering God changes how we understand ourselves and how we relate to other people.

So perhaps there is a connection between the Jesus we imagine and the kind of Christian life we expect. If our picture of Jesus is dominated by certainty, status and control, those things can easily become part of what we value in ourselves and in the church. But the Jesus we meet in the Gospels also washes feet, notices people others overlook, eats with those who have been pushed aside and repeatedly refuses to fit the expectations placed upon him. Following that Jesus may require us to reconsider some of the things we have come to take for granted. I am still working out what that means. There are parts of Jesus’ life and teaching which challenge the picture of God I find easiest to hold, and there are assumptions I have inherited which I have already had to reconsider. There are almost certainly others I have not yet noticed.

Perhaps that is why I find Peter such useful company. He recognises something true about Jesus, but that recognition does not bring his questioning or misunderstanding to an end. It becomes part of a much longer process of discovering what his answer actually means.

What happens when things change?

And so I find myself returning to the question with which this blog began: Who is Paul Coleman?

I can still give plenty of answers, but I am less convinced than I once was that any of them needs to be final. Roles change, circumstances change, and sometimes our understanding of ourselves changes too. The things which once seemed central to our identity can become less important, while things we barely noticed become much more significant.

Perhaps something similar happens when Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?”

Some of the titles I once used quite easily now make me pause. Kingship language, in particular, does not sit as comfortably with me as it once did. Much of the language we associate with rulers carries assumptions about hierarchy, authority and power over others, while the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels repeatedly complicates those ideas.

That does not necessarily mean I need to abandon the language. Perhaps Jesus is also reshaping my understanding of what a ruler might be like. As my own ideas about leadership and authority continue to change, I may find myself hearing that language differently again.

There is something reassuring in knowing that neither my understanding of Jesus nor my understanding of myself has to be finished. Peter is known, called and loved even while he is still getting things wrong. Perhaps our identity can be held there too, in being known and loved by Christ rather than entirely in the roles we perform, the expectations we meet or the certainty of the answers we give.

And perhaps that gives us some freedom to change. To reconsider things we once took for granted. To notice people differently. To respond when someone’s experience unsettles our assumptions. To become a little less concerned with protecting the person we think we ought to be, and a little more open to the person we might still become.

So I am not sure “Who do you say that I am?” is a question we answer once.

Perhaps we keep answering it as we encounter Jesus again, and allow that encounter to shape not only what we believe about him, but who we are becoming.

As I have been preparing this service, one song has kept coming back to me: “Who I Have Become in You.” Its language of being known, loved and changed by Christ seems a good place to leave the question.