Luke 9:18-20

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Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, "Who do the crowds say I am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life." "But who what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Luke 9:18-20
I have asked this question many times, much to my wife's grief early in our relationship and marriage -- too many times. Our conversation frequently went like this:

"But why do you believe, Valerie," I asked too often.

"Because I do," she always said.

"But why?"

"I don't know. I just do."

God bless her, after a lifetime of her parents setting her in a confessional Lutheran pew every Sunday at 7:45 a.m., she still does. But for whatever reason, try as I might in my late 20s, I struggled to reconcile my faith that  the "man" named Jesus, the one described in Scripture, was in fact the Son of God, the Christ, the Redeemer, my Redeemer.

Truth is, he was right there under my eyes the whole time. All through my years of questioning my upbringing -- one in which I was taught to go to church, to believe in Christ, to be a Christian -- I kept reading Scripture, searching for the answer I knew all along. OK, I didn't read it often enough, but I read enough to let the slight variations in the stories about Easter Sunday bother men.

"Look," I asked my wife. "Why does this account say there were two angels in the tomb, and this one say there was one?"

"I don't know," she said. "Ask a pastor."

Of course, at the time, I was insistent I wasn't going to church; so asking a pastor was out of the question. Instead, I was left to do the right thing: To search Scripture and pray. Which brings me to today's passage.

"Who do you say I am?" Jesus asked the disciples.

You are the Christ, the Son of God, I can say with clarity and conviction now. That confessional Lutheran upbringing, one that had me at church on Sunday mornings as a young teen, has finally taken hold. The Word, which is living and active (Heb 4:12), is a stream of living water (John 7:38) refreshing the soul. And that Word has transformed my life.

Just believe.


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