This important book proposes a new framework for thinking about God in our daily work. Despite the subtitle, it has useful things to say to people in all walks of life, not just entrepreneurs. Busenitz argues that those of us involved in the “Faith at Work” movement have been going about it wrong: the point is not to bring our faith to work but rather to discover God already there, actively engaged and inviting us to join in. Our work can become a spiritual discipline (hence the title, Soul Work); indeed, the author sketches out five distinct “work disciplines” and shows us how to put them into practice. Instead of having our cups filled on Sunday and depleting them Monday through Saturday, the author suggests that we allow the Spirit of God to fill our cups Monday through Saturday so that we can respond in worship on Sunday. He offers a step-by-step approach to this as well, showing us how each of the five work disciplines can lead us to genuine worship.
I highly recommend this book, not only for working people but also (and perhaps especially) for pastors. The three appendices offer useful suggestions for ministers. There’s plenty of hands-on information here: questions to help pastors start conversations with working people in their congregations and outlines for sermons on the subject. The entire book is written from the practical side. It’s meant to be used. But its most important contribution is theoretical: a change of paradigm that we’ve been needing for a long time.
It’s hard to have a meaningful conversation these days without ruffling feathers. I have found that customer service principles can help. Here’s a conversation I had about that subject with Dennis Wiens on the Unconventional Ministry podcast.
News and Events / Produced by Theology of Work Project and Partners
How do you know God’s calling for your life, including your everyday work? Join our panel discussion as we explore what it means to engage authentically with God in our personal and professional journeys, as well as understand the significance of “calling”, no matter where we are in our lives, careers, or in the world.
Ron Johnson has over 25 years’ experience working in customer service call centers. He also has a PhD in Philosophy and teaches night courses in Philosophy and History at Spring Arbor University. He is the author of Customer Service and the Imitation of Christ and What Does God Do from 9 to 5? His lifelong passion has been to bring the secular and sacred aspects of life together. His current research project focuses on another writer who shared that passion: the 20th Century novelist, Lloyd C. Douglas. Visit www.ronaldrjohnson.com to learn more.
Laurie Fralick
Laurie is a visionary leader gifted at seeing the big picture—then creating and implementing systems from the ground up, and inspiring and developing teams to get there. She has served as a leader with multiple organizations large and small, both corporate and non-profit. She has extensive experience working with marginalized populations in street outreach and trauma informed recovery. Laurie is a gifted speaker and performer who delights in challenging audiences into deeper impact.
Previously, Laurie lived and worked in China for over a decade. She now lives in inner-city Detroit with her husband and two young children.
Drew Fralick
Drew Fralick is a licensed mental health counselor, writer, and standup comedian. Previously he lived in China for over a decade working as a therapist and clinical researcher at the Shanghai Mental Health Center, one of China’s largest psychiatric hospitals. He was also a founding member of Kungfu Komedy, China’s first professional standup comedy club, where he performed regularly in both English and Mandarin.
In 2017 Drew and his family heard the call to return back to the United States and move to inner-city Detroit, where they currently live. Drew is married to Laurie and has two children, Abner and Zipporah. He is currently the interim Senior Pastor of Renaissance Vineyard Church.
I’m still giving my answers to the question Jesus asked his disciples: “Who do you say that I am?”
What I say:
He is One who serves.
What I mean:
He told his disciples that he came “not to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28; Mark 10:45 NRSV). This wasn’t just a random fact about him; it was his very essence. The Apostle Paul invites us to become like Christ:
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself,
and became obedient to the point of death –
even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).
The New Revised Standard Version tends to translate the Greek word doulos as “slave” rather than “servant.” I’ve had people in my adult Sunday School classes chafe at that, and they insist we should substitute the word “servant” for “slave.” But that just illustrates how hard it is for us to accept Jesus in this role. We’re much more comfortable thinking of him as a service-oriented kind of guy than as a slave. In fact, it can be trendy to call him a “Servant Leader.” A lot of highly paid businessmen and entrepreneurs pay big money to go to “Servant Leader” training. We like to think of Jesus as a “Servant Leader,” with emphasis on the word “Leader.” We’re not at all comfortable thinking of him as a slave.
But that was a fundamental fact about Jesus: that he had come to serve. And although it’s service to God that motivated him, he became the servant of all humanity, dying in order to save us. While he was still on earth, he was available at all times of the day and night, whenever anyone wanted their sick healed or their children blessed. The Gospel of Matthew says he took their infirmities upon himself (Matthew 8:17, referring to Isaiah 53:4). But he also set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem and the cross (Luke 9:51, KJV), because that was the thing his Father wanted him to do – for people in all ages.
There are three seemingly-unrelated passages in Luke that, when read in conjunction with each other, are jaw-dropping. The fact that the first two come in reverse order, with the set-up in a later chapter than the payoff, insures that most of us will miss their relationship. And yet they are related.
In Luke 17:7-8 (NRSV), Jesus says, “Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table?’ Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’?” In the next two verses, he says that we should not expect thanks but rather consider ourselves worthless servants because we have only done what we (as his servants) ought to have done.
But if we look very carefully at the part I quoted above, then turn back to Luke 12:37, the result is astounding: “Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them.”
The very thing he just finished saying that a master will never do! But that’s because he’s no ordinary master; he’s the One who serves. He drives home the point in a third passage, also in Luke: “For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).
When we Christians sing, “There is none like him,” I wonder if we’re thinking of passages like this? He never tries to prove how great he is. Instead, he serves. And by so doing, he shows us what true greatness really means.
I just posted this review on Amazon and Goodreads. The book is Bonhoeffer’s America: A Land Without Reformation, by Joel Looper.
After earning his doctorate in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent the 1930-31 school year at Union Theological Seminary in New York as an “exchange student,” taking classes with Reinhold Niebuhr and others. He did not have good things to say about his experience afterwards, but it wasn’t just the seminary that disappointed him. Having observed American Protestantism (both liberal and conservative), he called us “a land without reformation.”
Joel Looper’s book offers a detailed analysis of this critique. Using Bonhoeffer’s course schedule, he reconstructs, in a general way, the kinds of things Bonhoeffer probably heard from his professors, although the responses from the seminary students were also quite significant (their laughter at some of Luther’s writings, for example, and their distaste for biblical preaching). We learn how his professors reacted to the papers he wrote for their courses. We see how Bonhoeffer attempted a kind of Foucauldian genealogy of American Protestantism, first tracing its roots back to John Wycliffe and the Lollards in England in the late fourteenth century (every man becoming a priest unto himself), then describing America as a refuge for religious dissenters who no longer wanted to fight over religion. The result, on Bonhoeffer’s account, is a land in which political freedom is recognized as the true religion, and the citizens believe more strongly in their democratic rights than they do in any established religion.
The first hundred pages of Joel Looper’s book are the most important, if your aim is to understand Bonhoeffer’s point of view. The second half of the book responds to objections and qualifications (Did Bonhoeffer change his mind later? What about his experience at the African American church he attended regularly? How can we reconcile his earlier remarks the letters he wrote from prison? and so on).
The best thing about this book is the fact that it challenges us to include ourselves in Bonhoeffer’s critique. Looper doesn’t let us off easy by allowing us to say that these criticisms are only relevant for a certain segment of American Christians (in other words, not including me and my group). The author holds up a mirror to all of us, inviting us to see ourselves as Bonhoeffer saw us. Are we, in essence, pagan devotees of American Civil Religion? Have we elevated Democracy to a religion? And are we unable to see this because we’ve reinterpreted the scriptures to suit our brand of American Individualism?
These are questions we dare not dodge. If Bonhoeffer is right, and we Americans have secularized both the Christian message and the church as an institution, then we are actually taking our cues from secular culture and projecting them onto our reading of the scriptures. Our God turns out to be nothing more than an anthropomorphic reification of American Culture. Our political commitments become indistinguishable from our religious ones, rendering our faith no more powerful than our current degree of political clout. And this is true of both conservatives and liberals. If this analysis troubles us, then there may be hope. Looper’s book is supposed to prompt discussion. We should read it, first of all: pastors and lay leaders of all Protestant denominations should put it at the top of their reading list. Then we should have honest, soul-searching discussions about it. And together, we should bring the matter before God – not “God” in quotes, as Bonhoeffer would say, but the real God, the one to whom we must all one day render an account (Hebrews 4:13). This book is that important.
I have been sensing Christ asking me to give my own answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” I don’t have just one answer, however, so I have been giving a series of answers. Here’s another one.
What I say:
He is both lamb and shepherd.
What I mean:
He is “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29 RSV). It is his blood, “like that of a [sacrificial] lamb, without defect or blemish” that “ransomed” me from a life of futility (I Peter 1:18-19). It was his death that tore open the curtain of the Holiest Place and made it possible for me (and for all of us) to come boldly into the presence of God (Hebrews 10:19-20).
I can’t tell you why it was necessary for him to die for us. I’ve never understood the doctrine of original sin, or how Christ’s death solves the problem. He himself never tried to explain it. I only know that, when Jesus said it was necessary for him to die, and Peter told him to stop being such a downer, Jesus responded to Peter the same way he replied to the Devil when he tried to tempt Jesus in the wilderness: “Get behind me, Satan” (compare Matt 16:21-23 with Matt 4:10; in some ancient manuscripts the verbiage is identical). And in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asked his Father to prevent his death and suffering “if it were possible” (Mark 14:35). And he added, “For you, all things are possible” (v. 36). But he knew even then that he had to die for us. And he did. He was the sacrificial lamb whose death was a gift to us all.
I’ve never been any good at explaining all that. But I know this: it was only by claiming that gift, in the summer of 1971, that I found God. I didn’t understand it any better than Peter did, and everything inside me protested against it just like Peter protested when he first heard about it. But I understood what Jesus meant when Peter objected to Christ washing his feet (John 13:6-7). Jesus told him, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me” (v. 8). That much was clear to me.
So on that early summer’s evening in 1971, I accepted the gift, despite all my inner objections. I told him I wanted his blood to wash me of my sin. And he did.
Someday when I stand before God and have to give an account of my life, I’m not going to justify myself. “My one defense,” as Matt Maher says, is Jesus, and what he did on the cross. He is “the Lamb who was slain” (Revelation 5:12).
But, at the risk of mixing metaphors, I also identify him as the Great Shepherd. For after he cleanses us, then he guides us further into life with God.
On that Day of Reckoning, I will be asked a number of stern questions: What did I do with the resources God gave me (Matt 25:14-30)? And how did I respond when I was faced with people in need (vv. 31-46)? In other words, I’ll be compelled to give an account of what happened after I was redeemed by the blood of Christ. What did I go on to do with that precious gift?
Here again, my only defense will be that I followed my Shepherd. But that, too, will be enough. Through the fifty intervening years since I accepted his sacrifice as the Lamb, he has guided me, prodded me, and kept me moving forward, as a Shepherd. The Shepherd not only lays down his life for the sheep but also guides them; and his sheep know his voice and follow him wherever he leads (John 10:1-30). That has certainly been my experience. He has taken me to places I never expected to go, and herded me into flocks I never thought I’d be part of.
He’s full of surprises… so much so that it’s impossible for me to tell you who he is in a brief, tweetable message.
And that’s why I’ll continue giving you my answer to that question in future posts.
I’m still answering Christ’s question, “Who do you say that I am?”
What I say:
He is both the Prince of Peace and the great Disturber of the Peace.
What I mean:
We Christians identify Jesus as the person Isaiah calls “the Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 6:9). He has promised to give us his peace that is unlike anything the world can give us (John 14:27).
But he also said that he came not to bring peace, but a sword (Matt 10:34). He said that he would cause disturbances among people, even to the point of breaking up families: “and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household” (v. 36). The peace that he offers does not just soothe us and make us feel good; although it calms our fears, it also emboldens us to take a stand for him, despite opposition.
I’m sure the local leaders cringed when they heard that Jesus was coming to their town, because he often said things that upset them. “Blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me,” he said (Luke 7:23). It was a significant remark, for Jesus didn’t mince words. In Nazareth, the crowd got so upset they tried to grab him and throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). And these were the people who had known him as a boy!
Nor is this all confined to the pages of scripture. In my own life, he has been the Prince of Peace. Each day as I plug in my headset and take customer service calls for my day job, I sense him within me, not only keeping me calm when customers yell at me but also empowering me to respond compassionately, leading the discussion to a constructive outcome. And all the rest of the time (not just in those crisis situations), his peace wells up within me, helping me rise above boredom and remain fully engaged in each call.
But he is also the disturber of my peace, for his thoughts are not like mine (Isaiah 55:8), and every time I start to get comfortable with my conceptions of him, he reminds me of that in rather startling ways. Worse yet, he urges me to listen respectfully to viewpoints that I disagree with and to be kind to the people on the opposing side of the hot issues of the day. When I feel a strong impulse to hate someone, he places me in situations in which I must sort out those feelings and do something about them. There have been many times in which I have felt my course of action would be easier if I could just do things my own way.
He fits the description that the writer of Hebrews gives of the word of God: “quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12 KJV). I don’t just read about him; he reads me. And “all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do” (v. 13).
Those last words are especially appropriate: “him with whom we have to do.” I can’t ignore him. I can’t call upon him only when I want his counsel. He’s the one I have to answer to, not only at the end of the day but each moment of each day. As the New Revised Standard Version translates verse 13, he is “the one to whom we must render an account.” This calls to mind Jesus’ warning in Matthew 12:36: “I tell you, on the day of judgment you will have to give an account for every careless word you utter.” And these days, with so many subjects becoming politicized, it’s hard not to stumble carelessly into a remark that hurts someone else. “On the day of judgment, you will have to give an account…” Except that I don’t have the luxury of waiting for some eventual day of judgment; because I’m his follower, every day is a day of judgment. And he lets me know it.
My goal is to bring the two parts of this together – to know him as a disturber of my peace, and yet to rest in his peace. The New Testament tells a story about him that Illustrates this. Christ and his disciples were in a boat in the Sea of Galilee when a storm whipped up. At least four of his disciples were fishermen. They were experienced at this sort of thing, and they knew this was a bad storm. They hurried to Jesus, and he spoke to the wind and the waves as though they were a child having a tantrum. “Peace, be still,” he said. And the storm stopped (Mark 4:35-41; see also Matt 8:23-27 and Luke 8:22-25).
The lesson we’re supposed to learn from this story is to have faith in Jesus, whom “even the wind and the sea obey” (Mark 4:41). But I get more inspiration from a minor detail of the story. While the storm swirled about them, tossing their boat around like a toy, the disciples were surprised to find Jesus sleeping. He was at peace, and he was also able to make the storm be at peace.
“In the world you have tribulation,” he said. “But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33 KJV).
Who do I say that he is? He is the eye of the storm. Controversy swirls around him, problems come at him from every side; but he is the peace at the center of it all. He himself is at peace, and in some cases it’s contagious.
As his disciple, I want to live each day resting in his peace, no matter what storms or controversies are swirling around me.
I am giving my own heartfelt answers to Christ’s question, “Who do you say that I am?”
What I say:
He is the common denominator of all the Christian denominations.
What I mean:
I’ve been a Christian for 50 years, but I’ve been a member of various denominations over the course of that time. I was raised as a Reorganized Latter Day Saint and left that organization to join the United Church of Christ (UCC). I briefly attended a UCC seminary but did not go on to become a minister. I was a Presbyterian for a few years, and then a United Methodist. I got my PhD at Saint Louis University (a Jesuit school) and taught courses there for four years, then went on to teach for two years at another Jesuit school, Xavier University in Cincinnati. I’ve published a few stories in The Way of Saint Francis, a Catholic magazine. For a number of years I’ve taught at Spring Arbor University, which is a Free Methodist school (not to be confused with United Methodist), and I’ve been a frequent contributor to The Congregationalist, the official magazine of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. Years ago, when I lived in Portland, Oregon, I was a member of the Ecumenical Ministries of Oregon and served on a youth committee. For the past several years my wife and I have attended a variety of Evangelical churches.
Through all these experiences, I’ve seen enough to say this: despite the many differences from one denomination to another, we all sing and talk primarily about Jesus. I don’t mean to minimize the differences among us, for they are significant. I do want to point out, however, that every Christian organization I’ve been a part of has focused on Jesus, although they may differ greatly in their conception of who he is. (In other words, they give different answers to the question, “Who do you say that I am?”)
This has always been the case. Before the books of the New Testament were canonized, the various Christian communities may have had different books in their libraries, and they probably had different emphases. If you were used to worshiping with a group that emphasized Luke’s gospel, for example, then you would recite the Beatitudes saying, “Blessed are you poor,” and “Woe to you rich.” And if you happened to visit another community that emphasized Matthew’s gospel, you might be very surprised to hear them spiritualizing it: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” In fact, if you had come into the church excited about the social commentary that runs throughout Luke’s gospel, you might be scandalized by Matthew’s other-worldly interpretation of Jesus’ teachings.
Or if you were a member of the so-called “Johannine Community” (who rallied around the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John), then your chronology of Jesus’ life would have been very different from those who emphasized the so-called “Synoptic Gospels.” (To give just one example, you would be comfortable with seeing Jesus in Jerusalem repeatedly throughout his ministry, while the Synoptics have him going to Jerusalem only at the end.) But your views on Jesus would extend much farther than mere chronology, for even his voice would sound different to you. (In the Synoptics, Jesus talks in sound bites; in John, he gives long speeches which in turn are filled with long sentences.) You would also be used to seeing him as a cosmic creature – “the Word that was in the beginning with God” – whereas the members of other Christian communities would tend to refer to him as the Messiah of the Jews, emphasizing his role within one nation’s history.
And then there was the Gospel of Mark, which pictured Jesus as being largely misunderstood by his own disciples. Mark’s gospel shows him being much more exasperated with his followers than the other gospels do, even to the point of calling them “hard of heart.” The earliest version of Mark’s gospel has the disciples cowering in fear on Resurrection Sunday, not even going out to tell anyone that he is risen.
All these early “gospel communities” exhibit differences in their views of Jesus, and some of these differences are huge. But all of them focus on Jesus. And it’s been that way ever since. Within the first few centuries, many different kinds of churches were established around the Mediterranean Sea: Coptic Christians in North Africa, Eastern Orthodox Christians in Eastern Europe, and Roman Catholics in the West. They worshiped in increasingly divergent ways, but each group was responding to their own unique views of Jesus. And after the Reformation, each new group that split away from the “Mother Church” did so in order to follow Jesus according to their own conscience.
My point is that, despite our many differences, we all believe that our own group is following Jesus. If we concede that people in other denominations are also following him, we usually find it necessary to say that they are misguided in certain respects, or that they have misinterpreted him. We may even question their sincerity or the purity of their intentions in following him. But despite this tendency to try to claim him for the home team, the truth is that he is the common denominator among the denominations. We’re all trying to follow him, even though we’re going about it in radically different ways.
There are two further observations I want to make about this.
First, he’s too big for any one denomination. None of us have the corner on him, and we never will. He’s more than all of us put together. The world needs all of our witnesses, from all of our divergent vantage points. He’s that big.
Second, he’s been trying to bring us together from the beginning. When he chose his inner circle of disciples, he put a tax collector (Matthew, also called Levi) side-by-side with Simon the Zealot. Tax collectors were considered traitors because they worked for Rome; the Zealots were super-patriotic, even to the point of condoning terrorism. The fact that Jesus chose two such men to represent him shows not only that his program had room for both views, but also that he believed it was possible for them to accommodate each other. (We humans still haven’t figured out how to do that, however.) And in his High Priestly Prayer of John 17, Jesus asked his Father to make his followers one, as the Father and the Son are one. At the very least, I interpret this as a mandate to root for each other, support each other in prayer, and think the best of one another, even if we can’t see eye to eye.
Who is Jesus? He’s what we’re all trying to be. We may call ourselves Baptists or Episcopalians. We may belong to the Church of Christ or the Church of God (which is not the same thing). But we are all, in our own unique ways, striving to be like him.
I have been sensing that it is time for me to answer Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” And since my answer is not short, I am going to give it in serialized form. To begin, then…
What I say:
I say that he is the master of the short-short story form and of the memorable phrase.
What I mean:
A short story is usually at least several printed pages in length, and is often even longer. But a short-short story is one that can be printed on a single page.
The parables of Jesus are the most influential short-short stories in history. Yes, other religious and cultural leaders have told great short-short stories (Aesop, for example, and Chuang-tze), but the parables of Jesus have become so much a part of the fabric of our being, at least here in the Western world, that we still remember them even in this highly-secular age. People who would never set foot inside a church are nonetheless familiar with the Prodigal Son, and they even remember the evocative image of his father running out into the field to welcome him home. We still talk about Good Samaritans, and we still vaguely remember the story Jesus told about one of them. The parable of the Unforgiving Debtor might not be so well-remembered, but anyone who hears it is struck by the emotional power of the eponymous Debtor grabbing the other guy by the throat. Still to this day, people think they’re being clever when they say, “So I said to myself, ‘Self…'” but they don’t seem to realize that Jesus told that joke first, in the parable of the Man and His Barn.
Jesus’ parables are so extremely short that, if we had to do so, most of us would be unable to retell them as succinctly and yet as powerfully as he did. But as short as they are, they are so full of meaning that lengthy sermons – and even sermon series – are needed in order to explain their significance. As both a writer and a speaker (and an occasional preacher), I know how hard it is to be brief. It is amazing to me that Jesus could take the most important message in the world and encapsulate it in such tiny little narrative packages.
But he didn’t just specialize in storytelling; he was also a master of the memorable phrase. We still quote him often, although most of the time we don’t remember that he’s the one who said the line we’re quoting. Whenever we speak of the blind leading the blind (or joke about the blonde leading the blonde), or a house divided against itself, or the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, or we talk about having ears to hear or eyes to see or casting our pearls before swine, or we say we must separate the sheep from the goats – whenever we say any of these things, we’re quoting or paraphrasing him. When we say, “O ye of little faith,” we’re repeating what he said. Long before there were bumper stickers or tweets, Jesus was the master of both.
Why does this matter? Because I am in awe of anyone who can say something important and put it in such small packages. We humans (or at least we human speakers, writers, and preachers) are verbose by nature; to be concise takes amazing talent. But to be both concise and revelatory… THAT is divine. Those of us who follow Jesus may have many things we admire about him, and each of us can only speak for ourselves. When Jesus asks me to declare, publicly, who I say he is, this is the first thing that comes to mind. As a writer, speaker, and occasional preacher, I can give no greater praise: The way he preached… the way he told stories… the way he got his points across… I know of no one else in all of history who does these things like he did. He is the Master of short-form communication.”
I don’t suppose that was the kind of answer he was looking for that day when he asked his original disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” But I think he knows me well enough to realize how heartfelt my answer is.
Of course, I’m not concise like he is, so I also have several other answers to his question. I’ll share the second one in my next post.
The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) tell a very important story about Jesus. (You can read it in Matthew 16:13-20, Mark 8:27-30, and Luke 9:18-21.)
Jesus asked his disciples, “What are people saying about me? Who do they think I am?” Their answer was that the public seemed to be comparing him with other great preachers. John the Baptist and Elijah were the top two mentioned.
“But who do you say that I am?” he asked.
The question recedes quickly into the background because it prompts Simon Peter’s “Great Confession”: “You are the Christ,” he says, “the Son of the Living God.” And we love that passage because those words comprise the great Christological declaration of our faith.
Lately, however, I have felt a strong compulsion to answer the question, “Who do I say that he is?”
As of this summer (2021) I’ve been his disciple for 50 years. I’m tempted to say to him, much as Peter said to him later in the story, “Lord, you know I love you. You know I have served you. You know…”
I have blogged about him, written books about him, preached about him, taught classes about him. But lately I’ve felt myself uniquely addressed by the question. For whatever reason or reasons, I feel I must answer, in all honesty, who I think he is. (And more importantly, who I say he is, here in this public space where anyone can see it.)
I feel it is time for me to answer the question – honestly and publicly. So over the next several posts I’m going to share my answer with you. I have avoided other people’s pious phrases and definitions, including Peter’s. I’m going to tell you exactly what I believe, after all my philosophical training and pondering, and after knowing him for 50 years.
I hope you won’t be scandalized by what I am going to say, because I’m not going to follow the well-worn paths and just repeat what others before me have said. This will be a deeply personal response, but it will also be a reasoned response. It will, in other words, be a response to all that he has taught me about himself.
If I were to tell you about the people who are closest to me, I would find it difficult to do it briefly. If you were to ask me about the teachers or mentors who have most influenced me, you should be prepared to stick around a while. If I were to talk about some of the great figures in the history of the world, it would take me hours. (I know this from experience. I do it in the classroom all the time.)
Why, then, do we think it’s a simple matter to confess who Jesus is? For he is all these things: the Person closest to me, the Teacher and Mentor who has most deeply influenced me, and the greatest of all historical figures – indeed, the one historical figure who transcends history. I feel myself called upon to answer his question: “Who do you say that I am?” but I simply cannot give a short, simple response to this question of questions. I have many things to say, and I will do so over the next several blog posts.
Laurie Fralick
Drew Fralick
Spiritual Adventures in the Workplace 