Devotion - Thursday, February 7

One of the advantages to growing old and having read and re-read most of the stories in the Bible, is that you gain the opportunity to look at the stories from differing angles.  There may be a primary way to see the stories, but there are many other ways.

As I read, not only my Bible, but books about what it means to regard the Bible as "Holy Scripture," those books help me to consider some of the other ways of hearing the story.

This morning I re-read the encounter between Jesus and the disciples in which he asks them, "Who do people say that I am?"  Then goes on to ask them, "But who do you say that I am?"

One of the speakers I will hear at this summer's campus ministry conference writes that one angle from which we can understand this story is to see it as an invitation to address who we are in relationship to Jesus.  That an emphasis on this story as a doctrinal statement may cause us to miss the highly personal aspect of Jesus' question.  "Who do you say that I am?" is Jesus way of asking, "Who am I in relation to you?" or "Who are you in relation to me?"

In our main-line, cognitive-driven congregations, we have avoided language of accepting Jesus as our "personal Lord and Savior."  In so doing, we may have allowed yourselves to move too far away from the intentions of Jesus in Mark 8:27ff (today's reading.)  We may fail to hear Jesus' invitation to consider who Jesus is in OUR lives.

It may be less important to have a clear doctrinal statement about Jesus' Messiahship than it is to have the courage to say, "This is who Messiah is for me."