Don't you know who I am?!

My friend Justine told me a story yesterday about the most irate customer she'd ever had to deal with. She was working with a large national furniture company (known for their liberation) while the customer was the figurehead of a prominent wine company (two names, '&' in the middle). In the course of an animated discussion that followed some goods being damaged through the rough handling of the customers' courier company, the customer, demanding a replacement, began to explode down the phone: 'Don't you know who I am?'.

On and on, louder and louder...'Don't you know who I am?'...'Don't you know who I am?'. Aside from being rude and obnoxious, I was tickled that someone actually used the phrase seriously. I've heard people use it in jest, never legit.

It got me thinking: How often do we, by our words and actions (or maybe our thoughts), exclaim at some level: 'Don't you know who I am?'.

How often does someone wrong us, or treat us differently to how we feel we deserve, or ignore our needs and we respond somewhere inside, 'Don't you know who I am?'

We all crave justice—particularly for ourselves. Perhaps we all crave a level of recognition too. We want to be treated consistent with 'our station'...whatever that is. And when we're not, we feel wronged in some way.

And then there's Jesus...

Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Jesus, who had every right to demand authority, every right to assert dominion and every right to reign and rule, asserted none of these things. Paul tells us here in Philippians that he actually does the complete opposite...he becomes a servant. Interestingly, given that he was 'in very nature God', he was all these things all the same. Yet he had no need to assert authority—it was recognised in Him.

Isaiah tells us that: He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. And yet the lamb to the slaughter is also the Lion of Judah. Only Jesus makes sense of this kind of tautology by modeling it. Mark writes Him saying: 'If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all'.

But...Don't you know who I am?

We discover that, for Jesus, the answer was absolute: Yes.

Jesus revealed to us what the Kingdom of God looks like in contrast to what often prevails on earth. His ministry was chiefly about this revelation and become the means by which we are restored to God. That restoration is, in large part, a growing understanding of the economy of the Kingdom of God as opposed to what we've commonly experienced. And the two are a whole lot different.

I guess the bigger question is: 'Don't you know who He is?'

As we discover who Jesus is, we discover all we are because of Him. We also discover who we're not. As Luke wrote in Acts: 'It's in Him we live and move and have our being'. Paul wrote to the Ephesians: 'It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we're living for'. I don't think we get this once and are done with it. Discovering who He is a continual process. A journey, a wrestle, and in a completely tautological fashion, as we lay down our lives we discover what it means to be human. Better still, part of a new humanity.

Conversations like this could (and often do) go on forever. This one is going to stop in blog form real soon. But not without action. The laying down of our agendas to follow him is active after all. Paul's all about action in Philippians:

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus...

Do you know who you are?