Is that you?

“That’s me!,” said one 10-year-old insistently to another as they watched an action movie, and chose to be the character who was the most powerful, the most beautiful, or even the goofiest.

A good storyteller knows that listeners need to identify with the characters, but it can be a shock if your character turns out to be the villain, as when the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders realize that Jesus’ upside-down parables are calling them out. Jesus faced opposition — even violence — when His critics realized they were being challenged.

That’s what Jesus does — He challenges your assumptions about yourself. When by your own lack of compassion, your injustice, you are confronted by the hard truth of the gospel, you still have to say, “That’s me.”