Who Do You Think I Am?
Being me
by Helen Bryant (revised, originally published in 2012)
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To challenge us to think about who we really are.
Preparation and materials
- You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (Who Do You Think I Am?) and the means to display them.
Assembly
- Explain that you are going to show pictures of four famous people as children and you want the students to guess who they are.
Show Slide 1.
Ask the students which famous person this child became.
Show Slide 2.
Listen to a range of responses. The answer is Ariana Grande. - Repeat this for Slides 3-8.
- Slides 3 and 4 show Roger Federer.
- Slides 5 and 6 show Kanye West.
- Slides 7 and 8 show the Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. - Ask the following questions.
- Who would you say these people really are?
- What lies behind the celebrity images that we see?
- Is what we see always a true reflection of the person?
Ask the students what they think these people might be like in their families, behind closed doors.
Pause to allow time for thought. - Ask the following questions.
- Who would you say you really are?
- Do people know the real you or do you put up barriers to keep yourself from others?
- Do you change how you behave around people?
Who we are when we’re with our parents might be very different from the person we are with our friends. - Ask the following questions.
- Who would other people say you really are?
Our teachers might say that we’re very quiet in class, yet when we’re at home, we’re the noisy ones. Or it could be the other way round: we might be the clown at school or in lessons, but when we get home, we’re very quiet.
- Do our actions and words spell out who we really are or do we try hard to keep the real us hidden away? - Let’s return to our celebrities. Many of us would recognize them instantly if they came into this room; we would know who they were simply by looking at them. We would know their jobs and probably a little bit about them personally.
Time for reflection
If Jesus walked in here, would we recognize him? Who would we say he is?
Pause to allow time for thought and discussion. Listen to a range of responses.
Point out that Jesus was an actual historical figure. We have information from a man named Josephus that Jesus existed as a man and was crucified by the Romans.
Many of his own people, the Jews, did not recognize who Jesus was when he was on Earth the first time. In fact, John’s Gospel (John 1.10–11) states, ‘He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.’ Jesus was rejected by the people who were supposed to know who he was claiming to be: the Messiah.
There were people who did recognize him, however. One of Jesus’ disciples, Peter, recognized who Jesus was.
Jesus actually asked Peter, ‘Who do you say I am?’
Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’
This is known as ‘the great confession’ because Peter ‘confesses’ that he knows who Jesus is, not because he had been told, but because of the acts that he had witnessed Jesus do, such as feeding the 5,000, filling Peter’s own nets with fish, and healing the paralysed and the sick. Peter also recognized Jesus by what he said about himself and the way in which he presented his beliefs.
Peter’s statement is important because, by understanding that Jesus’ power came from God, it helped him to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, the chosen one sent from God to show us what God is really like.
Think about the many different people you are:
- the school person
- the home person
- the ‘out with my friends’ person
Who are we really?
Encourage the students to see that each of us is special. We all have unique talents, gifts and abilities. Christians believe that God made us and he doesn’t make mistakes.
Song/music
‘Who I am inside’ from the film Mulan, available at: https://youtu.be/EvD8nWujdN4 (2.04 minutes long)
‘This is me’ from the film The Greatest Showman, available at: https://youtu.be/CjxugyZCfuw (3.49 minutes long)
