“Then he went out to the gateway, where another servant girl saw him and said to the people there, “This fellow was with Jesus of Nazareth.”
He denied it again, with an oath: “I don’t know the man!”
After a little while, those standing there went up to Peter and said, “Surely you are one of them; your accent gives you away.”
Then he began to call down curses, and he swore to them, “I don’t know the man!”
Immediately a rooster crowed.”
Matthew 26:71-74 NIV

When we are confident in our walk with Christ, we don’t mind if people notice. We don’t mind if they ask us about church, or other ‘spiritual’ things. (Everything is spiritual, by the way.) getting those confirmations about our proximity to Jesus comes across as a compliment, an affirmation to what He is doing in us, and having that recognition feels good. It would be lying to say it doesn’t. And we know that any and all credit for those appearances of Christ in us goes directly to Him. After all, He is the One at work.

But when we slip up, when we aren’t quite as close to Christ as we know we should be or as close as we would want to be, and someone notices that we have called ourselves Christians, but we are behaving in a way that seems to stand against those claims……ouch.

Even more so for Peter who, caught up in the moment, shows a greater concern for his own skin than for his Rabbi’s, and he denies the 2nd strongest allegiance held in his heart in exchange for his 1st, his allegiance to himself. The servant girl says it plainly, ‘Your accent gives you away.’ Everyone knew he had been with Jesus. He wasn’t part of the crowd there. He was easily recognizable as ‘one of those guys from Galilee’ and they knew he was linked in with Jesus.

Where is your courtyard? Where is it difficult to stand close to the fire and be recognized? Where does your accent give you away, and so you begin speaking differently? Where is it that standing for Jesus is the most difficult?
Do you have accusers? Are there people who try to call you out on your faith and their questioning is hard to deal with? Are there places where it seems all eyes are on you, waiting for your reaction?

Hopefully we have stood up for Christ enough to get called out for Christ. Hopefully the love He has given to us has overflowed to others so that our accent of grace points us out. Beyond Jesus-y T-shirts and bumper stickers or always wearing a cross on the outside of our shirt, helpfully people have actually seen Jesus at work in us, and that our allegiance to Him goes beyond the superficial.

And when it does, we have to know that there will be accusing fingers pointing at us. When we stand for and speak the truth, and when we love and serve as Jesus did, then people are going to notice and our accent is going to give us away.

The question then becomes, ‘Who has my first allegiance? Who am I loyal to above all else?’

If it is to self, then we will deny and dodge just like Peter did in that courtyard. We will seek shelter from public ridicule and questions by leaving Jesus to stand by Himself.

If it is to Jesus, then we know and believe that He is going to take those hits for us and that the ones accusing us have pointed out something we are proud to say has happened in our lives. And even if we are caught doing something contrary to our faith, if we stumble in a moment, we can own up to it, seek forgiveness from those we have offended and remember that grace is greater than all our sin. We confess, repent and seek our Master’s gracious love.

Being a Christian means standing with Christ. It doesn’t mean we are perfect, but it does mean we are being perfected. It doesn’t mean that we are strong, but it means that in Christ we can withstand anything. He is our Rock and Refuge. When our accent gives us away, we stand up straight and keep on speaking with it, not in arrogance, but out of gratitude. He has first loved us, and so that love saves us from ourselves. His justice demanded restitution, payment for our sin. His love desired reconciliation with His creation that had chosen self over service. This love keeps us standing tall in the face of opposition, and it compels us to ‘go’ and to GoLove as we have been loved, sharing the good news of Jesus.