The real life

Luke 6:17-38

James Finley used to go to Thomas Merton for spiritual direction. When he arrived, Merton would ask him, “How’s it going?’  If Finley answered, “It’s going well!” Merton would respond, “Don’t worry, before too long it wont be going so well.”  And if he answered, “It’s not going so well.” Merton would respond, “Don’t worry, before too long, it will be going well.”

You aren’t sleeping through the night? 

Don’t worry, soon your kid will be done teething. 

You are sleeping through the night? 

Don’t worry, soon your kid will be out driving late at night with friends. 

You are stable and happy and healthy and have a job you love? 

Don’t worry, before too long you’ll get sick, or lose your job, or face some financial hardship. 

You are going through a difficult illness, hunting for a new job or struggling to make ends meet? 

Don’t worry, before too long your treatment will be finished, you will find employment, and one day you will be finished paying off your student loans.  

Jesus is among a crowd of people in what sounds like an overwhelming scene: a massive gathering from the whole region, pressing in on him, trying to touch him because power is going out from him and people are being healed of all sorts of things. In the middle of this scene Jesus looks up at his disciples and he gives them this sermon.

First, a collection of blessings and woes, which is to say a litany of How good you have it!s and Sucks to be you!s.  

How good you have it, you who are poor, or hungry, or weeping, or when people say terrible things about you!  You should leap for joy!  For yours is the kingdom of God, you will be fed, you will laugh, and you are in good company! 

And you who are rich and full and happy? Sucks to be you! 

For all of that will disappear and you’ll be left with nothing. 

Whatever it is that we look to for security, stability, for comfort and ease, the things we assume are defining and sustaining of our lives – they are fickle and changing.  Ability, disability, health, illness, weakness, strength, beauty, cruelty, happiness, despair, our lives cycle through it all, and we don't ever stop and stay somewhere, as though we’ve arrived. 

So even though we like to imbue them with power, they don’t actually determine reality.  
There must be something else, something greater, something deeper, that holds us than this. 
We must have to rest our souls, our security, our trust, in something or someone more than what we feel and experience.  

But we don’t get there through strength.  

When we avoid our pain, pretend what someone said doesn’t hurt, prop ourselves up with our assets and gifts and our “at least”s – at least I have my health, at least I have friends, at least I’m not as bad off as they are, we give those things the power over us and we become trapped by the pain, captive to the messages, enslaved to do everything possible to preserve ourselves and at least not lose our at leasts.  We cannot be free.  But that doesn’t stop us from doing everything we can to avoid the nothingness.

The real life, the real security, the real hope, is found in our weakness.  When you know nothingness; you will be ministered to by God. When you don’t try to flee it or avoid it, but acknowledge it and even receive it, you will find that the God who comes to us as minister will minister to you. 

My friend Phil in my pastor group is teaching the Enneagram in prison, gathering with groups of prisoners who want to talk about what unthought responses and defense mechanisms of their personality types trap them and get them into trouble.  When he first started, he kept marveling to the rest of us about how receptive the prisoners were, and and how dramatic the changes in them once they started recognizing their patterns. These are people living right up against their impossibility. They have no illusions about their weakness.  Their gut reactions and unthought responses have clearly not worked out for them.  He said, “They are so much freer than I am. They have nothing more to lose and no illusions about their own imprisonment. I get to walk around feeling like I’m doing pretty well.  My defense mechanisms are working pretty well, thank you very much.  I get to pretend I am not trapped in my own ego and cut off from real connection and relationships.” 

So, how good it is to be you when things aren’t working out so well, because you can confess your death and be met by life.  And sucks to be you when you’re doing a good job escaping your nothingness and deluding yourself that you’ve got it handled. Because your death is going to come as something of a shock.  How good it is to be you who can embrace your nothingness.  And sucks to be to you who believe you can escape it.

That’s the first part of Jesus’ sermon. And I like to imagine that the chaos has died down a little bit around him and people are straining to eavesdrop as he continues talking to his disciples.  

And the part he says next would get a lot of clapback on Twitter.  Social media is a perfect medium for destroying each other.  The extraordinary speed and venom with which we can soundly condemn someone is matched in force only by the hopelessness of finding redemption once you’ve been condemned. 

So imagine how Jesus’ message would go over with us: Bless those who curse you-? Love your enemies-? Don’t just love those who love you, that’s meaningless. Love those who hate you! Reach out to those who’ve rejected you from their tribe! Pray for those who abuse you! When someone does something terribly hurtful to you, deserving to feel the sting they’ve inflicted on you and the pain they’ve caused you, don’t give it back.  Instead show them mercy, pray for them, be kind to them. Share your stuff with the people who don’t return it-?  Lend to those who may not repay you-?  Big whoop if you engage in an economy of trading and bartering things and emotions and respect.  What does that prove? Anybody can do that, he says. 

Weirdly, God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.  We’d much rather see the ungrateful and wicked taken down a few notches.  In fact, we’ll gladly do that ourselves. We’ll call them out, shred their reputations, give them one star and call them trash. We will make them pay for their ingratitude and wickedness. 

But Jesus says, Live in God’s mercy and extend it to others. Live in God’s forgiveness and extend it to others. Live in God’s grace and extend it to others.  Especially when they don’t merit it. That’s when it really matters.

Don’t judge and you wont be judged, don’t condemn and you wont be condemned, forgive and you’ll be forgiven, give and it will be given to you. Trust in this reality where there is enough – enough love and forgiveness and grace and hope, and where we are not heaping judgment and condemnation on each other and ourselves.  

Live this way and this is how you will live. 

It was important that he said the first part first.  

Because this part is harder, and makes no sense without the first part.  

You’re always stuck in impossibility, Jesus tells us, so surrender. The only way to move from the way of fear to the way of God is through death and resurrection. Die to yourself and all you thought might keep you safe or make you invincible or good or immune.  Die to what you thought was giving you life. 

When you surrender, you get your humanity back.  When you’ve surrendered to your nothingness and embraced your death you are no longer ruled by it.  You will not be overtaken by comparison, or consumed by jealousy.  You will not need to prove yourself better than or equal to others.  You will not need to get caught in defensiveness and retaliation. You will be free.

Everything we do in life is to escape nothingness – we’re terrified by it, obsessed with it. It’s why Adam and Eve ate the apple, and it’s why we tweet. We want to build our own somethingness and fiercely uphold it.  But if you’re my disciple, Jesus says, walk right into nothingness. Walk into your weakness and surrender to it.  Lay down your life and you will find it.  Live with your nothingness.  

Right up against it is where you’ll find the love and grace, the mercy and forgiveness of God. Right up against it is where you’ll find freedom. You can’t kill what’s already dead, Paul reminds us. And we are those who have died and been raised into new life with Christ. We are those pulled into the love and care of the Father to the Son by the Spirit.  The grace of God inside the Trinity spills out into the world to create and claim us, as beloved, in God’s own image, and God ministers to us in our need. 

If this is where you begin – already in your nothingness and impossibility, then you cannot be pulled into the game of creating your own somethingness and defending your own possibility.  It is in our nothingness, our poverty and hunger and sadness and death, that God comes to us, and gives us back our humanity.  And it is here we minister to each other, giving and receiving love and care, living out the image of God.  God puts us in communion with God and each other, to rediscover our true belonging that is at the core of it all – to return to the love we most deeply long for, and that we recognize in our deepest self when we experience it.

All around you the lie is going to continue to rage that says we are apart and against and there’s only enough belonging for some and only enough respect for a few and the winners will win and the losers will lose and it can be locked in, settled and final, as we human beings strive to avoid and overcome the nothingness.

But the core of it all is God’s grace and mercy. And the kind of world God made and has redeemed us for is one of deep connection and love.  And it comes through death, not apart from it. Don’t protect or guard yourself from being hurt, or try to create and uphold your own possibility in the world, but surrender. Surrender to the impossibility and the inability to save yourself and find there your salvation. 

The time is coming when nobody will be hungry or poor or sick, when everyone will have enough and nobody will be less than, discarded or overlooked. This is God’s reality; it is as things are meant to be and will one day be for good. It is where we all will one day stop and stay.  We join in it now.

Then, beyond the game and the illusion and the constant striving and comparing, we are participating in the real reality.  We are acting as though we belong to one another because we do. 

Treat someone as worthy of respect, even if they don’t deserve it.  

If someone takes your coat, give your shirt too.  

Give more than is demanded unfairly of you.  Upset the apple cart.  Be the one who sets the terms.  

Don’t react and keep track; die to that way of life and rise to a different way of being.  

Refuse to be divided by other people’s actions or words.  

Refuse to let them make you reject them. 

Refuse to let their pain or rage or hatred or vitriol set the terms for how you will treat them. 

Instead of strong, be weak.  

Instead of wary, be generous. 

Treat people as more deserving of kindness than they generally are, says Jesus, who right as he is saying it is also doing it, showing kindness, without distinction, liberally healing all those who come near. They touch him and they’re healed. They don’t even have to ask the right way, or show they’ve earned it, or be a good person, or have the right religion, or turn their live around and use it for good. Jesus is just healing them. Because it’s who Jesus is.  It’s what God does.

Jesus is standing in a sea of broken and longing people, very few deserving at the moment and those who are wont be for long, people who are mostly confused, mostly unkind to each other, people who are lost and frantic to escape their nothingness, people not unlike you and me and all those we know.  And he’s just giving out healing and hope willy-nilly, without prescreening or checking credentials, and in the midst of this madness he’s gathering those of us who are longing to follow and are willing to be sent, and he is inviting us to face our own nothingness.  

He’s telling to embrace our own impossibility, to recognize the futility of our reliance on anything to save us – be it goodness or health or wisdom or financial security or reputation or hard work or people’s praise and good opinions of us, because just wait, tomorrow it will be gone. 

Instead, he’s inviting us to live as though we are already dead, which is to be truly alive.  To discover in our honesty and weakness that our ground of being cannot be shaken, because it extends deeper than the things that come and go on the surface; we are rooted and grounded in love. We are held and upheld in God. 

And then he’s giving these ludicrous instructions, these self-emptying kind of instructions. These ministry kind of instructions.  Be merciful like God who is merciful, who empties Godself to take on the form of a human being and come right in alongside us. So empty ourselves and go toward death, toward suffering, toward the nothingness and impossibility inside of us and others.  Let our utter vulnerability make us invulnerable to destruction.  Let our weakness becomes the strength to go right in alongside each other where Jesus is. 

Go toward each other, make the kind of relationships where people are seen and heard. Live the deeper truth. 

Live the wider hope. 

Live the greater mercy. 

Show forgiveness – a rare, upsetting and potent thing these days. 

Live in grace, which is to share in God’s fullness and contribute to others’ fullness. 

Surrender to God, who surrenders to us, and then surrender to each other. 

Come alongside each other as God comes alongside us.  

Be ministers. 

Let God set you free. 

And it will be contagious. It will be returned to you when you don't expect it; it will be filled up bubbling over kind of infectious.  

Live this way and this is how you will live.   

Amen.

Changing, and Being Changed

A sermon on Annual meeting Sunday.

Luke 4:14-30

Last night a friend posted a photo on Facebook of rack at a store with something blue, triangular shaped, quilted, and embroidered with flowers hanging on it, and said, “I think this ‘hat’ at the Good Will is actually a mislabeled tea cozy.’ 

 The first comment underneath was, “What’s a tea cozy?” and he had to go on to explain that it’s a cover you put on your tea pot to keep the tea from cooling too fast – and not the tea pot you boiled the water in on the stove, the ceramic one you serve the tea from.  

Neither the employees at the Good Will nor the friends on Facebook knew what this thing was even for. Because, in life, things are always changing. 

Last night I updated the church website with new photos. I didn’t mean to, I was there for something else, but I took a second and really looked at the photos for the first time in a long time.  And I was dismayed at how outdated they were.  Nearly every photo had people in it who are not here anymore. They’ve moved in on their journeys, are with new communities, connecting to God alongside different people, fulfilling baptism promises to different children.  Or they’ve died and been buried.  Or they’re in assisted living and unable to remember who they are, much less who we are.  

The kids in the photos are becoming teenagers and the babies are becoming kids, and there’s no more choir, and we stopped doing 5^thSundays at St. Joe’s.  All these photos were obsolete, showing a different LNPC than the one in front of me right now. 

Time moves so fast, and life is always, always changing, and isn’t it so strange to be human?  It's so strange to want to so badly to belong and to be always trying to figure out how and where you belong, and whether you still belong, and how to help other people belong without losing your own belonging.  It’s so strange to want so badly to be ok, to be good and safe and whole and right, and ok, and it’s scary to wonder if you will be ok, or how long how will be ok for, or what you will do when you’re no longer ok.  

All week long I found myself wanting to label Jesus’ townspeople in this passage. What jerks, what idiots, fickle fools who one minute think he’s amazing and wonderful and the next minute, literally want to kill him.  
Apparently we’ve always been bad at not getting what we want.  
How like every twitter war between conservatives and liberals, and liberals and liberals and conservatives and conservatives, every new cultural scandal and celebrity disturbance and dramatic political development.  The rise and fall of darlings to demons is a regular affair these days.  

We think we’re in it against each other, that there’s only so much love and acceptance and security to go around, and some people have had more than their share for too long so it’s time to take it from them and give it to others. We think belonging can be bestowed and withheld, that it can be lost, and it can be earned, and that somehow, it is ours to police.  And that’s not new either.

Jesus didn't’ belong to them. He belonged to the whole world – the Magi figured that one out when he was still a toddler.  But his own people have yet to get this.  And they think that if he belongs to other people, then they must be getting the short end of the stick.  They should get first dibs on the miracles; they raised him, after all.  

But before they even get to say it, Jesus takes the words out of their mouth.  No doubt you’re thinking,Why not a little kickback for the hometown, Jesus? At least do for us what you did for others! But that’s not going to happen.  No prophet is welcomed back home – in fact, let’s talk about the prophets –in each of these two stories – they healed one person, and that person was an outsider.

And the people's excitement and admiration turn to seething fury.  How dare he? Who does he think he is?  Rage fills them. They want to destroy him.  If others get God’s gifts and God’s blessings and the miracles and all the rest of it, what do we get?

Jesus doesn’t belong to us. He belongs to the whole world.  The Church, even we ourselves, this church, it doesn’t belong to us.  It belongs to the world.  It is God’s vessel of love to the world; we are that. That is who we are.

This year LNPC is 97 years old.  Along that path the congregation built and then added on to this building in a time when nearly everyone in the country went to church. It was designed to perfectly meet the needs of the 500 people who regularly gathered here.  It had classrooms for the different grades for Sundays and Wednesdays, and a much-used fellowship hall in a basement that everyone could get to on their own two feet. 

Over the years, as the church changed, the building’s uses changed with it – classrooms became a library, then a gathering room, the chapel a yoga room, one Sunday school room a sewing room, then back to a Sunday school room.  And now we rattle around in this big space and do our best to give it away to the community.  

And I bet those who were here in the 1960s couldn’t even have imagined that their building would one day hold artists and dancers and nursing moms meeting with their babies, and a neighborhood group and theater groups and other congregations.  Goodness!  And in a few weeks the country of Senegal will have an election polling station here, and just this week another congregation is asking about using our basement, and we still can’t seem to find enough ways to use this building to its fullest, or enough money to pay for its mounting needs, while at the same time, more and more people are being blessed by the gift of this space that we are entrusted with, and we’re doing a not half bad job making a stylish and functional hat out of this tea cozy.

Clearly we cannot, and should not, be trying to use this building for the reasons and ways it was built to be used.  That reality no longer exists, not in America, and not in this congregation.  And we do not have pews full of people for whom giving at least a tenth of their income to the church is a routine, no-brainer thing because church was the only charity game in town.  And even if we did, would we want people to give all their giving-away money to keep up this building and maintain this institution, when they could be feeding starving children or digging clean wells or giving homes to people without them?  

It’s a strange time to be church.  

It might make us wonder if we are going to be ok, or how long how we will be ok for, or what we will do when we’re no longer ok.  

The eager hometown crowd filled with ideas and expectations gazed starry-eyed at Jesus and didn’t hear a word of what he said.  What he said is, God is always, and already, and even right now, today, in this very place, in the business of setting captives free, and healing people, and bringing freedom to the oppressed and this, now, is the year of the Lord’s favor, the year of Jubilee-  that is, the year when all debts are canceled, and all who have made it big are brought down and all who’ve been brought down are lifted up. 

Jubilee was an actual thing, the compounding of the weekly Sabbath day of reminder and reorientation, building up to the seven year Sabbath where the land rests and people live off what they’ve saved to remember and return to the truth, and now the seventh of thatyear – the biggie – after 49 years everything there is goes back to the start.  The giant reset button year.  The computer crashes, all data is lost, all people are once again equal, nobody better, nobody worse – you don’t get to keep what you built up and you no longer have to scrape by. 

Remember? We all belong to God and we all belong to each other.  

It’s not just words, Jesus is saying, this is real. It’s really the way of God that is always breaking in.  

And it’s here right now.

Each one of you came here today.  You woke up and got dressed and ate breakfast and got in your cars and decided to come here. You made two dozen small choices in this direction, any one of which could have shifted the outcome.  You chose not to stay in bed, not put on sweats and chip away at your to-do list, not to turn the car the other direction and do the grocery shopping instead, but to come here.  

You came here because you believed there was a reason to be here.  Even if it was just out of habit, underneath of that somewhere, you believe this is a worthwhile use of your precious, limited time. You thought you could receive something, or give something, or feel something, or learn something.  

Thank you for coming here. For bringing yourself through those doors.  That’s not a small thing.  When we come together, God meets us.

This thing we are doing – believing that God is real, trying to practicing trusting that this is so, reminding each other that it is, talking toGod, even when it feels illogical, listening to stories from a book written centuries and cultures ago as though it has something important to do with us, doing these strange, ancient rituals with bread and juice, and these institutional formalities with words like ‘elders’ and ‘ministry’ – this thing we do here is part of what tells us who we are. It is part of how you live out your unique personhood and your belonging in the world.  By coming here, you say – this is what I choose to help define my life, to be known as, to shape me in some way.  Even as things change, this is something timeless and deep and it matters.  

Maybe it’s been a while since I said it, so it bears saying again, really strongly: This is God’s church; it is not ours. It’s not ours to protect or preserve, not ours to innovate or adapt, not ours to save or keep.  We are here to give it away.  To share ourselves, to love the world, to serve our neighbor.  This is why we exist as a congregation; this is who we are. God’s Church came way before us and endures way after us, and as we say every communion and will again today – we are one teeny little expression of the Body of Christ for this one particular time and place, different than it was before and different than it will be later, and letting God make us into just what is needed here and now.  

Our security, and our hope, and our belonging, do not reside in what we’ve built, and they don’t reside in what we can control or preserve or maintain. 

Our security, and our hope, and our belonging exist in in God.  

This is not words or ideas. 

This is a real, living being, the source of all life, whose power mostly sneaks in weak and unassuming and surprising ways, and who doesn’t care about bigger and better and winning and making a name for yourself or coming out on top or succeeding or ensuring your place is secure, but instead built in a reset button, lots of them, in fact. And has no qualms about using them regularly.  

This is the being who marched into his own hometown, told them what God was up to, said, I know what you’re wanting, but it’s not going to happen. Get with the picture, pay attention, join in what God is doing. 

It’s not going to be what you thought, most likely, or even what you wanted. 

But it is what you need. It’s what the world needs.  

And they nearly threw him off a cliff for that.  

But that doesn’t make it not true.

Change is an inevitable part of being alive.  

But transformation, resurrection, life- these are Jesus things; this is what the Holy Spirit does in us, to us, and through us.  It is what God is already and always doing.  Not just now, not just all of a sudden.  Every moment, always, God is bringing newness and life and hope into our world, into our lives. Sometimes it just takes us a while to catch on and join in.  But that doesn’t mean God isn’t already and always doing it.  

This is why we got out of bed and came here today. We believe this is so, Lord, help our unbelief.  And we want to experience it.  You and I come together here because we are choosing to be changed by God, toward God, toward life. 

And it’s not going to be what we thought, most likely, or even what we wanted. But it is what we need. It’s what the world needs.  

The Church is God’s vessel of love for the world. God is doing this and it will continue. But what that looks like, and how that happens, is not the same as it was in the past, and it will be different in the future.

For our part, here and now, I think it’s about being brave enough to welcome Jesus. The real Jesus, not the Jesus we wish he would be.  (And remember, we meet Jesus, who is God with and for us, when we are with and for each other).  And it’s about praying for the courage to recognize and grieve any misguided expectations and desires that might keep us from seeking Christ and what he might do to change us.  And it’s about resisting the urge to scramble for survival, or grasp for what used to be, or compete or compare to try to belong or be ok, and instead it’s being extravagant and excessive in acknowledging the belonging of others, and confident and certain of our own.  And it’s telling each other the truth, and working out our disagreements in love – no literal or figurative hurling off of cliffs. 

And as we keep showing up to this, we will listen, and get better and better at listening, deeper and deeper, so that we hear the voice of God in each other, and can be the voice of God to each other.  And all the while, this is about trusting that the Church is, and always will be, God’s vessel of love to the world.  And so with resilient joy and unchecked hope, let’s buckle up and go along for the ride.

Amen.

Differently than this

(You can read more about the story here and here).

Over the weekend, an explosive controversy unfolded rapidly on social media responding to an incident Friday at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. 

Groups of people gathered in the same place with different agendas, all operating on stereotypes, assumptions and prejudices.  And in the hours that followed, in the social media firestorm that was unleashed WE operated on stereotypes, assumptions and prejudices.  Here are some of the snap judgments that may have been in play: 

MAGA wearing, white males = perpetrators. 
Native American elder = wise. 
Black people = victims.  
It's Simple. 
Except the kids were shouting school spirit chants, trying to figure out their way through an overwhelming situation.  The Elder inserted himself in, trying to change the dynamic he thought was occurring, adding to the confusion and fear.  And the Black people were the ones yelling racial slurs and demeaning things at other groups - for two hours.  

Cue our heads exploding. 

Because when we first saw the images and clips, we thought we knew who we were supposed to support and stand with, and who we were allowed to judge, condemn and dismiss.  

And now it's not so simple.  
People didn't stay neatly  in their categories for us.

(And let's be honest - it felt like a delicious, righteous rage roiling inside to read the boy's smile as smug, arrogant, Trumpian assholery, didn't it?  We don't want to see a scared kid trying to communicate calm. I mean, look at his hat!).  We humans love having our stereotypes reinforced, and can barely stand - literally are thrown off balance - when they don't fit.

By Saturday we'd already crucified those kids.  Because apparently we are allowed to do the things we supposedly abhor – that is, judge, condemn, criticize, belittle, demean, and destroy - as long as we aim it at the right people. (But they’re not even people, right? Animals, monsters, idiots, let's call them).  

On Facebook I saw people I respect posting the children's personal information, school, church, parents' workplace, neighborhood, etc. Let's get them. Ruin their college changes. Make them PAY.  Maybe you or I would never stoop to issuing death threats, but someone did. You should DIE for showing disrespect. You are not worthy to live.  But we'll take the high ground.  We'll just say you are not worthy to be called a human being. 

We are the mob. 

We might as well have been in the scene shouting obscenities in their faces.  

Only that doesn’t have nearly the damaging impact of what we can inflict on them from behind our safe and self-righteous screens, does it? The power to punish, right at our fingertips. 

BUT

We all belong to God.  

Everyone in this scenario is a precious child of God. 

Everyone in this scene is acting out of desire to belong. 

Everyone in this scene is reacting to their own interpretations of what is happening in front of them.

Each person is working to figure out who they are and assert where they fit.  

Each person is trying to live out their humanity in a really, really messed up, broken system. 

We are all victims of this system. 

We are all perpetrators of this system. 

We are all culpable for what we’ve built and continue to reinforce.  

AND

We all belong to each other. 

This is true and doesn't change. 

We are stuck with each other – all these different Americans! 

Even the ones we can't understand. 

Even the ones we can't relate to.

Even the ones we don't even like.  

Nevertheless, they are ours and we are theirs. We are responsible for each other. 

Those kids are our kids. That is our Native American Elder, and the small group shouting obscenities at everyone else, they’re ours too.  

Some of us are adults – meant to set an example, to teach, to guide. The elder, the Hebrew Israelites, you and I – we are the adults here.  We are responsible for the nation we are building for our kids.  

What kind of a country do we want to hand on?  

What kind of faith do we want to practice?  

What kind of humanity do we want to embody?

Let’s do this differently. 
I believe we can live differently than this.

What's Your Identity?

Luke 3:15;17, 21-22

There are things that happen to us in our lives that come to define us. They are the things that most make us who we are. Some of them happen before we are even born – where we are born, the color of our skin, our gender, our DNA that comes with its own timeline and traits, handed down from our ancestors or parents, that predisposes us to disease, temper or genius, a biological tendency toward addiction, or a mind for math.  

Then there are things that happen to us when we are young – particular experiences, like the loss of a parent, a childhood spent moving around from place to place, an exceptionally encouraging teacher, an acutely abusive coach, an accident or illness, or a relentlessly reoccurring message about what it will take to be accepted by our family or community.  

Then, there are the things we experience or choose, the opportunities open or doors closed to us, the advantages or struggles that set the stage for our lives, the terrible mistakes or the soaring successes, the communities that raise us and the ones we seek out, the places we get our stories and the people who tell them to us all shape our identities.

We live in a time where more than ever before in history, it is presumed in Western culture that the purpose of life is to define your own identity.  Nobody else can tell you who you are; that’s exclusively your job, it’s your main job, and it’s your highest job.  

It’s become such an important project, defining your own identity, that we do it all the time without even realizing we are doing it.  It requires comparing ourselves to others nearly constantly.  It means knowing what identities are available so we can figure out where we fit, listening to others who have our chosen identities so we know more how to be whatever they are, whatever we are, so that we can find community or ensure respect by fitting in well enough with whatever that identity happens to be. Who are you going to be?

The tricky part is, some of these things change, in fact, a lot of them do.  Because people change.  You see it most easily with children.  One year their favorite color is yellow, but then it’s blue and you didn’t get the memo.  First it’s dresses and skirts all year, and then, (after you’ve shopped), it’s only pants the next year.  It’s basketball all the time, and then it’s photography; it’s the inseparable best friend, and then a completely new crowd.  Let’s just say, after being able to quote nearly every episode, now nobody in my house will use the Dora the Explorer beach towel in public.  

And being human also means moving through knowledge and development, through ideas, and experiences that shape us and change our perceived identity.  We move from student to master.  From amateur to professional to retired.  From employed to unemployed. From ability to disability, health to sickness, and back again, perhaps several times. 

 And over time beliefs change. So what you might have thought or shaped your life around previously, no longer is central for you, or becomes more nuanced, or is traded out for something else entirely.  And now something new defines you. This new thing becomes your identity.  Until something happens that might shift that again. You move to a new place, lose your spouse, your career ends, your health changes, your child comes out to you, you become your dad’s caregiver, your church falls apart, new questions arise in your spirit, new callings emerge.

And is our identity even consistent from context to context?  With one group of friends we might be the outgoing one, with another group, the quiet one.  In one situation you might be related to everyone in the room, in another you might be the only woman, or only black person, or only English-speaker.  So even though we think it is ours alone to create and shape, our identity has something to do with those around us, and the role we play in the group.

And to complicate things, our culture puts on pressure to be immediately identifiable in your self-chosen labels, so that even thought you’re supposedly completely unique, you should be properly categorized and labeled as a “type.”  People want to know, are you a Republican or a Democrat? Are you Progressive? Conservative?  An ally? An enemy?  What do you do for a living?  Where do you live? Rent or own? Are you single? Did you come from somewhere else? 

We wont admit it, but we want to be able to make assumptions and snap judgments about people based on things like education level, finances, or body weight, which, according to a recent study, is the one area today where stereotypes and prejudices are increasing, while in all other areas, like race, religion, sexual orientation, rates of prejudice are dropping.  

And it really throws us for a loop when people don’t fit neatly into the categories.  What do we do with a black, gay, Republican, Christian Pastor with Asbergers, like my friend Dennis?   Which table does he get assigned to in the lunchroom of life?  I read this week that the Woman’s March founders – for all their unity of goals and perspective, had a personal rift because they differed on whether the Jewish member was part of the dominant white culture, or a marginalized person.   Was she a victim of oppression or part of the oppressive power structure? And we need to know these things so we know how to treat each other. We need to know if you belong, or who belongs more, or who needs to work harder to belong. 

Because in a time when our main job is to create and curate our own identity, we had better not slip up and mislabel others or ourselves and we’d better not lose a prized label once it’s secured.  People are always paying attention, everything we say and do is evidence of our belonging or not, and our place and potential in the world will be shaped by our self-defined identity.  So choose carefully and walk delicately.

This is a new thing. In the past, identities were pretty much given to you by your community.  You didn’t get a say, because it wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that it was the individual person’s job to figure that out. For better or worse, you simply were defined by where you were born, and your status and role in society were predetermined.  You just lived into it. Of course, this had its own problems, but whatever they were, people were not swimming in options and drowning in expectations as they figured out their own slippery identity and tried to live it out in the world.

Step into this framework, the Messiah. And here’s an interesting case.  Is he God? Is he human?  In the lineage of a king, or the son of a carpenter?  (Trick questions, the answers to all of them are YES). 

Messiah - This is a one and only role, never before lived into, with a collection of deeply held expectations at the get-go.  Messiah was supposed to liberate the people from an oppressive empire, to bring in a revolution, restore the nation of Israel.  The Messiah belongs to Israel.  Messiah is strong, extraordinary, powerful and obvious, not vulnerable or ordinary, weak or hidden.

So Jesus has already thwarted all these expectations pretty radically by being born in a (debatable) stable, being honored by a bunch of pagan mystics from a far-off land for his cosmic significance to the whole world, and spending the first few years of his life as a refugee, and then having apparently the most ordinary small town, Middle Eastern Jewish upbringing that it’s not even worth mentioning, with an appearance that didn't stand out in any remarkable way. 

And he hasn’t come to overthrow the Romans!  He has come to overthrow death! We don't have a category for that one. So there are lots of identities being thrust upon Jesus before his ministry even begins, but there’s only one that matters.

And it’s spoken at his baptism.  

John has been preaching and raving in the wilderness, and people are flocking to be chastised by his strong language and powerful rhetoric, and then baptized by him.  And Jesus shows up there, just, it seems, as John references this Messiah that is coming, one who is so important that John would not be worthy of even untying his sandal and washing his feet like a servant.

But Jesus slips into the crowd, according to Luke’s telling, and gets baptized right alongside the rest of them, and John seems not to pause the act, and rather than stopping himself from washing the Messiah’s feet, John proceeds, apparently, to wash him completely, just like the person before and the person after him.  

And then the Holy Spirit descends in bodily form like a dove, and Jesus hears the words spoken over him like a pronouncement, “This is my child, the beloved one; I am delighted with him.”  

In this moment heaven and earth converge in the person of Christ.  Jesus is God, fully God. That is his identity.  And the full God shuffles into the waters of humanity, submitting anonymously, alongside everyone else, to this act of repentance and renewal – for that’s what John’s baptism was.  God claims his identity as a human being, a creature in need of God.  

And at the same time the human Jesus reaches out toward the divine, the divinity of God reaches out and claims Jesus with a voice from heaven and blessing, and the Holy Spirit wraps the connection in affirmation, pronouncement, and blessing. The Trinity is present here, and the movement of God toward us and us toward God. 

Every tradition has that movement, by the way – dedication as a baby and baptism as an adult, baptism as a baby and confirmation later, they all try to capture and express the covenant movement of God claiming us and us responding Yes to God’s Yes.

It’s worth noting that baptism is an enactment of dying and rising.  This gets missed with the gentle Presbyterian head sprinkle, but is easier to see with the full immersion dunk.  

We are baptized into Jesus’ own death and resurrection.  We acknowledge that we die. We are, in fact, given over to death.  And then we are raised up in Christ’s life.  Jesus’ own relationship with God, his identity, becomes ours– permanently sealed into the love of God.  Receiving God’s Yes, living toward God as God lives toward us, is our acknowledged purpose.  

And Jesus, all the things he was supposed to be and do, all the messages shaping even his own beliefs about Messiah, and the people’s intense expectations on him, they die here.  And what rises is just the connection with God, just the identity as beloved, just the purpose of embodying the love of God to us and us to God.

We wont talk about it until Lent, but right after this, Jesus is sent into the wilderness to face temptation, all the things that would try to claim and shape his identity. These too are what he is prepared to let go when comes up out of that water and hears spoken his true identity – the temptations he hasn’t yet faced in the wilderness, and every day after that.

Baptism is not some kind of magical thing.  Ordinary water, ordinary words, ordinary people watching and pouring water and making promises.  But in this ordinary moment, we trust that God –who always has claimed you for love – now becomes the source of your identity, the love of God becomes your purpose, the grace of God becomes your belonging.  It’s the convergences of Yeses. God’s and yours, back and forth. 

All other identities, whether long-term or temporary, inherent or chosen, released or reclaimed, whether denied or explored, embraced or rejected, they are not the true identity that defines us.  None of them is powerful enough or expansive enough to determine our deepest self, and our truest purpose.  

There is but one identity that defines us first, last and most completely. It is true of each of us before we came into being, and it remains true after we are gone from this earth. Beloved, child of God, in whom God delights. 

So despite the relentless messages around us, our primary job is not, in fact, to construct our own identity in the world. That’s already been decided for us.  

Our first job, our only job, is to live into the identity decided for us to us before the foundation of the world.  Made in God’s own image to share this life with God, the grace of God reaches out to us by the Holy Spirit, and brings us back, every time we forget – and we forget many times a day! But God’s grace always brings us back to our truest, deepest identity: which is Beloved. Child of God, in whom God delights.

 Your life is a gift, made to be lived in response to God’s grace.  

Each one of us is completely unique, unequalled in all the world. Each one of us is a mix of contradictions and conundrums, beauty and ugliness, struggle and gladness, a glorious hodge-podge of features and facets.  Not one of us fits easily into human categories or labels, nor should we.  We are each meant to be the one and only you or me that has ever, or will ever, walk on this earth. 

But the only way that is possible is if we trust that our identity isn’t up for grabs. It is secure. Unshakable and permanent.  It cannot be altered or abolished.  It cannot be lost and it cannot be earned.  It is bestowed upon us by the Creator of all, given to us by the one who comes in alongside us.  And in baptism, this identity is recognized, confirmed, celebrated, witnessed, and sealed. 

Death gets spoken over you first.  You will die. This is good news.  First because it’s true.  And baptism tells the truth.  

But also because in baptism we die to all the identities we thought made us who we are, or all the things that will one day seek to so.  

They do not determine our being or define our ultimate worth.  

They cannot give us our purpose or take away our belonging.  

We live in this world as though we’re already dead, so we don’t need to fear death or avoid it – even if we’re threatened with loss, rejection or obliteration.  Jesus died for us, Jesus’ death takes on our death, and we take on his.
  

And then, resurrection. We rise to a new life, a new identity.  Beloved.  Child of God, in whom God delights.  Belonging forever to God, existing for life that will never die.

This identity will never fade. 

This purpose will never disappear.  

This belonging will never end. 

It turns out the only person who can really tell you who you are is God.  
And God names you Beloved. 
This is your true self.  

Live it boldly. 

Amen.