I’m going to give you all a little bit of
time to think about how you might answer this question. Who are you?
Who are you? In a culture where names have meaning, answering the
question with your name may offer insight into your character or into the
destiny your parents hope for you.
Names held meaning and power in the ancient Near East. The night before Jacob meets his brother
Esau again—the brother he stole his father’s blessing from decades ago—Jacob
wrestles with an unknown, possibly divine messenger. Refusing to give up the struggle, near daybreak Jacob
demands a blessing. The divine
messenger responds: “What is your
name?” Jacob “No longer will you be called Jacob—which means the one who
displaces, unseats, supersedes—but now
you will be called Israel—which
means one who struggles with God—for you
have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.”[1]
Who are you? Jacob would now respond, I am Israel—one who wrestled with and
held his own with God Almighty.
In
the movie, Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis’ character says, “It’s America, our given
names don’t mean anything.” And
that is often true, but our surname reveals something. It identifies our family. So in small communities, that last name
offers history, connections, respectability. Who are you? I’m
R Lentz. Oh, the Lentz family—in
Wagstaff—I know your homeplace . . . the Presbyterian church was right next to
your grandparents’ house. I know your people . . . your grandfather was the one
who. . . Your dad owned the . . . your uncle bought the . . . Surnames offer
history & connections.
Who are you? There was a time when, I would answer something like this: I’m
Mari Lyn Whisler; I’m a twirler. I’m Mari Lyn Whisler, I’m a UT student. I’m Mari Lyn Jones, I’m a math teacher. In other words, there was a time when my identity was
tightly interwoven with what I did.
It was as if I thought I had to earn, I had to do, in order to be.
Who are you? Very early in the process
of discerning whether I was indeed being called by God to ministry of Word and
Sacrament—I was asked to reflect on and respond to this question—Who are you? By then my perception had changed
from Who I am is what I do. So I
answered in terms of relationships:
I am a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend, a mentor, a sister, a niece,
an aunt, a cousin. But first and foremost, I am a beloved child of God. Yes, familiar with today’s text, I
answered using its claim.
The
unspoken question behind today’s scripture is “Who are you?” And the author boldly and emphatically
answers for the Ephesians. Chosen by God from the beginning of creation, you
are children of God. Singled out
for adoption into God’s family, you are heirs
to the family inheritance. You are brothers and sisters to Jesus, your eldest
brother. Receiving the gift
of the Holy Spirit, you enjoy the down payment of that inheritance.
This
answer to the question “Who are you?” also tells us something about the God we
Christians know in Jesus the Christ.
God, the sovereign creator, “is gracious beyond the wildest reaches of
[our] imaginations.”[2] Choosing to
be merciful to us—not because of anything we have done or will do or can do to
earn his mercy—God pours out God’s love over us—drenching us with grace as if
we were standing outside in a Kansas rain shower.
God does this, because God loves us as if
we are flesh of God’s flesh, bone of God’s bone, being of God’s being.
But
sometimes, somehow, we find ourselves in a drought. With parched throats, we can’t even call on God’s name. Vision blurring, we see a mirage of
empty, endless landscape devoid of the Life-giving One. Weak from hunger and thirst, we cannot
move our hands or knees into a prayer posture. Sometimes, somehow, we forget . . .
Begin Lion King clip of Simba seeing and hearing Mufasa in the
gathering storm clouds above the African plain—“Simba, you have forgotton who
you are, so you have forgotten me . . . Remember who you are. Remember.
Remember.
Sometimes,
somehow, like Simba we forget who we are. . . So we look for reminders. Like the
family crest in Celtic lands, the royal signet ring in ruling dynasties, or the
special locket with our grandparents’ wedding picture inside, God has given us
physical reminders—something we can see and hear and feel to remind us who we
are and to whom we belong. We
see the baptismal font—filled with water, and we remember baptisms. We see the water, we hear it splashing,
we feel its wet, cool touch, and we remember baptisms. We remember Jesus’ baptism in the
Jordan River and God’s voice, “This is my
beloved son. In him I am
well-pleased.”[3] We remember
what happens in our baptism—in the waters of our baptism we die to sin and rise
to new life in Christ. Washed in
the water, we are made clean. The pastor says, “I baptize you
in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Claimed by God in
the waters of our baptism, we are a new creation. In the presence of the gathered community and with their
promises to teach us the faith, we are adopted into God’s family and enter into
the community of faith. In our
faith-droughts, symbols like the baptismal font, the prayers and music of
worship, the scripture read and proclaimed—these combine to reminds us of our baptism. They combine to remind
us who we are and whose we are.
This
text says we are children of God—children—plural. The language “is not
individualistic. As beloved as we
are, we are lifted up into something far greater than ourselves. We are blessed in Christ, we are chosen in
Christ, we are destined for adoption through
Christ. In Christ we have obtained our inheritance, and our hope is set on Christ.”[4]
This freely given gift of Christ “is not an individual blessing but always [one
meant] for the community of Christ.”[5]
From
the beginning of creation, God has been at work to draw those created in his
image to close, familial relationship with God. Covenanting with Abraham, God promised that through his
family, all families of the earth would be blessed. Using Abraham’s descendents to weave the tapestry of law and
covenant that we call the Jewish faith, God prepared the foundation for the
fulfillment of the law and the prophets—God’s son, Jesus the Christ. As Eugene Peterson puts it in his
paraphrase of the Bible, The Message, “It's in Christ that we find out who we are
and what we are living for.”[6]
God’s good plan destines us Christians not only for the privilege of being in
God’s family but more importantly for the responsibility that kinship
engenders. What is that responsibility?
Discipleship—molding our lives to the form of Christ’s life. Sitting with our gravely ill friend; putting
gas in an itinerant worker’s car; stocking the food pantry; visiting a
home-bound person; taking a meal to a recently released patient; sharing
worship at a care home; providing a family with clothes after loss of their
home; teaching our children the stories of our faith; preparing our worship
& sacraments; enjoying our young people. These are all acts of discipleship—specific tasks of serving
God and neighbor. It is in our
serving that we live out our destiny.
We are blessed to be a blessing.
“Who are you?” Chosen by God from the beginning of creation,
we are children of God. Adopted
into God’s family, we are heirs with his Son, Jesus the Christ. Receiving the Holy Spirit, we are
assured of our place in God’s family.
Whose are we? We are God’s—His
“grace in Jesus Christ precedes us, surrounds us, and sustains us.”[7]
Remember
who you are. Remember whose you
are.
Using
the opening words of “The Heidelberg Catechism,” one of the confessions found
in our Presbyterian Book of Confessions, please join me in responding.
One: What is your only comfort in life and
death?
Many:
That I belong—body and soul, in life and in death—not to myself but to
my faithful Savior, Jesus the Christ.[8]
Amen.
[1] Genesis 32: 28 NRSV
[2] George W. Stroup. “Ephesians 1: 3 – 14: Theological Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word, Year B. volume
3. Edited by David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor.
Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2009, p. 232.
[3] Matthew 3:17 NRSV
[4] Karen Chakoian. “Ephesians 1: 3 – 14: Pastoral Perspective,” in Feasting on the Word, Year B. vol.
3. Edited by David L. Bartlett and
Barbara Brown Taylor.
Louisville: Westminster
John Knox Press, 2009, p. 232, 234.
[5] Chakoian, 234.
[7] Stroup, 234.
[8] “Heidelberg Catechism” The
Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA) Part 1: The Book of Confessions, 4.001
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