Our Identity - Unforgettable!
Baptism of Our Lord, January 11, 2015 (Mark 1:4-11 with Genesis 1:1-5 and Acts 19:1-7 in bg)
Children of God, grace to you and peace...
Do you ever struggle with you identity? Do you ever really question who you are, what you are to be about, your specific place in the grander scheme of things? Do you?
I must confess that I sometimes struggle with my identity. As a young boy and adolescent I really wrestled with what I would do? Who was I in light of my particular gifts and skills? As it became clearer as to the particular call of my vocation, I worried about how that was going to work. Given my unique personality and the call I was experiencing from God, would I be able to find someone to share my life with me – who would be willing to travel around to who knows where, to deal with the ups and downs of being a Pastor and sometimes live in a veritable fishbowl. In those days I certainly wondered whether or not I could do it. Sometimes I still do.
In ongoing struggles with our identity questions continue to surface. How am I doing? Have I been faithful? After years of living our identity we may look backwards and wonder if our identity has been what we thought it would be? As I watch church attendance decline, fewer people presenting themselves for seminary, and observe the increasing secularization of our culture, I sometimes I wonder about the value or wisdom of my own identity. Can you identify?
I remember Andy. He was amazing. Andy had experienced little opportunity for formal education. But he knew farming. He had been born on a particular piece of land. He had lived in the same yard and tilled the same soil for 80 years. Andy and his wife, Sarah, had carved out a good life for their three children on that land. They contributed to the life of the communities they were part of including the church.
However in these latter years Andy's life was becoming more difficult. Dementia was setting in. Sarah was justifiably concerned. Andy had been arising in the middle of the night, getting dressed and wandering outside. He had little or no awareness of the time of day or night. As he went out into the farm yard sometimes he couldn't find his way back home. Saskatchewan winters are bitterly cold. People outside for any length of time, particularly not dressed properly can die. Sarah knew something had to be done. In consultation with her adult children, their family doctor and pastor a decision was made. Sarah and Andy would move from the farm into town. Maybe, at least for a while they could live together in a new home there.
Moving day arrived. Andy was beside himself. Their Pastor had been called to accompany them on their move, perhaps to assist Andy with his goodbyes to what had been such a great part of his life – that house, that yard and all the land surrounding it. Upon entering the house the Pastor found Andy sitting on the piano bench. Andy's eyes drooped tears. He sobbed as he said to his Pastor, "If I am not a farmer, if I can no longer live here, if I can no longer provide for Sarah and my kids then what good am I! Who am I anyway?"
Jesus was young the day he approached that river. We do not know his thoughts or feelings as he began his ministry. But that day he went down into the Jordan River to be baptized by John we do know that he clearly heard his own identity being spelled out. We are allowed to listen to that amazing declaration.
Mark's gospel tells us that the heavens are literally torn apart as Jesus arises from the water. In that moment, the moment of Jesus' baptism, the gap between God the Creator and we creatures is bridged. The very Spirit of God, the breath of God which hovered over the waters of chaos at Creation, now descends upon Jesus like a dove. Jesus hears a voice. The voice is clear. The source of the voice is God. Jesus is being addressed. We are enabled to listen into what is being said to Jesus. "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." ...
I wonder how often Jesus thought back to that moment? As Jesus feeds the hungry, heals the sick, struggles with his closest friends who never get him while he is alive, did he strive to remember that day, to hear again the voice he heard that day at the river, identifying Him as God's own Son? When he was being beaten, spat upon, whipped, hanging on the cross, did he cling to those words, to that promise, his identity, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased!"?
Our amazing news, the good news for everyone is that Jesus is God's Son, the Beloved. His life, death and resurrection allow us not only to glimpse God being for us and with us, but allow us to realize that death and evil and all their accompanying powers including our self doubt, and our mortality can never trump, nor bring to naught God's love for us and this world.
On this festival of the Baptism of our Lord, we not only recall Jesus' baptism, but we hear of his unmistakeable identity.
Because of Who He is, we are pushed, even shoved by the very breath of God to the radical ongoing reality of our baptism. God's Spirit acts there and here, then and now, again and again, seeking to bringing order out of chaos, warmth and new life where once there was frigidity and death.
God declares in our baptism calling us by name, "You are my son, you are my daughter. I love you. I join you to my Son and his body. I call you to follow and trust Him - all the days of your life."
This, dear people is my identity, your identity, our identity together. We are numbered uniquely among the daughters and sons of God. No one and nothing can take this away from us. Our identity is not our accomplishment. Rather, our identity is a gift from God, forged through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God's Spirit wills to work all of this out in and through us.
Our daily living questions then are: Do we know this? D we realize whose we are, which births who are? As we do – how then shall we live, now?
By God's grace may we continually remember and know our identity - blessed to be blessings. Amen.