Beloved, we are God’s children now, says John.
This is just who we are.
And just like that, you’ve been changed. Your passport, your city, your team, your family, your profession – whatever names or communities or history that have made up your identity to this point – those no longer define you. Instead, your relationship with God defines you.
All those things you learn to say to introduce yourself in the first semester of a language class – My name is Emily. I am from Chicago. I am a priest. – these are no longer your identity.
We are children of God.
That’s how you introduce yourself.
That’s how you understand yourself.
Try it:
Hi, I am _______. I am a child of God.
Use your own name, and say it out loud.
I know, as a “repeat after me” it may feel silly or strange.
But as a fundamental truth, as our true identity, it changes everything.
Because the world changes – and how we react to the world changes – when our identity changes.
You know that if you got branded with an identity in high school – if you were one of the nerds when nerds weren’t cool, or if you were preppy when preppy meant popular; if you were a greaser or a geek or a jock – the world was a different place because of who you were. Those identity tags mean different access, different opportunities, different friends, different measures of success or happiness.
That’s true beyond high school, too. The world is a different place for people identified as entrepreneurs or drones, identified as men or women or neither, as black or Asian or white or Indian or foreign or native; as “normal” or “different”, queer or mainstream.
Often, those identities are given to us by others; sometimes we create them ourselves.
Sometimes both.
In every case, they change how we encounter the world, and how the world sees us.
Sometimes the identities we belong to feel so obvious we scarcely notice them – at least until they are challenged – hey, that’s my family, my people you’re talking about! Sometimes we’re very intentional about broadcasting and boosting an identity with the hats we wear, the colors we choose - the shirt that says “I bleed Eagles green” - the language we use, the way we introduce ourselves.
We join groups - sororities, churches, clubs – because we want to match ourselves to an identity of community service, faithfulness, local pride, or fun. And because we want a community that supports our identity as people who serve and build one another up, who pray together, who golf, who dance, who sing….
And when you choose or accept an identity, you change.
We change our behavior – often unconsciously – we change our language, our expectations to fit the identities we adopt.
People who identify as athletes simply go for their run, whatever the weather; while people who “jog for exercise” might avoid the rain for a run even if they’d go boating or camping in the wet.
Years ago I bought a Mazda simply because they had a small hatchback - and then gradually found myself identifying with their “Zoom zoom” branding on the road. I drive a little differently now than I would if Toyota had had a Corolla hatchback at the time.
You don’t identify with Philly sports teams and host a genteel champagne brunch for a championship game. But you wear a stylish hat or a smart jacket if you’re a member of the Turf Club.
And that’s exactly what John is telling us today.
Because of God’s love for us, we are children of God, and that is how we behave because it is who we are.
It is how we act, how we live, how we meet the world and how the world meets us.
We are children of God, and children of God don’t hang on to sin, John says. Children of God don’t conform ourselves to the world’s values, children of God are like Jesus.
Just like Jesus.
We don’t know all of who Jesus is just yet, John says, but we will. And as we know, we ourselves will become just like Jesus.
Who is just like God.
Think for a moment about the adjectives you’ve heard or used to describe Jesus:
compassionate, gentle, loving, fierce, forgiving, faithful, healing??
That is who you are, when you accept yourself as a child of God.
What if you took that identity – I am a child of God, so I am loving, I am faithful, I am compassionate – and used it to shape how you interact with others as well as how you see yourself?
There’s a spiritual exercise many people use, in which you put your own name (or the name of someone else) into the famous words of First Corinthians 13, everywhere that Paul says “love”:
Emily is patient, Emily is kind…
Joan is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
Tom does not insist on his own way.
David is not irritable or resentful.
Nancy does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
Jeff bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Try it yourself. Seriously.
Put your name in there, and say it out loud.
It’s a lot to live up to, but what if God’s love is already making it true?
John says that’s happening.
Beloved, we are children of God, because of God’s love we are becoming like God, and that is just who we are.
What if you said that to yourself any time you had to send an email to a colleague, client, or boss; every time you pick up your phone, whether you talk on it or text? When you’re navigating the grocery store, or trying to get Zoom to work?
What if you said that to yourself every time you connect to the internet, start the day at work or school, make dinner?
How do you think that might change your interaction with the world?
How do you think believing that with your whole heart and actions would change the way the world appears to you?
That poetry of love from Paul is not the only Bible passage or set of adjectives to try on, to understand and embrace who you are as a child of God.
Come to me, all who labor and bear heavy burdens, Jesus says, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
What if you said that out loud – come to me; I am gentle – and knew that you could give people rest and relief from their burdens. Wouldn’t you look at the burdened people around us differently?
You could. Because as children of God, we are like Jesus. Becoming just like Jesus.
Which means becoming like God.
So, what if you adopted the classic description of God’s character (Exodus 34) and said to yourself:
I am compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, committed to generations of loyal love, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, without ignoring guilt and consequences.
What if you reminded yourself of that identity when you watch the news, or read the internet, or enter a new place, walk down an unfamiliar street, or decide where to spend and invest your money?
I imagine it would affect how we hear and tell the stories of George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo. How we respond to the stories of Derek Chauvin, Kim Potter, Eric Stillman. How we hear and see and respond to our long, troubled history that creates the conditions of violent death.
It may change how we experience and respond to political campaigns, to statements from the CDC and missions to Mars, to Oscar nominations and negotiations with Iran – or to changes in school schedules, garbage pickup, and other more local matters.
Beloved, we are children of God.
We are people who – purely through the love of God, not through our own merit or efforts – are transformed to become more and more and more like Jesus, more like God.
It’s just who we are.
And that changes everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment