Who Are You?

September 2015

To All the Saints of St. Paul’s     

Grace to you all, and peace!

“Who are you?”

This is a normal enough question to ask, and to answer, when meeting as many people as you do when accepting a new job or call. It is also a question we spend a lifetime answering as we live out our response of “Who are you?” and “Whose are you?”

You may have also noticed that each Sunday, that question is implied in the benediction with which you have been blessed as you ready to leave the worship service. There is much I can and will say about that benediction, but now I draw your attention to the phrase, “Be who God made to be, and know that you are loved.” This is an invitation for you to consider who God made you to be, and who you are.

 “Be who God made you to be” is hardly an original thought. There is everything from Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true,” to the baptismal refrain of the Lion King, “Remember who you are.” There is even Popeye and his “I yam who I yam”!

But as Christians it is neither high culture nor low that creates, guides, and sustains us, but God and God’s word, where again and again we are reminded of God’s love for us, and that love’s call on our lives. This love is conveyed again and again to the people of Israel and through the person of Jesus Christ, for example

                                                          

But now thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, who formed you, O Israel:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine (Isaiah 43:1).

and

… you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people,

in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him

who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people;

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Peter 2:9-10)..

Who are you? And what would it be like to live as the person you really are? That is the question Thomas Merton asks in his book, New Seeds of Contemplation. What if we gave glory to God out of our true self—being who God made us to be—rather than from the fears, insecurities, and assumptions we make about ourselves and that others make about us? If only, he suggests, we glorified God as the trees do, branches waving, leaves turning—never trying to be something other than what they are, but worshipping with all that they are.

As a pastor, I see one of my primary tasks as helping others to be who God made them to be. To be humble in the truest sense of the word, neither thinking too much of themselves nor too little, but being grounded (humus: ground) in the truth. We need to be honest about the gifts we have and those we lack, not seeking to be every “successful” person or church  we read about, but to be the fullest expression of Christ of which we are capable, in our own unique way.

In the movie City Slickers, Billy Crystal’s character, stuck in the midst of a mid-life crisis, asks the grizzled cowboy played by Jack Palance for his secret of life. Palance raises a finger and says, “You have to find one thing, just one thing.” “What is it?” asks Crystal. “That,” Palance replies, “is for you to find out.”

May we each have the courage, patience, and trust to let God reveal to us who God made us to be, and then live it out. Even if—especially if—it is different than what we or the world around us expects. Even if—especially if—it takes us in directions we could never have anticipated. Even if—especially if—being a child of God is all we can be ever sure of, because so often it has to be enough. And because ultimately it is more than enough.

                  

God is all in all,

Pastor Steve