October 9, 2016
True North | Identity in Christ
- Genesis 12:1-8
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
A couple of months ago I talked about the story of how when I was around 9 years old I got lost in the middle of Tokyo. It was a remarkably scary time and even now, some 3 decades later, when I talk about it I can feel the fear that flooded me during that time. I also mentioned that right before I got lost we had eaten at a Wendy’s. And I knew that when I mentioned that that there would be some of you who would hold your noses up in the air at the fact that these Americans would go to Wendy’s when they were in a foreign country and could experience all the succulent tastes of Japanese food.
Well, what I didn’t tell you was that not only did we eat at a Wendy’s in Tokyo, but that we had searched for it for a couple of hours. We took a train for a half-hour or so from where we were staying and then realized that while we knew which train stop to get off of, we didn’t know which exit to take or where it was from there. This was well before the time of GPS on our phones and English was not nearly as prevalent as it is now and so we kept walking and walking and walking. For miles we walked around and we had a brochure with the Wendy’s logo on it, but apparently the Japanese had not grown to fully appreciate the taste of a Wendy’s cheeseburger because no one could point us in the right direction. But we were not to be thwarted and so we kept looking and looking and looking and walking and walking and walking. Until finally, hungry and worn out, we finally discovered the holy grail of fast food joints.
And the question of course, is why in the world we would have spent 2 hours trying to find Wendy’s. Yes, their hamburgers are pretty good (in my mind at least), but they’re not that good. But what you have to understand is that we had been living in Guam where there was no Wendy’s and Wendy’s had always been our favorite place to eat when were in the States. We had been living on this small little island that was so different then what we had been used to. While there were a lot of really cool things about living in the middle of the Pacific it still wasn’t home. And when we reached Japan and found out that there was a Wendy’s there was nothing that was going to keep us from getting there. Not because they had the best hamburgers in the world, but because it felt like being home. And walking into that Wendy’s (which I can still visualize all these years past) even in the middle of a completely foreign culture, there was this most familiar of feelings. Or to put it another way, there was a sense that this was a place where our identities as Americans could feel at home. For a brief moment things were comfortable, they made sense, like we could live into who we were here in this place. I could get my single cheese plain and my Wendy’s fries and my sister could get her Frosty and it just felt right.
The sense of home and knowing who we are, our identity, is remarkably important for people. A couple of months ago I read an article in the New York Times about a castle off the western coast of Scotland. It’s called Duart Castle and it has been owned by the McLean family for over 600 years. The article was about how expensive it is to renovate castles, but what struck me was how there are McLeans across the globe who are intensely interested in this castle which has some connection to them, even if it is just one drop of their blood. Sir Lachlan, the resident of the castle said, “People are increasingly searching for their heritage and their identity,” which is why so many of them come to visit the castle. Then he went on to say that in a globalized world, “people are becoming less sure about themselves and they want to find home.”
People are looking for a home, an identity, a sense of who they are. Home really means the place where things make sense, where I know what is valued, what to expect. It is the thing which gives us a framework for the world out there. A sense of home, is a sense of your identity, a sense of who you are. This is why, of course, when God sends Abram away from his home this is no small request. As we’ve talked about before, when God says so explicitly, “Go from your country, and your kindred and your father’s house,” he is saying more than just move, he is telling him that he is going to have a new identity. If that’s not clear enough he makes it even more explicit when, in five chapters, he gives him the new name of Abraham. It’s a bit like Jesus would do when he changed Simon’s name to Peter or when Saul’s name gets changed to Paul. There is a sense that when God comes onto the scene in your life you’re not just rearranging some furniture, you’re getting a whole new home (or as we’ve said the last couple of weeks, a new story). Your identity completely changes.
And so what do we as Christians believe our new identity is? Well the gospel of John tells us that for all those who receive Christ (this is what we talked about last week, for those who can accept the grace and forgiveness of Jesus), for all those who receive Jesus they have become children of God. In Romans, Paul says that when we cry Abba, Father, to God that the Spirit is bearing witness to the fact that we are children of God. Who are we? What is our identity? When are we home? When we understand that we are loved, children of God. As ??? Benner says, we know that we have our understanding of identity right when the first answer we think of when it comes to the question of “Who am I” is that we are someone who is deeply loved by God.
Now, my guess is that if I were to ask you all whether or not you believe that you are a loved child of God that most of you would say “yes, absolutely.” That this is a part of who you are. That your identity is in Christ. The problem though, is that I’m not sure if our lives really look like we believe it. We may say this is who we are, but the way our lives actually look are quite a bit different. It’s a bit like this scene from Groundhog Day.
If you know this movie at all what you know is that Phil (played by Bill Murray) is not at all who his boss is describing and not at all who Phil wants to think he is. Like that, it’s not that we don’t want to believe that our foundation who we are is a loved child of God, but it’s simply that there are so many other things that easily begin to take precedence over that. That what we value and what gives us a sense of worthiness is so easily coopted by other things.
What are those things? Well, just think about conversations that we have when we first meet someone and are trying to get to know who they are. What are the questions we ask? “What do you do for a living?” “Where are you from?” Are you married? Do you have children? Where do you live? Where’d you go to college? These are all great questions, of course, and there’s nothing wrong in asking them. But are you aware of the underlying premise to all of them? That who you are is where you’re from or where you live now or what you do for a living or whether you have children or what kind of job you have or whether you’re married or where you went to college. Now, I’m not suggesting that those things are unimportant or that they don’t make up a part of who you are and I’m not saying that the first question you should ask someone you’ve just met is, “Are you a loved child of God?” But I do kind of wonder, as weird as it might be, if it wouldn’t at least be better to simply ask, “Who are you?” I’m wondering whether or not we realize just how much these other questions shape us and what that does to us, to our identities, to our souls? How it sets us up for distorted and exhausted souls.
I was struck this week by our passage in Matthew. It’s a passage that I frequently bring up when we partake in community. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Something that was pointed out to me this week is that what this is talking about is not rest physically, but rest for your souls. That what happens is that when our souls, our ultimate identity, are built on anything other than Christ that we will end up being exhausted and weary.
Because if our identity is based on things like our achievements, our social status, our talents, our jobs, our approval by others then our lives will look like this with sweeping highs and lows depending on how things are going in any of those areas. If our core identity is our career then if that goes of the rails we will be shattered. If our sense of who we are is embedded in what others think of us then we will be chasing after people’s affirmation our whole lives. If, as Tim Keller points out, our identity is found in our children then when something goes wrong with them there will be no “me” left. Or, if our young people feel like their worthiness, their value, is based on the grades they receive or how they do on the ball field or the universities they get into then the pressure they will be under will be interminable.
And in many ways it is that last one that I have been reflecting on a lot this week. When it comes to our young people from where are they getting their identity? Another way to put that, of course, is what makes them feel valued, what do they think their friends, their parents, and the community values in them? As many of you know we have a group of ZPCers who have been asking questions about what a community center would look like in a town like Zionsville or Carmel. In what ways might we have a bigger presence in our communities? It’s been an interesting and somewhat difficult question because it’s easy for us to see the needs in poorer communities, but we also believed that there were probably things going on in our communities that we may not be paying attention to. Tall fences, big houses, nice vacations and beautiful, smiling family pictures do a tremendous job of hiding pain and brokenness.
And in talking to town officials and school leaders over the last few months one of the major threads we have discovered is that a lot of our young people are struggling; with drugs, with alcohol, with depression. That in many ways they are exhausted. And though these issues are multivalent and complex and I don’t want to seem overly simplistic, the reality (it seems to me) is that underlying much of this is the pressure they are under to perform, to fit in, to succeed so that they will feel valued and worthy. That who they are is defined by what they have done or not done, what they have succeeded at or not succeeded at, how they have done better or worse than others. Another way to put it is that they are being weighed down by a yoke that can never be satisfied and will always ask for more of them.
And what we are hearing is that oftentimes parents (and it seems to me our community) wrestles with facing what these children are going through head on and seeing the truth of what is in front of them. And my guess is that they (that we) aren’t hiding because we don’t love our young people but is because, quite frankly, we wrestle with our identity, and our values, ourselves. Our own identity is so wrapped up in whether we are succeeding as well as whether they are succeeding. Our value comes from how we are stacking up against others and how they are stacking up against others. It is a thirst which can never be quenched, a hunger which can never be filled, a yoke that never be carried well. And in the midst of that Jesus says, “Come to me, you who are weary and heavy burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your soul.”
What our kids, our community, you and me need is, well, a Wendy’s in the midst of a foreign land. In a culture that says your worth and your identity is to be found in how well you or your children are doing, we need a place where people can come and feel at home and be reminded that their core identity is found only in being a loved child of God. The image in my mind is a people who walk into the doors of our building and as they walk through the gathering space their yoke that has been building upon them all week begins to slowly fall off. The yoke that says their value comes from the house they live in or how they did on that last test or whether they are married or if their child stacks up or whether his sermon last week was any good. To come in and worship and be in a community that reminds us again and again to let go of that yoke and to take on the yoke of Jesus which says you are a loved child of God. Megan did a cross stich a little while back that hangs on one of our walls. It comes from The Jesus Storybook Bible’s take on the creation of man and woman. It simply says, “And they were lovely because [God] loved them.” You are lovely because God loves you.
Before I close let me say that I know there are some who are wondering, “Do you mean that working hard is unimportant and shouldn’t be valued” and maybe even some students who are saying, “You mean I don’t have to study for my test this week?!” That isn’t what I’m saying. Megan and I watched Chariots of Fire a couple of weeks ago and there is a fascinating distinction between the two star Olympians runners. For one it is clear that running is his identity. When he speaks of running the 100 meters he says, “I have 10 seconds to justify my existence.” But then Eric Liddel, who grew up steeped in a community of faith that it seems kept reminding him that his identity is found in being a beloved child of God said this when it came to his running. “I believe God made me for a purpose. But he also made me fast. And when I run I feel [God’s] pleasure.” There is nothing wrong with doing well at your job or having hopes for your children or getting into a good university. The question is are you building that on top of the firm understanding that you are a loved child of God or are you trying to replace that reality. Are you doing these things to prove your worth or value or are you doing so in order to join in with the beauty of what God is doing in this world?
May we be a community, a home, that stands out in our culture because we are not afraid to ask the quirky question: Who are you? And may we, by the way in which we live, be walking answers to that most important of questions. I am a loved child of God and we are lovely because God loves us. And if we can be that community then I have no question that we will be the type of place that people (young and old) will be willing to walk to, even for two hours, to be reminded of who they are and of the easy yoke which Jesus offers. May it be so. Amen.