Grace to you and
peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen
Who are we?
Who are we
related to?
And what shall we
do?
----Sexist stereo type alert----
One of my
observations over the years is that if you ask a room full of women to tell you
who they are, they will most likely begin by talking about the relationships in
their life.
On the other hand
if you ask the same question of a room full of men they will tell you what they
do.
There is not a
right or wrong here.
Be we men, or be
we women, we are both related to many people in our lives and called to do many
different things, and together, our relationships and our vocations define our
lives.
But what is more
important? What comes first and lasts
longest?
It is the
relationships, the many different relationships, that are primary and which
endure.
Our vocations
will inevitably change over the course of our lives.
But our
relationships have much more of an enduring character to them.
Your mom and dad,
are forever, your mom and dad.
Your siblings
remain your siblings.
When we enter
into marriage it is with the intent that it be life long, and even if we fail
at that, that relationship shapes who we are throughout our life.
Children are our
children forever.
Even when death
separates us, these relationships of our lives continue to define who we are and
whose we are.
Our vocations are
much more fleeting.
Our earliest
vocation is to be a learner, a pupil of life.
And then as our
life unfolds we are called to various vocations.
Some of our
vocations are defined by our relationships:
for example, being a parent means that we do certain things. A mother, a father, has to do the work of ‘mothering’
and ‘fathering’.
Likewise,
husbands and wives are called to do the work of marriage.
Many of our
vocations shape our relationships beyond our immediate family.
I am a pastor.
And a woodworker.
Early in my life,
I had a wide variety of jobs that gave me the experience I would rely on
throughout the remainder of my life.
I mowed lawns,
delivered papers, worked in a grocery store and lumber yard. I drove a truck. I’ve been a custodian. I’ve built a house.
Even as a pastor
I’ve been called to do a wide variety of things, from baptizing little children
to being with the elderly as they died.
Who am I?
Who am I related
to?
And what shall I
do?
These are the
questions each of us answer in one way or another throughout our lives.
They are all
interrelated.
You can’t answer
one, without reflecting on the others.
From the
perspective of faith, baptism answers all those questions.
“This
is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
These words
spoken at Jesus’ baptism shine light on all three of life’s questions.
Who is Jesus? Who is he related to? And what about his vocation?
Jesus: A child of God, God’s own son. Beloved of God, and called to be Savior of
the world. That is the meaning of his
name: He saves.
Isaiah speaks
about the servant of God in today’s first reading:
1Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my
chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring
forth justice to the nations.
I have given you as a covenant to the
people, a light to the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out
the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.
In thinking about
Jesus, and this question of identity, this is the bottom line:
Jesus cannot be
Jesus apart from his relationship to the Father and to us, or apart from his
vocation to serve the Father and save us.
Jesus cannot be
Jesus apart from his relationship to the Father and to us, or apart from his
vocation to serve the Father and save us.
Jesus baptism
speaks to his identity, his relationships, and his vocation.
And likewise,
when we are baptized it shapes our identity, our relationships, and our
vocations.
The three are
intimately intertwined.
In Baptism we are
identified as Children of God.
And we are
brought into a relationship with God as our Father and our brothers and sisters
throughout the world.
And finally we
are called to be servants of God and each other.
This is expressed
in our Affirmation of Baptism service:
You have made public profession of your
faith. Do you intend to continue in the covenant God made with you in holy
baptism:
to live among God’s faithful people,
to hear the word of God and share in the
Lord’s supper,
to proclaim the good news of God in Christ
through word and deed,
to serve all people, following the example
of Jesus,
and to strive for justice and peace in all
the earth?
Who are we?
Each of us is a
child of God, created in his image and called to be his own through our
baptisms.
Who are we
related to?
Here we have both
an extended family and an immediate family.
In breadth, as
creatures of God, we are one with all creation and all people. Our relationship with the world in which we
live and the people with whom we live is established in creation.
But also, as
Christians we have a more immediate and intimate relationship with those
brothers and sisters who share the same faith in God, and in Jesus Christ.
And what are we
called to do?
What is our
vocation?
It is to love
God, and each other.
We do that by
continuing in the covenant God made with us in Holy Baptism.
Who are we?
Who are we
related to?
And what shall we
do?
These three
questions and their answers are intimately intertwined.
But inevitably we
as humans have taken these intimately connected issues and made them into
conditional laws.
If you don’t do
the right things. . .
If you don’t hang
out with the right people. . .
Then, you must
not, cannot be a child of God.
When we do that
we make everything into a status that is dependent on our efforts and not the
Grace of God.
But our identity
as Children of God and heirs of the promise is not the result of our actions,
but rather God’s saving grace.
What Martin
Luther talks about is that those other things, who we relate to and how we act
flow from the first, our identity as children of God.
In the Augsburg
Confession this is called the New Obedience of Faith.
Put simply, the
more that we live in the promise that we are loved by God, claimed as his
children, and called according to his will—
Then we will
naturally begin to love as we have been loved, care for our brothers and
sisters, and act according to the will of God’s Spirit within us.
Well, what about
when we fail?
Not everyone has
faith in God.
Not everyone
cares for their neighbor as a brother or sister.
Not everyone does
the will of the Spirit.
In fact none of
us does so to perfection.
We all fail.
And that, my
brothers and sisters, is simply a sign that God is not done with us yet. He’s still working on us.
Amen
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