A sermon preached at St. Mary’s by Graham Low on 11th August 2024
When I was a full-time parish priest Janet would sometimes come home and say that she had met someone for the first time and they had said “Oh, are you the curate’s wife, or later, are you the vicar’s wife?”. Not surprisingly this was both a blessing and curse, because she was defined by my role, my identity, which was inevitably much more public than hers. On the other hand, I am now sometimes asked: “are you the organist’s husband?”. Being defined by our connection to other people can often be belittling. We can feel this not only when it means we are in a sense dismissed, but also if it seems that this is the reason we are honored. Our identity is made up of a complex of our genes, of the environment in which we have grown up – parents, family, education, etc. But our identity is also fundamentally shaped by the people we know and connect with now, and why we do so.
Our gospel passage this morning shows that Jesus was being discounted because of his family ties. Although we are told that he honoured Mary and Joseph, Jesus’ identity, though shaped by them, was not determined by them. It was his identity as the son of God that made his position unique. As John wrote, he is “the one who is from God; he has seen the Father.”
Today’s gospel speaks about why some Jews challenged Jesus’ identity. It reveals something of the identity of many Jews at that time. They judged people on human grounds and could not accept that a carpenter’s son could have come from God. They often argued with one another, rather than referring arguments to God. And at times it seemed that they did not listen to God. Furthermore, the Jews often resisted the drawing of God. The word drawing implies a degree of resistance. God may draw us, but we can and very often do resist that draw.
Our reading from the First Book of The Kings is a prompt to look at the identity of God as Elijah sees it. Elijah has been having a very hard time alongside a God whose identity seems relentlessly tough and uncompromising, working against the powers of darkness. Now Elijah has had enough and asks to die. But in the midst of his exhaustion, he finds another identity of God, tender and mother-like, sustaining him with food and water. When God finally speaks to Elijah, just after this passage, it not as a military commander, but as “a sound of sheer silence”. This is about the dialogue between a soul and its maker, where understanding is felt as much as it articulated. It is a new and quite different identity.
The Letter to the people of Ephesus is radical. The community is described as a foretaste of the age to come, when everything will be brought together in Christ. It will be a place where a new life will be shaped, a new way of life that anticipates the coming of God. It will be without dishonesty, or anger or greed. It will be a way to a new kind of life, a new identity. This new community will not simply be a place with a list of what we cannot do: thus, instead of bottling up anger people are to learn how to deal with it quickly rather letting it fester and eat away at their emotional and spiritual wellbeing. Again, it is a community where hurtful words are not only avoided but an effort is made to speak positively about other people. In other words the people of Ephesus are being asked to be positive in action and not to be negatively abstaining.
Returning to our identities and what shapes them, there may be times when we need to change them, by replacing some part of our life with something new. Changing our identity can be threatening as well as liberating. But alongside such a change today’s gospel reminds us of the offer of a new identity in Christ as joint heirs with him of his kingdom, of his identity, and as recipients of the promise of eternal life. This offer of identity with Christ, of receiving his body and blood, is a gift from God. It is an identity that frees us to become more like the people God desires us to be, rather than what other people expect us to be.
Our dear sister Brigit, whose death profoundly saddens us today, found her identity in the bread of life, in the eucharist, which shaped and sustained her regularly until immediately before her death. We too find our identity every time we come to the Eucharist. Here we place our lives before God, asking for and receiving his forgiveness, hearing how God has shaped his people, placing our concerns prayerfully in God’s hands, recalling thankfully the last days of Jesus’ life, and then receiving his body and his blood. Each time we do this we are changed and our identity is renewed. And then we are asked to go into the world to share with others what we have been given. We do this as people with the identity of Christ, people who are shaped by Christ, so that we can reveal something of Christ to those who have not yet been found by God. May we have the grace to accept our new identity, now and always. Amen.