Finding the Identity of Identities

23 Pentecost, A p26, November 5, 2023
Micah 3:5-12           Ps. 43
1 Thessalonians 2:9-13,17-20 Matt. 23:1-12

Lectionary Link

 
Because we are people in relationship and location and social settings we come to have many personal identities in our lives.  The list of identities are many and varied: father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter, uncle, cousin, grandfather, grandmother, aunt, all kinship identities.  But we also have vocational identities: student, teacher, athlete, business man or woman, police officer, priest, and so on.  We receive important identity from what we do.  We receive identity from where we live: other side of the tracks, ghetto, rich neighborhood, gated community, and blue collar neighborhood.  We receive identity from associations and institutions: alumni, Mason, parish, diocese, denomination, and faith community.

Identities can be a positive or negative thing.  They can be something that we are proud of or ashamed of.  They can be how we regard the very worth of our lives.  They can be seen as how people regard our worth.

Our social lives might be regarded as trying to clamor for the best and highest identities.  We want to be part of the "in-crowd."  I am important because I am father, son, in such a such a family.  I am a businessman and millionaire.  I live in a very expensive house.  I went to the best schools.

But what if we are socially stuck with some not so fortunate identities?  Someone poor, someone uneducated, someone who has cancer, someone unemployed?

Identities which are socially forged can become the very basis of personal esteem and personal self worth, and the way in which others in society regard us.

The words of Jesus from our appointed Gospel address the identity issue for the members of the early Jesus Movement.  Many of those who followed Jesus had less than positive identities within their social settings.  Jesus appealed to those who were not given high regard in society.

The Jesus Movement was a movement to get people restored to their primary identity.  And what was that?  Created in the image of God, and therefore a child of God, first and foremost.  So this is where each person begins their identity.  Every other identity is simply how one is called to manifest the primary identity of life, namely being a child of God.  How am I a child of God as a father, mother, teacher, lawyer, business person, student, son, or daughter?

The words of Jesus were not meant to deny or get rid of the other identities in our lives; they were to remind us that whatever we do, whomever we are, we are first and foremost children of God, and therefore in our being and doing we are strive to perform our identities in godly ways?  And how do we do this?  By loving God, our neighbor as our self.

The Gospel message for us today is to found our identity upon being children of God and then in our various callings in life, strive to be godly in our behaviors, and seek our esteem in being children of God and treating others with that same esteem.  Amen.