Isaiah 40:1-8, 28-31 “Who am I?”
As I tried to formulate this message a few things distracted me this week. I was distracted in my preparation by a funeral I conducted yesterday, which for me usually causes me to slow things down a bit and reflect on my life. I was distracted by a visit I made to a person who is struggling with cancer. Our discussions concerning life and death helped me focus somewhat on what I wanted to say but were more of a distraction than a help. And I was distracted by the news that the 21-year-old son of a good friend was killed in a motorcycle crash. It seems like death and bad news followed me around this week. And as I usually do when I am distracted and have trouble focusing I grabbed a CD from the rack by my desk and allowed the music to help clear my mind so I could begin to formulate what to say to you this morning. I do not know what it is about music, especially Christian music, but it helps push the distractions from my mind aside and allows me to focus more clearly on what I think God is asking me to say. I was amazed that one song on the CD I chose spoke directly to what I was trying to assemble in my mind. The song’s title is who am I? And as I listened to it and replayed it a few times, I began to reflect on the question at a much deeper level that I have before. Who am I?
And as I reflected on the question who am I I began to realize that life is a fleeting thing. Things we look forward seem to arrive ever so slowly and then with the blink of an eye they are gone. And when they are gone they become part of our history and the only way to revisit them is through our memories. When we are in the middle of a time of celebration sometimes we wish it could continue forever but all too soon it is gone. As I look back on my life I see things that I wish I could relive, I see things I wish I could change, and I see things that I enjoyed for what they were and for the time they lasted. My past and my present are all a part of the answer to the question who am I.
Life is fleeting but there are a few things in our lives that are guaranteed. One thing that is guaranteed is that once we are born we must live with our decisions. We are guaranteed that once we make a decision it can never be erased. What is done is done. We can try to undo things but the original decision, whether it is a good or bad decision remains. It is the same thing with words. Once we say something it remains just that, spoken words. They can never be unspoken or pulled back into our mouths as if never spoken in the first place. Apologies can be quickly made but the words remain out there. Another guarantee that we all are given is that at some time in our lives we will be a sinner. No one is exempt from that fact. We all sin on occasion. The final guarantee in life is that we will all die. Our lives have a finite end. But beyond the guarantees of life, the one guarantee many overlook is that God is always with you no matter how you deal with your other guarantees.
As I looked at death in a few ways this week I drew me to the question who am I. We all need to ask ourselves the question, who am I? We also need to ask ourselves if God truly does care for us. And we need to look at the fragileness of life.
Fragileness of life is another one of the guarantees I did not speak of earlier. A helpless infant enters this world and soon that infant begins school, enters college, and eventually is out in the world living his or her own life. And even as an infant grows into a strong adult, he or she is still surrounded by the fragile things in life. Fragileness of involves the times when we are not as strong as we though we were. When our emotions overpower our sense of strength we need to know who we are to help us survive. When illness strikes us we need to know who we are in order to help find our way out of the situation that is scaring us. No matter who we are or where we find ourselves, we need to continually ask ourselves, who am I.
Within our fragile lives our roles change from time to time. Our roles revolve around the things we do in life or around the things we enjoy in life. We change from loving parent to dedicated employee. We change from dedicated employee to a person of leisure when the workweek ends or when we begin retirement. We change from loving parent, dedicated employee, or person of leisure to a faithful Christian when we focus on God and our role within the church. But we remain the same person on the inside. That is why the question who am I becomes difficult to answer. Because as our roles change so does the answer to the question. Different points in time provide different answers to this or any question. Let me try to explain. In our role as parent our love for our children causes us to act in certain ways towards them and even towards other children. I ask you parents out there when you see a child misbehaving did you ever see that child being treated differently by his or her parents than you would have treated your child? Maybe a slap on the behind or harsh words spoken? Did you ask yourself what the parents were thinking? Did your heart go out to that child as you saw their reaction? Your compassion rises up out of your role as parent for a child you may not even know. Or your role as Christian changes when you decide to serve on a committee within the church, or become involved in mission work, or clean up after a dinner or rummage sale. Your passive role as a Christian becomes one of action because you are filling a need you feel called to fill. So you see the answer to the question who am I will be different than when it is asked in a situations.
As my roles changed this week I was filled with many emotions, which is why I said I was distracted so much. In my role as a pastor visiting with those who are homebound or in the hospital or nursing home I cannot help but wonder how those I am visiting would answer the question who am I. When a person laments to me that they miss the visits of friends, or misses their phone calls I cannot help sharing in their feeling or loneliness. They long for things to be as they were before their affliction but they know they cannot change what has happened. They are the same person living in a new role, a role they wish they could throw off and get rid of, but they cannot.
As my role changed from pastor to caring friend when I visited the family of the young man killed in the motorcycle crash I immediately saw how quickly life could change right before our eyes. Things beyond our control can alter our lives and the lives of those around us in the blink of an eye. My role as loving parent was quickly blended with my role as caring friend as I shared in this family’s grief at the loss of their child.
And when my role changed back to pastor visiting with the family whose father had died, I saw the love of children for a parent who had made their lives better over his lifetime. Roles of parent and child were now modified as they prepared to say their final goodbyes.
The roles I spoke of today are important but they are only a few of the roles we inhabit in our lives. We all share some roles and some roles are personal to us. Our roles are intertwined with the roles of those around us. That is what makes God’s beautiful world what it is. But all of our roles lead us to a better understanding of who we are and help us answer the question who am I.
You see when we ask ourselves who am I we are looking inside our very souls to see what is there. And if we take the time to really look, not superficially but deeply, we may be surprised by what we see. We may see things we like and things we do not like. The message we need to take from the reading from Isaiah where he writes that we are like grass that withers or flowers that fade is that we have a finite time on this earth. Our lives have a beginning and an end. We need to make the best use of our roles while we are here.
We need to be the caring friend for the afflicted, we need to be the compassionate friend for those who have lost loved ones, we need to stand by the side of the grieving in their time of loneliness and sorrow. We cannot take our roles for granted just as we cannot take God’s love for us for granted.
God knows each of us intimately. God does not leave us floundering or lost. I believe God helps us answer our question when we ask ourselves who am I. I firmly believe that God tells us in our very souls who we are. In a sense God names us. And when we can honestly answer the question who am I and can include God in our answer, God calms the storms within us and God fills the loneliness in our hearts. And when we are at peace with ourselves and with God we can then truthfully say who we are, a faithful child of God. Amen.
