"well Pleased"

Matthew 3:13-17

“Well Pleased”

In a story in the Upper Room Devotional a number of years ago a woman from Ohio named Lois Wilson wrote: “On the first day of each community college art class I taught, I would ask the students to write a brief answer to the question: “Who are you?”

Later, I was eager to read their responses.”

One of the answers I’ve never forgotten was ‘I am a child of God.’”

Lois continued, “This young woman’s response left me in awe that she was so grounded in her faith.

It also led me to question myself: ‘Would I have replied this way?’”

How about you?

Would you reply this way?

Life is so very short, is it not?

I was born in 1968 and say I live until 2056—that’s not bad, right?

But that’s it.

Now, you may be thinking, “I came along a little bit later than you, and so I have a few more years,” or “I came along a bit earlier so I probably have fewer years ahead of me than you.”

But it doesn’t make a huge difference in the whole scheme of things.

We all have a limited amount of time and our lives go by very, very fast.

It’s like a flash in the pan.

And throughout our lives, throughout these short years the question that most of us spend our lives trying to answer, according to Henry Nouewen, whether we know it or not, is: “Who am I?”

You might be sitting here thinking, “That’s not true for me.”

And maybe it’s not, but I bet many of us who do this aren’t even aware of it.

One answer we might give to the question “Who am I?” is “I am what I do.”

I think a lot of us answer this question this way, especially in our hyper-competitive world.

For instance, when I have a little success in life that might cause me to feel good about myself, but when I fail I might start feeling low.

Then, as I get older, I might say to myself, “I can’t do a whole lot anymore, but look at what I did in the past.”

“Look what I built or look at my children…look, look, look at what I did.”

(pause)

Another way we might answer the question of “Who am I” is “I am what other people say about me.”

A lot of us do this when we are kids and it can get us into all sorts of trouble, but we do it as adults as well, don’t we?...

…and what other people say about us can be VERY powerful.

Sometimes it can be the most important thing.

For instance, if people have good things to say about me, I can walk around feeling good, feeling free.

But when someone starts talking behind my back, or when somebody starts saying negative things about me, I might start feeling sad, depressed, less than.

I think most of us can relate to this on some level.

Think about it, have you ever gotten like a hundred compliments about something, but then, say, one person doesn’t like what you are doing or how you are doing it—they are upset with you for some reason and that’s the only thing you can remember—it’s the only thing you can focus on and it ruins just about everything.

This has happened to me throughout my life.

If someone says something mean or negative or hurtful to me in the morning, it can ruin my entire day.

Or, if it’s on a Thursday or Friday it can ruin my entire weekend.

(Pause)

Another answer we might give in order to try and figure out who we are is: “I am what I have.”

We might say, “I have a good background, or good parents, or a good education, or good health or I have a lot of material possessions.”

But the problem with this is that as soon as I lose any of it—say a family member dies or my health starts to go down or I lose my money I can fall into darkness.

I can slip into despair.

As human beings, a lot of our energy can go into these claims: “I am what I do,” “I am what other people say about me,” and “I am what I have.”

And this puts our lives, our happiness, and our identities at the mercy of our highs and lows.

And then, we might obsess over staying above a certain line, we may obsess over surviving.

And then we die.

And when we are dead, after a while, no one talks about us, not enough to matter to us, anyway.

We don’t have material things anymore and the ups and downs of surviving is not surviving at all.