"who Am I?"

“Who Am I?”

Mark 1:4-13

(This sermon gets its inspiration from Henry Nouwen’s “Life of the Beloved” 1992)

Life is short, isn’t it?

I was born in 1968 and say I live until 2054—that’s not so 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 the question most of us spend our lives trying to answer is: “Who Am I?”

And one answer we live with is: “I am what I do.”

When I have a little success in life I might feel good about myself, but when I fail I might start feeling a little low.

As I get older, I might say “I can’t do a whole lot anymore, but look what I have done in the past.”

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

(pause)

Another answer I may have as it relates to who I am is “I am what other people say about me.”

And what other people say about me can be very powerful.

Sometimes it can be the most important thing.

If people say good things 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.

I think most of us can relate to this, I might get a hundred compliments about something, but then, say, one person doesn’t like what I’m doing or the way I’m doing it—they are unsettled about me in some way, then that’s the only thing that I remember—that’s the only thing I focus on and it ruins just about everything.

When someone speaks badly about us—those words cut deep and wound us.

And if someone says something mean or negative or hurtful to us in the morning it can ruin our whole day.

(pause)

Another thing we might say to try and figure out who we are is “I am what I have.”

I have a good background.

I have good parents.

I have a good education.

I have good health.

I have a lot of things.

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 or I lose my house I can fall into darkness.

I can slip into despair.

As humans, a lot of our energy goes 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 so, we obsess over staying above a certain line…we obsess over surviving.

And then, we die.

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

We don’t have anything anymore.

The ups and downs end in death and just surviving is not surviving at all.

And what little life we have ends up as nothing in the end.

(pause)

But this whole thing is wrong!!!

That is NOT who you are and that is NOT who I am!

But these things are what the devil said to Jesus when Jesus went into the wilderness after He was baptized.

The devil said, “Turn these stones into bread and prove you can do something.”

“Jump from the Temple and let the angels catch you so that people will speak well about you.”

“Kneel in front of me and then I will give you all kinds of things.”

“And then your life will be worthwhile because you will have done something, people will speak well about you and you will have something.”

“And everyone is going to love you.”

And Jesus says, “That is a LIE!!!”

And that lie is at the root of what causes us to enter into relationships of violence and destruction.

It’s the root of war, misery, and selfishness.

In our Gospel Lesson for this morning, we are told that a time came for Jesus to come from Nazareth in Galilee to be baptized by John in the Jordan.

And “just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven:

‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”