The Grounding Of Our Identity

January 7, 2024

Rev. Mary Erickson

Hope Lutheran Church

Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11

The Grounding of Our Identity

Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.

Who are you? How do you understand yourself to be? In some ways, our identity never changes. A person who is 105 years old still feels like the same person as she was when she was 5. At our core, we remain the same.

But in other ways, we mature and grow in wisdom. Interviewers will ask: if you could go back in time and talk to your teenage self, what advice would you give yourself? People say things like:

• Be kinder to yourself.

• Don’t be afraid to be yourself.

• Don’t let others define your value.

All good advice at any age.

Every day, we’re growing into a deeper understanding of who we are. But who we are, how we make sense of our own identity, depends upon a frame of reference. It’s like that big map at the mall. You see the layout of the entire mall space, and then there’s a big X: You are here.

In order to understand ourselves, we need to know who we are in relation to the world. Maybe that’s why everyone got so upset at Galileo when he suggested that the world circles the sun and not the other way around. “What do you mean, we’re not the center of the universe!” It changed how we viewed ourselves as humanity and earthlings.

And now that we know just how very huge the entire universe is, we feel even smaller than the folks in Galileo’s day.

And yet, and yet, here we are, you and I! We have this relationship with one another. And we also have a relationship with the Divine One. And despite the incredibly huge dimensions of the ever-expanding universe, we hear the message that when a single hair falls from our head, the Divine Presence knows of this minuscule occurrence. Even this trivial loss is known and felt by God.

I know you, and you know me. And both of us are known by the everlasting, divine force who has spoken and breathed us into being.

The German philosopher Martin Buber wrote a seminal book entitled “I and Thou.” Buber said that there are two ways that we encounter one another. One is that we engage in a genuine, mutual relationship, an “I – Thou.” We experience each other with mutual respect and regard.

But the alternative is an “I – It” relationship. Here we don’t see the other as a whole, distinct being. We objectify them. We reduce them into a mere thing, a cog in the universe. And it’s so much simpler to pigeon-hole others. Then we know exactly where they fit and how to make sense of them. We see them as no more and no less than that one label we’ve attached to them.

And maybe we feel on the receiving end of that reduction into an it. How has the world diminished you into a thing, a category? Maybe that’s partially why the movie Barbie has been such a hit. We can resonate with her plastic universe, the “discontinued models” and how gender roles diminish who each person is.

We get this movie because so much of the world has reduced us, too. Our full essence has been reduced into some objectified and undervalued thing. All too often, our identity is lowered into a defining “it.” And if you hear it often enough, you begin to believe it.

If there is one clear message we receive from the entirety of the scriptures, it’s that you are not an it! You are not some reduced form of whatever category the world has labeled you as! God sees you as your full you, all of you, your full Thou.

In the very first chapter of the Bible, this is why God deems everything God created as good. And you are part of that wonderful creation.

This is why St. Paul declared, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.” The categories and distinctions of the world do not define us in the warmth of Christ’s welcoming love.

And Jesus’ ministry epitomizes our real value. Jesus treated everyone he encountered as their full “Thou”

• He befriended and healted Mary Magdalene, who was inhabited by multiple demons.

• The invisible, poor widow who put her two pennies into the temple treasury was not invisible to Jesus.

• He called to the scorned Zacchaeus and declared him as a son of Abraham.

• And even Judas, who would betray him, was invited into Jesus’ circle of discipleship!