Identity, 02 21, 2010

Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Luke 4:1-13
JASPER THOMAS RYAN! How is it that parents choose a name for a child? Ancestors? Close friends and loved ones? Great Leaders of the common era? How many children were named Jack in memory of Kennedy, how many named Martin in honor and love of Martin Luther King, who himself was named after his father, who was named for the great Reformer. My Great Grandfather was named Ovid Ware, WARE, who often went by the Nickname Warrie. His son, had the same name, but the middle initial A. so he claimed the identity A.WARE. His son was Bert Ware, who of course went by BEWARE! In gifting to a child: a name, we give identity.
In their own selection of friends, and of a career, even breed of dog, we choose for ourselves: Identity. I have been intrigued and amazed watching the Olympics, not only for the prowess and athleticism of these individuals, but for the number who have been born in one place and have chosen to immigrate, to abdicate that identity to become citizens, to have identity as Being of another Nation. Our passages this day, at the beginning of Lent, at the beginning of Karen's second year with us, are passages of claiming an Identity. IDENTITY is involved in a Name and Title, but more than just a NAME.

Immediately upon being Baptized, Jesus is filled with the Holy Spirit and goes into the wilderness, to fast and to pray, and to seek God's guidance for the living of life. Here, he was tested, tempted by the Devil, with all he could do, how he could be known, tempted by POWER.
One of the earliest controversies within Christianity was over “Docetism”. The Docetists believed Jesus was not actually human, because humans are sinners. They believed Jesus was God masquerading as a human being, was only a spirit, that was not actually human, did not actually live and therefore did not actually die. One interpretation of The Temptations is that these are proof of Jesus being human, proof because Jesus was Tempted. Human life would be so much simpler, would be perfection without sin, if only we did not have a FREE WILL, Temptation to choose something other than God. The Docetists believed that as God, Christ could choose no other... but that would have been a denial of freedom and temptation, both as God and as a Man. NO, the point of Luke affirming that the Temptations did take place, are that Jesus was tempted, these are very real opportunities.

Both humanity and God could choose, would want to choose to eradicate hunger and poverty, to have all power and riches and access to do whatever you chose, to be able to perform miracles that would cause people to believe in Him. But Jesus, as God and as Human, though tempted, chose instead to trust and to live life. This is what has consistently been described as the identity of a person of faith. The SHEMA, the Affirmation as basic to the Hebrew faith as the Lord's Prayer is to Christianity, declares: “The Lord our God is ONE, and God only shall we serve, with all our heart, mind, soul and strength.” IDENTITY is CHOSEN by FREE WILL in the midst of real Temptations.

A thousands years before Jesus, before the Roman Empire, before Alexander the Great and Greek Empire, before the Deportation to Babylon, before King Solomon, before King David, before the Judges, before they had entered in with Joshua and taken possession of the Land, while still in the Wilderness, Moses gave to the people a command. When you come into the land, and have taken possession of it, and live in it, you shall stop from all you do, stop in Sabbath, and take of the first-fruits, a tythe, as an offering of thanksgiving. You shall place that offering into a basket; Remembering the basket that carries the Tablets of the Covenant; Remembering the basket of reeds lined with pitch and bitumen that Moses' parents had placed him in to keep him safe in the River of Life, when Pharaoh had commanded all parents to put their children into the River Nile; Remembering the Ark of Gopherwood, bitumen and pitch, that Noah built for God to begin anew after the flood. IDENTITY is REMEMBERING all that has gone before us.

You are commanded by Moses to bring that basket of first fruits to the Temple of the Lord, and to make an Offering. From earliest memory, we have been a people who WORSHIP, it may be every day, it may be each week, or each year, or every three years, but routinely we will stop from our labor to give thanks to God. There is in Worship a Liturgy, an ORDER that allows us to make sense of life. A piece of our IDENITY is in Worshipping God.

As we do, we are to claim the vulnerability of our ancestors. The ones we are descended from, who have entrusted our identities to us, these were not Kings and Queens and Presidents. These were not great heroes, though they may have been our Patriarchs, they are remembered in our IDENTITY as having been homeless nomads, wandering Arameans.

What is amazing about this passage from Deuteronomy, the Book where Moses, gives the people the 10 Commandments, there is NO mention here of that identity. Instead of being THE PEOPLE OF THE LAW or the PEOPLE OF THE LAND OF ISRAEL, our identity as a Nation began when we were wandering nomads, individuals without a home, whom God made Numerous and God made Strong. A people whom God listened to and cared about. Our Identity is not only in Circumstances that have happened along the way, but in our basic DNA from our earliest beginnings.

There is a remarkable difference here, in claiming an Identity as our Nation has won 23 medals in this year's Olympics, and an identity of vulnerability for having been nomads and slaves. By claiming vulnerability we are called upon to be empathetic and compassionate to those in need. I remember my mother regularly describing to us what it was to grow up in the Great Depression, they had no food left, nothing, when a cousin stopped by with grocery bag of potatoes. They had never been to see a doctor or dentist, and a neighbor was in Dental school, who came home and went through all the neighbor kids examining their teeth and pulling the rotten ones on their kitchen table.

This week, I spent some time on the Holiday and evenings creating a partnership agreement for the Clinic in Sudan, so as to be able to test and treat for AIDs. At this point, we will be the only place in S.Sudan able to test and treat for AIDs. When someone commented about my working on this, I remembered working with Haitian refugees who were Migrant Farm Workers, and in 1980 they had these spots, these lesions that no one could explain and no doctor wanted to touch.
Three years later, I was a chaplain at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in Harlem, where there were patients who had what at that time was described as GRID, a disease without a name, identified because it fit a number of different symptoms on a grid. As a Chaplain, we were ordered to have no physical contact, to wear gloves and masks and gowns and booties, so as to be able to enter their room and sit, unable to hold their hand.
And several years later, my wife led a conference for the Junior League, of Community Awareness on AIDs for Women and Children. We had Elisabeth Kubler-Ross speak about her work with children with AIDs. And she asked every person to imagine adopting a child who has AIDs, having to be careful about soiled diapers, having to go to the doctor weekly for tests, having to give this child so many medications every day. Then she asked the question, NOW, having chosen to adopt a child who is ill, whom you know you may have to bury, how will you feel when they create tests and drugs to control and cure this disease?

In this Sacrament, we claim and affirm a sacred IDENTITY, of being vulnerable, of having done harm to ourselves, to one another, to God. We are the Body of Christ, and we are a BROKEN PEOPLE. We claim the cup, as an IDENTITY of HOPE, of FORGIVENESS, an identity of GRACE fro God.