Both/And Identity

A sermon on John 14:8-27, Romans 8:14-17, and Acts 2:1-21

[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by TJ Arnold on Unsplash]

In just a few hours, members of our congregation with gather with neighbors from the larger community to celebrate the first every “Pride Party” in our town.

A handful of days ago I shared my thoughts on the meaning of “pride” in this context, specifically that what is meant is not the ego-centric self-aggrandizement warned against in scripture, but something much closer to the biblical idea of shalom:

the peace and wholeness that comes from being fully present to and embracing of the goodness and beauty intended by our Creator.

Or, at least, that’s my churchy way of talking about it.

In queer spaces, the same idea is usually captured by language of identity: “loving and owning who we really are.”

I sort of doubt that the lectionary-selection committee intentionally made this connection between Pride month and Pentecost, but nevertheless I was struck this week by the ways that the theme of “identity” provides a throughline for today’s readings.

From various angles, each of the scriptures we heard today call us to reflect on the question of who we are and also on the consequences of that identity for how we show up in the world… with wholeness… with assurance of our belovedness… with shalom.

In the letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul assures the church that we “did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but… a spirit of adoption.”

This is a statement of a conferred identity, an identity we receive from God that transforms our lives through the granting of a deeply needed freedom.

Whereas, Paul argues, our reality was once a state of fear, a state that we would be vulnerable to falling back into without the assurance that we do, in fact, belong to God…

Our identity now is that of beloved children… of those who address God by the affectionate, familial name of “Abba.”

It is an identity that protects us against the mindset of fear… although not against all reasons for fear.

There is that bit about suffering with Christ!

But that’s what is so powerful about our identity as children of God: identity cannot be changed by suffering or circumstances.

When God claims us as children, we forever have freedom from the fear that could otherwise consume and constrain us because we know we belong to God, and no one can snatch us out of God’s hands.

The gospel reading also develops the theme of identity but here the assurance starts with who Jesus is:

When Phillip asks Jesus to show the disciples the Father, Jesus chides him to believe what he has seen – to recognize the unity of word, and works, and being the Jesus has demonstrated with God’s own self.

There is no distinction, no essential separation. They are one.

And, of course, that tells us about Jesus’s identity, but Jesus quickly moves on to what it tells us about ours…

Because we get pulled into that same unity of works by trusting Jesus.

That’s what it means to “believe in him;” it means trust.

In the same way that believing a chair will support our weight lets us trust it enough to sit down…

Believing in the truth of who Jesus is lets us trust him enough to lean all of the weight of our lives into him… and with him into the wholeness of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The Spirit that Jesus promises to abide with us… to be in us…

And to teach us, and guide us, and to transform our experience of peace into something that cannot be shaken.

Into something that protects us from fear, so that we can keep his commandment to center our lives in love.

And, of course, that brings us to the reading from Acts, describing the very first Pentecost, with the outpouring of God’s Spirit on the church in fulfillment of Jesus’s promise.

Of course, the drama of that scene is in the rushing wind, and tongues of flame… the supernatural manifestations of power.

But I think the most powerful miracle that day was the one that centers on identity… when a crowd “from every nation under heaven” heard the testimony to God’s deeds of power each in their own language.

If that is not an affirmation of identity, I don’t know what is!

Because it means that the VERY FIRST thing God’s Spirit did in creating the church was to show the outsiders that they could still be who they were and belong to the church at the same time.

They did not have to learn how to function in a language, or a culture that would always feel a little bit foreign.

They could receive the good news of God’s grace in the language they learned on their mother’s knee… the language that was as instinctive to them as breathing.

And then… the message they heard was yet another affirmation of identity:

A reminder of God’s promise to prophesy through ALL people: erasing boundaries based on age, and gender, and social status.

It’s a story that confirms the promise Jesus makes in the gospel; but it is also a story that contrasts with the message we get about our identity in the other two readings.

Because the Acts reading affirms the identity that we bring to faith in Jesus;

whereas the other two readings promise a transformation of our identity through Jesus.

And that contrast is actually why I decided to talk about all three readings today:

I think we need the both/and of this contrast… the witness that makes us hold both truths together and to find the wholeness of affirmation and transformation.

The life of faith that we find in Jesus DOES give us a transformed identity.

When we are adopted into the family of God, we experience a belonging that is unique and different from what we know outside of faith.

In this identity, we can close our ears to the whispers of fear because we belong to God, and nothing can even threaten who and whose we are.

And in this truth we can open hearts to the peace of Christ that empowers us to live and to love with freedom.

These are life-changing claims… and if we will lean into them with trust, they can even be world-changing because of what God can do through us.

That’s what Jesus promises: “the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do, and, in fact, will do greater works that these.”

And… AND, even as we lean into the new identity we have in Christ, that identity, that faith does NOT require us to abandon what makes us… us.

Our uniqueness is part of the beautiful diversity that is essential to God’s design for the church.

We are meant to bring our different languages, which means bringing our different cultures too, because language and culture go hand-in-hand.

We are meant to bring our various perspectives as young or old, privileged or disadvantaged, male and female and genders that don’t easily divide into binary categories.

[By the way, that switch from “or” to “and” as the connecting word in the series was very deliberate – I got that from Galatians 3 and it’s one of the reasons why the point about transcending binary categories is consistent with scripture.]

But back to the theme: the identity we have in Christ transforms us, but it doesn’t erase us.

Rather, it frees us from the slavery of fear, so that we can be freed for lives of wholeness.

We will celebrate that wholeness at the pride event later today;

and we celebrate it every time we each show up in this community as our whole, beloved, transformed and still-transforming selves;

And Jesus invites us to carry that wholeness into a world that is still captive to fear with a message of the great, and liberating work of God’s transforming love.

Thanks be to God.