Who Am I?

by | Jul 29, 2024

Acts 9:1-19; John 21:15-19

PRAYER:  God of grace and second chances, we all have gone down paths that have informed our lives in some way, shape, or form.  Enable us to recognize those moments, those experiences as ways to draw closer to you and others, that your teachings of love may always be at the forefront what who we are.  May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you, O God, my rock and my redeemer.  Amen.

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Twelve years ago, I was in France visiting the 12th century village of Taizé as I was discerning my calling to ministry.  I’d already had a life-changing experience in (finally) answering my call to ministry; I was back to school, but this trip was one last… test, for lack of a better word, to confirm in my own heart that I was on the right track before I started applying to seminaries. 

So, I went to Taizé and spent a week in prayer.  I can confirm that I heard God’s unconditional affirmation of my call.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard God’s voice (before or since) as clearly as I heard it that week in France.  But there was more.  It wasn’t just God confirming that I was on the correct path, that I should go into ministry.  It was the Holy Spirit asking me what I was doing right then at that time. 

You see, when I restarted my college career, I was singularly focused on that.  I put a lot of things on my proverbial back burner, and was just focusing on my school work.  But as clearly as I heard God confirming my calling, I also heard God asking me, “But what are you doing right now?” 

I responded that I was doing my schoolwork so that I could go onto seminary and join the ranks of ministry.  In my head, it made a lot of sense, because for most of my life – schoolwork was never my top priority, but I was sincerely trying to change all of that!  I had to change the way I focused on schoolwork if I was going to get where God was calling me to go.   But again, amongst the thousands of pilgrims at Taizé that week, I could hear God interrupting my argument with, “Yes, you’re doing your schoolwork, as you should… but what are you doing for ME right now?”

After three years of navigating my schoolwork, I guess I had become something of an ostrich with my head in the sand.  So this voice in my head and in my soul was God telling me that it’s time to poke my head up and look around. 

That’s where The Shepherd’s Shelves was born.  I started formulating a plan for a new ministry in our home church which would be singularly focused on collecting food that could be distributed to various local food pantries.  That ministry is thriving today.

There is a great truth that our past experiences tend to define who we are – in both good and bad ways.  My poor grades growing up informed the change I had to make in order to pursue my higher-education.  My time in Taizé still informs and influences my thinking as far as how we are called to serve God and others.

Growing up, there was a kid who lived in my town who was my age.  Eric.  We were friends in our middle school years, and I used to hang out at his house after school from time to time.  It’s one of those situations where – as a middle school student, I didn’t have the understanding that I do today.  Looking back, knowing what I know now, I am 100% confident when I say that my friend was living with an abusive father and an enabling mother.  There’s no doubt in my mind.  Of course, in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, I didn’t have the knowledge; I didn’t have the language to identify and communicate the red flags that I only now see in hindsight. 

In high school, my friend turned to smoking, and to drugs.  After high school, he was arrested a number of times and eventually, he died at the age of 49.

Our experiences, our culture, our backgrounds can all have a profound impact on how we function throughout our lives.  Positive and negative experiences shape who we are, how we think about ourselves, and the world around us.  We all have “baggage”, and we may even be tempted to define ourselves by those things alone.  But what if there is value in all of life’s experiences?  What if they teach us something about our purpose, and who we are?

Saul was one of the main opponents of the early Christian church.  He made it his personal mission to bring down anyone who so much as whispered the name of Jesus.  He was on hand for the stoning of Steven, considered to be the church’s first martyred disciple.  Saul literally had a license to arrest and persecute anyone proclaiming Christ. 

And then, he was on the road to Damascus.  Saul was in the dark for three days.  How many of those days were spent replaying his life choices?  How, over that time, did he think about or reconcile his past in light of what God was now inviting him to do?  How much of that time spent in the dark did Saul try to come up with some way to gaslight the people who he had been trying to persecute?  But instead of gaslighting, Saul faces the hard truth about his past and turns himself around… his come-to-Jesus moment on the road was the turning point for him.

1 Corinthians 15:9-10 gives us some insight.  Paul (he is now Paul) is honest about his past experiences and how they inform his present: “For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.”

Paul’s past informs his present and his future, but it no longer defines who he is as an apostle.  My past as a mediocre student (and that’s putting it generously) informs who I am, but it no longer defines who I am. 

Our second reading from John is a very famous passage in which the resurrected Jesus is addressing Peter’s behavior on the night that Jesus was arrested.  Just an hour or two after Peter insisted that he would never deny Jesus, he did just that.  And if that was the end of the story, then Peter would have probably carried the guilt he felt for the rest of his life.  But Jesus confronts Peter and gives him a pathway that puts his denial in the rearview mirror with three simple words: Feed my sheep. 

We sometimes avoid the past because we are afraid that the worst things define us.  And maybe on some level, they do.  But in both of these stories, God redeems hard moments in the lives of two leaders for God’s purposes.  These are stories of freedom and liberation from past experiences.  For Saul, his past makes his faith-testimony even more compelling, and God is sure about his role as a leader, even when everyone around Saul questions it.  When Jesus asks Peter three times if Peter loves him, and invites Peter to “follow him,” it is surely a nod to the three times Peter denied him just days earlier.  He not only chooses to come to Peter and have breakfast, but he invites Peter to “feed my sheep,” and makes Peter the cornerstone of his Church.  It is an undeniable confirmation that Jesus is redeemer, drawing a new story out of past pain. 

We may feel like we are defined by our highs and lows, but first and foremost we are defined by God’s love of us.   And God’s love promises to redeem our whole stories.  It allows us to look back over our lives and see how all our experiences – good, bad, and in-between — can shape and clarify who we are in God’s eyes.

We are forever asking ourselves the question, “Who am I”, and a significant part of the answer to that question is understood in relationship to who we are together.  We cannot simply view the question through an individualistic lens.  We define ourselves through the lens of community.  We collectively affirm one another just as Annanias did for Saul.  Annanias was resistant at first, but he trusted in the One who sent him and laid hands on Saul, raising him to new life and a new vision… a new identity as Paul.  Jesus gently, but undeniably challenges Peter, calling him to become more than he currently is. Our identity is forever linked to who we are as a community.  We journey with each other in self-discovery, lifting one another up in affirmation and hope.

Throughout this coming week, reflect on some of those events in your own life that impacted you either negatively or positively.  Take inventory of what you learned from them, or what surprising gifts they offered you.  There’s a method of prayer called “Examen” in which you reflect very specifically on what the Sprit is saying to you.  I’ve printed some guidelines for this spiritual practice that you can take with you and use in your reflections.

God is forever writing in your lives, inviting you to explore and deepen your life of faith.  It is a story that invites you deeper into your relationship with God and (not “or”, but AND) with one another.  We are invited to explore those new understandings, coming to deeper understandings of who we are as individuals AND as a community of faith.  How are you coming to understand yourself as “beloved” and how is that informed by your view of the past?  And how does understanding yourself as beloved change your view of the past? 

At its absolute best, Dinner Church is an opportunity for us to create space for people to be their most authentic selves within the context of community.  Our identity of who we are is best found in how we, as a community lift one another up, love one another, share God’s love with the least, the hurting, the poor, the sick, those who have lost hope. 

We’re not defined by our highs and lows, but by God’s love of us.  And God’s love promises us new life, redeeming our whole stories, allowing us to find the clarity of purpose that offers new life for us all. 

To God be the glory.