Becoming Who We Are

Becoming Who We Are--September 21, 2016

“For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.  Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true.” (Ephesians 5:8-9)

They say that the things you choose in life shape the person you become.  And that is true.

But it is also true—maybe even more true—that the ways we are chosen in life shape the people we become, too.

Let’s have a Harry Potter moment, shall we?  One of the recurring structures in the books of the Harry Potter series is the way new students at good old Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are assigned their dormitories:  the Sorting Hat.  This magical talking hat gets placed upon the head of all first-year students at the beginning of the new school year, and the hat, discerning the young magician’s character and values perhaps even better than the students know themselves at the moment, declares which “house” he or she will belong to.  In the books, there is noble and brave Gryffindor House, patient and hardworking Hufflepuff House, intelligent and academic Ravenclaw House, and (last, and always sort of least in the books) conniving and cunning Slytherin House.  And in the world of Harry Potter, the house you are assigned to affects who your classmates are, what virtues will be brought to the fore in your education, and to a large degree what kinds of influences will be put in your path.

In other words, in the wizarding world that J.K. Rowling created, you get chosen to belong in a certain community, and that chosen-ness then shapes you into the person you were chosen to become.  Gryffindors become more “Gryffindor-ish.”  Slytherins become more “Slytherin-y,” so to speak.  But you “are” whatever house you are sorted into from the get-go, without auditioning or trying out or pledging, like an American college fraternity.  You get chosen in an instant—bam!—and yet you also become over time what you were already chosen to be.

Something like that is the way it works in Christ.  On our own we weren’t anything—we were “darkness,” says Paul. Turned away from God.  Bent in on ourselves.  Self-interested and self-centered.  Not disciple material, in other words, and certainly not disciple-of-Jesus material.  On our own, we humans have the raw materials in us to be pretty cruel and greedy, and are often afraid of our own shadows.

Ah, but, now we have been claimed by Christ.  We have been chosen.  Selfish chicken-hearts that we were on our own, before we’ve shown a lick of promise or proven ourselves, we were claimed, chosen, and marked.  We are now, as Paul says, “in the Lord,” light.  We have been brought into the light by God’s own claim on us—so that we will become what God says we already are: children of the light. 

In Harry Potter-speak, it’s like Paul says, “You are Gryffindors—act like the Gryffindors the Sorting Hat already chose you to be.  Become what you are.”

Yes, that’s it.  That’s the challenge, and the invitation, for this day and every day:  to become what God says we already are.  To become, more and more fully, what we have been claimed and chosen to be.  Because Jesus claimed us for himself and called us into his light, regardless of how dim and dirty we were before, we are now children of light—but we are still only slowly learning how to live and act like what we are. 

If this is one of those days when you are not feeling particularly like you are a “child of light,” if this is one of those dark days for you, know this: the living Jesus says you belong to him.  You will more and more become a reflection of his light, as who you are flows out of whose you are.

Lord Jesus, let us become more and more fully like you, because we are in you.