Becoming Who We Are

Becoming Who We Are--November 23, 2016

"Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.  What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is."  [1 John 3:2]

The whole Christian life is about becoming who and what God says we already are.  If that seems like a bit of a brain twister, it's probably a sign that we're onto something. After all, most of the really important things we believe as Christians boggle our minds if we spend any time at thinking about them. (In his book, Everything Belongs, Richard Rohr quotes some of the great Eastern fathers as saying, "If you can explain it, it isn't true," meaning that ultimately we can't completely unravel the mystery of the faith, and that if we think we understand it all, it's a sign we have probably missed the boat somewhere.)  So, back to the mystery du jour:  the Christian life is a matter of becoming who we are.

Again and again throughout the Bible, Christians find themselves bumping up against the idea of things being already-and-not-yet with us and God.  Jesus is Lord of the entire universe, and yet there is still coming a day when he will be revealed fully to all as Lord.  The Kingdom of God is among us, Jesus said two thousand years ago, and yet the same Jesus also still taught us to pray for that same very Kingdom to come, and for God's will to be done on earth the way it is done already in heaven.  Eternal life begins now, the New Testament writers say, but it also yet to come beyond the bounds of death.  There are lots of places where we live in that already-but-not-yet tension as believers in Jesus.

Well, here's one more for the pile:  John tells us here we are God's children now, and he says it plainly and assertively as something we can take to the bank,  But John also points us forward to something that is yet in store for us, something that is to come, something we are not yet experiencing fully.  "We will be like him," John says, referring to Jesus.  We will be like Jesus, the One in whom we have met the face of God.  In other words, we are God's children already, but we will be made to be fully like God's Son at the last. 

In some ways, that is part of what this whole life is about--being formed into the likeness of Jesus.  Not beards and sandals of course, but becoming like Jesus in the ways that matter.  This life--which also then includes this day--is part of how God is shaping us to be made like Jesus, so that, as John says, "when he is revealed, we will be like him."  That is an important thing for us to remember, because it is very easy for us to slip into thinking that this life is just a matter of biding our time until we get to heaven, or that we just have to trudge through the days and keep our nose down as much as possible so that we can just skip ahead to the good part of life after death.  But Jesus, it turns out, is just as much interested in life before death.  And in fact, Jesus has gifted us with a community of people who are placed around us in this life-before-death to be used as instruments whom God uses to shape us to be like Christ.  That community is called church.  Sinners though we are, every last one of us, in God's great cosmic genius, the Spirit uses each of us to work on all of the rest of us.  And together in community, we learn how to love like Jesus, how to be courageous truth-tellers like Jesus, how to serve in humility like Jesus, and how to weep and rejoice like Jesus.  When we go out to serve others--whether on far-out mission trips or just down the road to the clothes closet or working side by side in our own church buildings--part of what is happening is that you and I are being changed, too.  For whatever other good we are doing for others on our mission trips and with our clothing drives, God is using those moments to form the kind of people we are becoming--so that we will come to look like the kind of children God says we are already.  When we hold hands together to pray in a circle, when we come to the Table to receive the bread and the cup, when we are gathered around the Word each Sunday, God is shaping us to make us to be like Jesus.  God has already called us and claimed us as "children of God," but that is not the end of things--God continues to make us to be what God says we are already.

So for today, we look out on the hours in front of us before we go to bed again, and we can see the open possibility that God will be at work on us today--and through us at the same time, too--to make us all more fully to become like Jesus.  We, children of God already, are being made to be more fully like the Son of God.  And it will be happening, if perhaps in small ways that we will have to be vigilant to notice and recognize, even today. 

O Great and Gracious God, we pray for your presence and blessing today on us, to make us more fully to become who and what you say we are.  Let us be your children, and let us live as your children as you keep shaping us in the image of Jesus today.