On Being Somebodies--September 19, 2023

On Being Somebodies--September 19, 2023

"See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's chosen 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.  And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure." [1 John 3:1-3]

You know who needs to be reminded that they're somebodies?  The folks who have been treated like nobodies.  You know who finds comfort from being assured they are children of God?  The ones who have been told before that they don't belong and never can.  And do you know who is desperate to know they're beloved?  The people who have had it ingrained in them over and over again that they aren't worth anything.

And in case we relatively comfortable churchgoing practitioners of Respectable Religion have forgotten, the early Christians knew precisely what it was like to be all of the above. To read both the New Testament itself and the criticisms that the Greco-Roman world lobbed at the early church, one of the most scandalous things about those first generations was that the Christian community included so many people without status, class, or high reputation.  Paul would regularly point in his letters to how many of his readers were written off as un-schooled, un-impressive, and generally un-important.  They were the "weak," the "lowly," and the "foolish," in the eyes of the powerful and well-connected.  The Christian community included the enslaved, and not just those wealthy enough to study philosophy and religion in their spare time.  It included women and not just men, including in leadership, from the very beginning.  It included Gentiles, Samaritans, and eunuchs along with Judeans who could recite their Israelite pedigrees to perfection.  They were people that the world by and large wrote off as unworthy outcasts and negligible nobodies--and yet, those first Christians dared to believe that the world's appraisal was wrong.  The early church believed, and reminded one another, that they were not just "somebodies" rather than "nobodies" but no less than the very children of God.

And it was that claim that gave them hope--hope to keep going in life, one day at a time, but also hope to continue following the way of Jesus, even when it seemed pointless or dangerous.  It was the deep confidence that they were precious to God even when the world thought they were disposable, and that they were beloved even when their wider society saw them only as troublemakers and disturbers of the peace, that gave those early Christians the ability to endure.  And it was their hope, too, that indeed one day it would be clear that they were not the "nobodies" of the world after all, which allowed them to keep on striving to love the way Jesus loved, even if the world didn't recognize why that mattered.

That's how the writer of what we call First John addresses his readers.  They are children of God, even if the world doesn't agree.  They are precious and chosen, even if the rest of society sees them as low-class riff-raff.  They are living reflections of the character of Christ, even if on some days and in some situations they don't seem to look much like Jesus.  Because their status as children of God is a given (and not up for debate), John's readers start from a place of knowing they are accepted.  And because they know they are beloved, they can keep putting in the energy and effort it takes to respond to the world like Jesus--to love like Jesus does, to act like Jesus does, and to speak like Jesus does.  They keep on striving at that--to "purify themselves, just as he is pure"--to embody more fully what God has already said about them: they are children of God.

Of course, anybody who has ever loved and nurtured a child knows the same, too: when we remind children (ours, our grandchildren, students in a classroom, or young ones in our local congregation) that they are precious and beloved, they have a way of stepping into that identity.  When we remind children that they belong, that they are worthy, and that they are reflections of God's love in the world, they are enabled to embody all of that.  They will fail at it sometimes (as will we grown-ups), and they will have moments and even seasons of struggle.  But when we make the effort to remind them that they are chosen, that they are special, that they are beloved, and that they are somebodies, they will have less and less reason to become bullies who push other kids down in order to make themselves feel more important.  And they will have the resources to endure when somebody else comes along who tells them they're nobodies.  Well, if you and I have seen that with the children around us, then maybe we can recognize what First John is doing here, as he writes to a whole church that often needed to be reminded that they were God's children.

And maybe we can recognize our own need to hear it as well.  Maybe, amid all the voices in our culture that might tell us we are only important if we're in the top tax bracket, or that your opinion only counts if your preferred political party is in power, or that you're only a "somebody" if you fit someone else's mold of what a Respectable Religious Person is supposed to look like, we need to hear First John say to us as well, "You are chosen.  You are beloved.  You are a child of God."  Maybe that's part of why so much of what we do on Sunday mornings (at least this is certainly true of the Lutheran tradition in which I have grown up) is centered on reminding us who and whose we are.  We are re-membered--put back together again--and reshaped with the identity we have in God's love.  We keep being reminded that we are God's children so that we will, like those first century Christians to whom First John was written, hold onto the hope that keeps us striving to love like Jesus.  And when we are clear deep down what God says about us, we will be able to keep spending our energy and effort to love like Jesus, even if it seems like a waste to the rest of the world.  Hope does that to you--it gives you the power to keep putting one foot in front of the other in the direction you are pointed, even if everybody else thinks it's a waste.  

Today, then, remember who and whose you are--you, too, dear one, are a child of God.  And if that's true, well, then so are two other conclusions: for one, God's opinion of you holds no matter what anybody else says about you.  And just as important, we who know we the power of being called children of God will not demean anybody else as being "nobodies," because we ourselves are learning that God has a thing for taking the nobodies and outcasts and claiming them as beloved children.

Lord Jesus, remind us whose we are, so that we will reflect your love more clearly in this day.