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Foundry United Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield, Deacon for Social Justice |
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“A New Identity” Sunday, October 5,
2008 |
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Philippians 3: 4b-14 |
I got
married last month. After saying “I do” under a black walnut tree in western
North Carolina and signing our marriage license, I went from being Amy-Ellen
Duke to Amy Ellen Duke-Benfield. Just
like that, I got a new identity. In Paul’s writings, sometimes it can seem
that his description of our new identity in Christ is something that happens
instantaneously, through Christ’s resurrection we are made anew, just like
that. In the scripture read earlier, we hear of his former identity, being “a
member of the people of What I
found out this week, as I visited the Social Security office to officially
change my name, is that identify change isn’t quite so instantaneous. Before
I visited the Social Security office, I took a few days to think about
whether someone with a double first name could also have a double last name
and if it was okay to have five names.
Once I decided on my new name, I had to fill out some paperwork and
then wait for an hour and a half to see the Social Security employee who
could change my name with the government. In waiting an hour for a new
driver’s license at the DMV, I practiced the signature for my new name. This was mildly agonizing as one’s
signature is how we record our identity in everyday transactions and I
realized that signing my new long name is a pain. Upon my return to work, I
realized my identity change was nowhere near complete. To top it off, I
haven’t really internalized my new identity, as I’ve been referred to as Mrs.
Duke-Benfield several times now and it takes me a good 5 seconds to realize
that’s me. Not only is an identity
change not instantaneous, it’s not exactly easy. In the
same way Paul is transformed, we have a new identity through our relationship
with Christ. Through Jesus’ saving
act, we are freed from sin and reborn so we can make manifest something not
merely like Christ, but share in His righteousness. Through faith in Christ, we are justified
and our relationship with God is made right. The Holy Spirit works, through
us, to give our lives the same shape as that of Christ. The life we are
expected to live, if we are to be conformed to Christ, will be different from
the life we have been living. But,
what Paul points out, and, in my desire for instant gratification, I ignore,
is that living into that new identity is a lifetime process. In Romans, Paul describes creation’s
“groaning” pains as it labors to give birth to something new. Like childbirth, it’s a process that’s
anything but easy or instant. John
Wesley believed not only are we granted a new identity in Christ through our
faith, but that God doesn’t stop there.
God inaugurates a new creation, regenerating us, restoring the
relation to which we are called, to mirror God in the world. And that
regeneration leads to a process of perfecting the image of God in each of us
and extending the new birth into every aspect of human existence so that life
becomes a consistent whole, so that our new identity is coherent and
congruent. On a theoretical level I
understand this, that inaugurating a new creation means beginning something new, but I want to skip the process and be
there, completely in the new, not at the beginning or in the midst of some
process. Yet doing this means skipping over how to foster God’s continual
presence in our lives, and failing to ensure that we are truly living out
God’s new creation in response to God’s love for us. In wanting to speed the process along, I
fail to recognize that I am dependent on God for my new identity to take hold
and that it’s not something I can simply “do.” I seek to live the new
creation without nurturing this new identity in the midst of a culture that’s
often in conflict with Christ’s values.
Recalling Dean Snyder’s sermon on part of this scripture last week, we
must let Christ deep inside our lives to make the transformation real. John Wesley spent much of his ministry
wrestling with how this transformation could take place in a church that had
moved away from significance. He ultimately emphasized the importance of both
spiritual disciplines and doing good to others – as the means of opening our
hearts and lives to God’s work, but these practices require continued action
and investment on our part. Like I
learned while sitting in the Social Security and DMV offices this week, I may
have a new identity, but it takes time and effort to live into the new
identity. I may now be found in
Christ, but I still have to what Paul says – “strain forward to what lies
ahead.” Other versions of the Bible
translate the Greek as “reaching forward” and “stretching,” but I find
straining compelling because one definition of this term is “to cause a
change in form or size in (a body) by application of external force.”[i] What the use of strain captures is that
it’s not simply my action or efforts that matter in this process. God applies the force that ensures I’m
moving forward. By practicing the
means of grace through prayer, studying the scripture, participating in
worship and the sacraments, and being in service and seeking justice, God
quickens our spiritual senses so we can continue to hear the call of God and
live into our new identity. As my seminary professor Roberta Bondi said, the
means of grace allow us to, “overcome the habits of seeing, feeling,
thinking, and acting that characteristically blind us to who we ourselves,
our neighbors and God really are so we can respond appropriately, rationally,
and lovingly.” Through them, God works invisibly in us, strengthening our
faith, opening up unlimited possibilities for growth. Early
Christian monasticism in the 4th and 5th centuries
arose from the tension between a commitment to the Christian life and
pressures from culture; the challenge of becoming new in Christ. In order to join early monastic
communities, male and female monks had to give up their property, family and
friends, and sexuality, move to the desert, limit food and sleep, and take up
a strict discipline in order to conquer whatever was separating them from
love of God and neighbor. They sought
out a way to live into their new identity as Christians without interference
from everyday life by practicing a life centered on prayer. Professor Bondi, an expert on the early
church, described their practice as follows “Prayer connects us with
ourselves; it is the link between our new selves that are always being
transformed into God’s loving image and our old selves with which we must
come to terms if we are to be transformed.
By it we are able to discover who we are and who we are to become.”[ii]
The
early desert mothers and fathers prayed persistently in myriad ways. Because
prayer is an expression of each person’s relationship to God, there is no one
right way to pray. The desert monastics studied scripture until they could
recite it by memory, praying the Psalms while they weaved baskets. They
practiced zen-like meditation, prayed the liturgy of the hours, and wrestled
with the temptations that they felt separated them from their new identity,
crying aloud to God. Through prayer we open our lives to Christ and allow
ourselves to be changed, but it’s not something that comes naturally to all
of us, and the work of transformation can be gut-wrenching. The early church father Ammonas told a
younger monk in regard to his struggle with anger, “I have spent 14 years in
Scetis asking God night and day to grant me victory over anger.” The slowness
of Christian growth was as much a problem for the early church mothers and
fathers as it is for us today. And if
praying doesn’t come easy, as I’m afraid to admit that for me it does not,
not praying isn’t an option. It’s one of the most significant ways we meet
God. Prayer must be learned over a whole lifetime of sincere and often
unspontaneous work on our part coupled with the continuous gift of God’s
grace. The
same holds true with worship, reading the Bible, service, and the other means
of grace. Worship is another way in which our new identity is formed. Worship
is God’s revelation of God’s self in Jesus Christ and our response to that
revelation. Through the reading and
exposition of scripture, we recover and appropriate for our own lives the
experiences of Through
service we meet God and make real Christ’s love for the world. Wesley believed that we could not have
authentic personal holiness without social holiness. In order to grow in our
faith, we must pray, worship, and read the scripture, and do works of mercy,
which include service and seeking justice.
As Jesus tells us in Matthew 25, that whatever we do for the least of
these – the hungry, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner – we do for Him.
Through service we come into contact with those whom we might not usually
interact with, whether it is a homeless person, a day laborer, or a woman
escaping domestic violence and are challenged to incarnate Christ’s
love. Through service we meet God and,
while making real the kingdom of heaven on earth, we are changed. We need
to participate in these practices so that God’s grace may be mediated to us –
so we can remain responsive to God’s love and grow in our Christian faith,
making God’s love visible in the world. I had a
friend in seminary who, after spending a year serving a church, said she
would really like being a minister if she didn’t have to go to church every
Sunday morning. She found sitting still difficult and, at times, chafed at
the rituals. She wanted to go to Sunday brunch. Rather than finding a job
that didn’t require attending worship, she kept at it, praying that she would
feel God’s presence in worship and other times, simply sitting with her
discomfort. Six years later she is the minister of worship at a large
church. Like
participating in worship regularly or engaging in a new form of prayer,
service isn’t always comfortable. We may be afraid of venturing into a new
environment or nervous about talking with someone who made what we consider
to be the wrong decisions in life. We
may not think we have the skills to participate in certain missions, but dive
in any way, honing our gifts, discovering new gifts, or linking up with
others who have gifts that complement our own. Even when we are discouraged, we must press
on. Our new identity can seem elusive, as it has when I’ve tried to sign my
new signature and forgotten to include my new last name. It’s not perfect. At times it may feel that
we haven’t changed at all. We may hope that through prayer, forgiveness comes
quicker or patience comes easier. But
sometimes they don’t. In those times, as in all times, we must seek God. God is always there; this is God’s gracious
gift, but the question is whether we will be present, as well. The means of
grace may not come naturally, but with discipline and commitment, and some
straining, we are made anew and can create a place where we can work with God
on being a sign of God’s love for the world. www.foundryumc.org |
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