Being Who You Are

Matthew 25:41-56

November 23, 2014

Most of you have heard me rant about my least favorite camp song: “I just wanna be a sheep, bah, bah, bah, bah.” But, really, I do not want to be a sheep. So, what’s it gonna be then? A goat?

Sheep or goats? That seems to be the choice before us in the story the youth just shared with us. Or, as a vastly superior song asks, “Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on?”

“Choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua challenged the Israelites before concluding, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Scripture regularly challenges its readers to choose, to pick a side, to stake a claim, to, in effect, claim the name by which you shall be known. Christ the King Sunday seems like a good idea to name who we are, and to whom we belong.

You know what? We do that all of the time – whether we know it or not, in countless small matters, every single day. We say who we are, and, this is the key to Jesus’ parable, we say who we are by things that we do.

In other words, you are what you do.

Perhaps it is one of the hazards of middle age, but lately I have been pondering more and more the question of how I spend my time, how that has changed over the years, what I want to do with the time that I have left, and what that says about who I am in ways both large and small.

For example, I spend a fair amount of time these days running. I’m not particularly good at it; I’m a classic middle-of-the-pack runner. I remember the days, 30 years ago, when I thought nothing of running a six-minute mile, and could keep such a pace over a fair distance. In fact, I thought so little of it that I pretty much gave it up for a good long while, in part, no doubt, because there were so many others so much faster. For 20 years I ran only rarely and did not participate at all in the running community – the men and women of all ages who gather regularly for races of various lengths.

I got back into it for a variety of reasons that are neither unusual nor particularly interesting, and now I call myself a runner – not because I am particularly good or gifted at it, but because I do it.

Similarly, I put down my guitar for many years – at least a decade during which I rarely played and never wrote songs. These days I am always working on at least one song, and I play at least as often as I run.

Some years ago I was chatting with David LaMotte, a singer-songwriter who has released a dozen albums, toured on five continents, and published a couple of books, to boot. In singer-songwriter circles he is both well known and roundly respected. At some point in that years-ago conversation, I said something to the effect of, “well, I play a little but I’m not a musician.” He cut me off immediately, and said, “if you make music, you’re a musician.”

You are what you do. How you spend your time is how you become identifiable in the world, and it doesn’t matter whether or not you do it for money or whether or not you are, objectively speaking, particularly good at it or not so much.

So, while it may be true that as a runner I make a decent guitar player, and as I musician I make a runner, I am, in fact a runner and a musician.

Putting names to something claims them, and it puts us under their claim, as well. That may be the only reason why membership in a church matters.

If we stand under the name of Jesus that name claims us. Thus claimed, we are shaped and framed by the stories of Jesus and of his followers.

If, as I believe, the fullness not so much of God, but of humanity, was pleased to dwell in the person of Jesus, then when we stand under his claim we are shaped into the fullness of what we can be as human beings.

Claiming that name – and being claimed by it – does not mean that we’re good at it! It’s aspirational more than ontological. In other words, claiming the name of Jesus is more about who we hope to be than who we are at the moment. Just as when I say, “I am a runner,” it does not mean that I am fast or that I win races. It means I’m going to get out there and run the race that is set before me. When I say, “I am a musician,” it does not mean that I am a professional making money at it, nor that I am particularly “good” at it, but it does mean that I will make a joyful noise.

These names – runner, musician, parent, sibling, writer or whatever one you offer – mean something. The ones I’ve lifted up here mean that my life is shaped by running, by making music. My life is shaped, deepened, given meaning, by these identities that I claim and am claimed by.

I am a Christian. My life is shaped, deepened, given meaning in the journey of trying to follow Jesus. As with running and making music, this works better in community than as a solo act. That is not to say there are not solitary times, for surely there are.

But if you’ve ever made music with others you know that there’s something indescribably wonderful about that experience that is qualitatively different than playing alone. If you’ve ever run with others – on a team, with a running partner, at a race – you’ve experienced something similar.

The community of the church is the same. To be sure, there are individual practices of our common faith, but there is a depth of joy, a profundity of understanding, an expansive power in our shared experience that is simply not possible absent the company of those similarly claimed by the name of Jesus. The community of those sojourning under the name of Jesus – that is the church.

Its marks are clear: when people are hungry, we feed them; when people are thirsty, we give them drink; when people are imprisoned, we visit them; when people are naked we clothe them.

So, how do you want to be known? If you want to be known as generous, then give. I you want to be known as compassionate, then be willing to suffer alongside those who hurt. If you want to be known as loving, then love. If you want to be known as a Christian, then live like Jesus.

I still don’t wanna be a sheep; but I do know which side I am on. Amen.