Who Are You?

This sermon begins at a hypothetical party. The company’s good, the night is young and there’s plenty to eat and drink. So naturally, you’re happy. Hypothetically.

But half-way through the evening, a pleasant stranger comes up

and says “Hi – who are you?”.

So you smile and give your name. But the stranger leans in closer, and says, with an intensity that kind of unnerves you: “No. I mean – who are you?”

So you start wittering on about what you do in life and your family and where you come from, and all the things that seem to define you as a person, but the amusement in your inquisitor’s eyes tells you that this still isn’t hitting the mark.

“No no. That’s not who you are. That’s the stuff you do and the people you belong to; they’re important, but they’re not you. Take them away, or get shipwrecked on a desert island and that part of you called ‘you’ is still there. So who are you?”

Of course, by this stage you’re looking around nervously for any excuse to break off the conversation, so when the doorbell goes you practically leap across the room to answer it.

And you spend the rest of the evening avoiding the stranger like the plague. But you can’t avoid the question. It’s there now: and the worrying thing is, you don’t have a clue how to begin to answer it.

Who are you, sitting out there in Belhelvie Church this morning?

There are farmers, teachers, nurses, carers, administrators, oil workers, people in retirement, fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, new members, old members, non members, visitors, young people, old people, sick people, well people, content people, troubled people, depressed people, busy people, bored people.

Strip all of that stuff away from yourself, all of the stuff that seems to define you, and what’s left? Who are you?

Who are you when you sit alone in a quiet room away from everything that might distract you? Who are you when you take a solitary walk in the hills, or along the beach, and spend some time being rather than doing?

That’s a question we need to get to the bottom of, because although the things we do, and the people we love, are a huge, formative part of our lives, they aren’t ‘who we are’. They help shape the clay, but they’re not the clay itself. You are the clay.

But we forget that. We forget that we are more than the sum of commitments and relationships that make up our lives. And I believe that many people go to their graves without ever really discovering that truth about themselves.

So who are you?

Well according to what God says through Isaiah, the first thing we must understand about ourselves as Christians is that we’re chosen.

“Before I was born, the Lord chose me” says Isaiah in verse 1 of chapter 49, and that theme of chosenness is repeated time and time again in Scripture.

And today I want you to know that whether you realise it or not, God has chosen you. Before you saw the light of day; before your mother held you in her arms, you were chosen by God. He saw your uniqueness; he saw your gifts and your potential. And he chose you.

I wonder if you remember what it feels like to be chosen? Or maybe not chosen?

The boys line up against the wall, and the two best players stand apart from them, sizing them up. Maybe you were always one of the first picked? Maybe, like me, you were one of those who breathed a sigh of relief when you weren’t chosen last. Maybe you were the one left scuffing your shoes at the very end, chosen just to make up the numbers and get in the way.

The girls line up against the wall – red faced and giggling. Social dancing in the Assembly Hall. After much cajoling and threats, the boys drag themselves across the floor to pair up with someone. Maybe you were first chosen. Maybe you were always last; yearning for some shy lad to lift his eyes in your direction.

You see, choosing in this world is competitive – there are winners and losers.  If we’re chosen then it means that someone else isn’t chosen. So there are always tears mingling with the smiles.

But it’s different when God chooses. Because the game isn’t football and we’re not practicing our dancing. God chooses us so that we might bring our own unique gifts into his world, and use them for his glory. And that means that every one of us has something to offer.

So we all line up against the wall. And God sees us as we are. And he chooses some for their wisdom; some for their beauty; some for their enthusiasm; some for their compassion; some for their humility; some for their creativity; some for their practicality; some for their spirituality. But all are chosen, every last one of us, because God sees right to the truth of who we are, and values us for what we are, and what we can be, through Christ.

Who are you? Well the first thing to realise is that you – just as you are - are God’s chosen.

But what are we chosen for?

Well again, Isaiah gives us the answer:

“Before I was born, the Lord chose me and appointed me to be his servant”

Now I wonder what image comes into your mind when you hear that word ‘servant’? Mr Carson selecting the wines for the dinner, or Mrs Patmore slaving over a five course meal for a party of twelve, maybe?

It’s worth remembering that in the ancient world, some slaves, or servants, rose to positions of great importance in the household.

They were trusted. They were given responsibility.

You’ might remember that Joseph started life as a slave in Egypt, and yet he rose to become the Pharaoh’s right hand man.

So the defining characteristic of a servant isn’t that they’re poor or downtrodden, but that they’re people whose will is subject to someone else’s. They don’t just live to please themselves. They live to please the one they serve.

“The Lord chose me and appointed me to be his servant” says Isaiah.

In other words, I don’t just live for myself and the things that I want any more, because I’ve realised that God has a prior call on my life. “You are not your own” says the apostle Paul. “You were bought at a price”.

And of course this is where the rubber hits the road, because serving God comes at the cost of some of our personal freedoms.

When we take vows of membership in joining the church, we’re committing to set aside Sunday mornings for worship. Wherever possible, that should come first.

We’re committing to practice spiritual disciplines in our own time; developing a life of prayer, and starting to discover how God speaks into our lives through the Bible.

We’re committing to give of our time, talents and money to the church, so that God’s work in this place can flourish.

And we’re committing to being open with others about our faith, and unashamed of being known as a Christian.

That’s what it means to be a servant of Christ, and a member of the church. It’s not about joining an institution; it’s about choosing to live from a different set of priorities. that become foundational for your life.

Anything less than that is a watered down form of Christianity that doesn’t deserve the name.

Who are you? You’re God’s chosen; and he’s chosen you for service in his kingdom

But there’s one more step we need to take in answering the question that the stranger in the story was asking us.

If we’re chosen to be servants, then what’s our task? What are we meant to do?

Well once again, Isaiah helps us with an answer:

verse 5 of chapter 49 says this: “Before I was born, the Lord appointed me (chose me); he made me his servant to bring back his people, to bring back the scattered people of Israel”.

Isaiah understood those words in a particular way, because he prophesied in the years when the Israelite people were exiled in Babylon and longing for home.

But those words speak just as clearly to you and me today. Our role as servants is to bring the scattered people back to God.

Stop and take a look at our society with me for a moment.

This morning, we’re a small, seemingly eccentric minority in Great Britain – in coming out to church.

The rest of the country’s out at the car boot sales; or in bed reading the papers. Some are busy scrubbing the alloys; some are heading off for retail therapy; some are putting up shelves; some are heading off for a day out with the kids, all of which are fine things to do. But not when those things are filling the space in our lives that God’s supposed to occupy.

And of course, some commentators are rubbing their hands with glee at the way secularism has replaced faith in the hearts and minds of the nation.

But what staggers me is that the same commentators, ridiculing belief as superstition, then turn around and start wringing their hands about the way society’s changed in our lifetime. Can they not see the connection? It doesn’t take a PhD in Social Science to see what’s happening!

50 years ago, a basic Christian morality was the glue that held our society together. People knew right from wrong. They understood respect. They thought about people other than themselves. The basic truths about how to live in the world seemed self-evident, even to those who weren’t committed believers.

But in our day that glue’s perishing in our nation; people amd communities don’t seem to hold together in the ways they used to. We’re more scattered than we’ve ever been.

People are scattered, spiritually and emotionally, because in the absence of God, they have no story that tells them who they are. So they have to search out an identity for themselves; and that puts us entirely at the mercy of the great corporate machine which tells us how to think, how to look, what to eat, what to wear, how to live and what to aspire to.

We’re in this place today because in small, seemingly insignificant ways, our nation drifted away from the story that once gave it life.

We got rid of God and then promptly set up a host of other idols to worship in his place. We don’t call them idols – but they’re the things we live for.

And although the drift’s been glacially slow, you only have to look at the ice-carved hills of our country to know what slow movement over time can do. It digs deep, deep valleys.

“The Lord made me his servant to bring back his people, to bring back the scattered people of Israel”.

Thank God we don’t often see the worst of this scatteredness, this brokenness in our community. But it’s there, and you know it is. The couples who can’t seem to give and take enough to make it work; the people who are working too hard for their own good; the neighbour who’s hitting the bottle; the parents who either can’t cope or can’t be bothered to cope. All scattered.

What can we do? And what can we do about our own brokenness?

Well, Isaiah gives us another word to hold onto as we leave. In a world lacking stories to live by, where many feel worthless and powerless to change, this is what the Christian can say:

“The Lord gives me honour. He is the source of my strength”

The most powerful witness to the presence of God in a scattered world is the evidence of broken people becoming whole through him. Not denying the pain, not pretending away the difficulties, but working through them with faith – and becoming stronger, deeper, wiser and more together as a consequence.

Who are you? asks the stranger at the party. And it’s a good question to be asking.

You’d do well to think long and hard before you say anything in response; because how you answer says a lot about where your roots really lie. In things that will pass and fade with time? Or in the God who holds all our times in his hands?