PROPER 29B - Daniel 7:9-14; Psalm 93; Revelation 1:1-8; John 18:33-37 - 26 November 2006 - A sermon preached by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado

 

Living Into the Truth of Who You Are

 

LABELING JESUS

 

Did you notice that even after he was arrested, people were trying to label Jesus?

 

The crowd called him a criminal. “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” (John 18:30)

 

Pilate wants to hang “King of the Jews” on him. Somehow, in Pilate’s mind, that would have made everything more clear, and his decision easier. If a rival king is stirring up the people, leading a rebellion against Rome, then he could take care of that.

 

Jesus was having none of it. He wouldn’t agree that he had broken any laws. And he wouldn’t agree that he was the king of the Jews. When Pilate heard Jesus say, “My kingdom is not from this world”, he couldn’t let it go. “So you are a king?” To which Jesus responded, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

 

Two thousand years later, we’re still trying to hang labels on Jesus. Jesus may be the most labeled person in the history of the world. Some of the labels ring true, given what we’ve been told by the Gospel writers. But some of them are really about us trying to make Jesus out to be who we want him to be. Making Jesus in our image, we might call it.

 

It’s the problem with the “What would Jesus do?” thinking. I understand it, believe me. If Jesus is Lord, and I am trying to follow him, it’s important to try to know what he’d do in any given situation that I find myself in, and then do that. How would he vote? What would he do on a date? How would he respond to advertising?

 

We like to think that we know what Jesus would do in certain situations. But do we know? I’m guessing that if Jesus were still walking around today, he wouldn’t necessarily do what you or I think he would do, or should do. Because when he walked this earth before, he defied the conventional wisdom of that time.

 

Maybe he’s our Messiah! Yeah, but he doesn’t fit if he’s the Messiah. He’s from Nazareth, and there’s that mystery about who his father was, and he makes Samaritans the heroes of his stories, and he hangs out with women, tax collectors, and notorious sinners, and he doesn’t seem to honor the Sabbath very much, and his teachings are sometimes really confusing. He doesn’t fit with the kind of Messiah we think that he should be.

 

BEING TRUE TO HIMSELF

 

Maybe we need to pay more attention to what Jesus said to Pilate. “For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

 

Maybe it’s another label, but I’m thinking that Jesus stayed true to himself more than anyone who ever lived. What do I mean by that? He stayed true to the call that he heard - God’s call upon his life. His understanding of that call shifted a little bit here and there. For example, he understood after a while that he wasn’t just called to be among the Jews. His calling was wider than that. But allowing for some ongoing discernment, he stayed true to what he heard God calling him to do. When he heard, “It’s time for me to move on from here and go teach and heal in other places,” he moved on. When all sorts of religious experts told him it was a sin to heal others on the Sabbath, he said, “No, really, it isn’t!”, and he kept doing it. When they said, “If you’re the Messiah, you should be doing this, or acting this way,” he didn’t buy into it if it didn’t fit with his understanding of who God called him to be.

 

“Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

 

How do we belong to the truth? We listen, as best we can, for God’s call upon our life, and try to stay true to that. And we resist all the labels, all the projections, and all the expectations that others have for us that don’t fit with that call.

 

BEING LABELED

 

It seems like folks want to label us from early on.

 

My family went to see the animated movie “Happy Feet” last night. It’s about an Emperor penguin named Mumble, who, from the moment he gets hatched, doesn’t fit the expectations of just about all the other Emperor penguins. He is told and taught that each Emperor penguin is supposed to have their own unique “heart song”, and that this is how you fulfill your destiny - or attract your mate for life, which, for penguins, is sort of the same thing. The problem is, Mumble can’t sing. When we tries to sing, in fact, it is so grating and so awful that he is told that he “ruins it for everybody”. But man, can he dance! From the moment that he hatched, he could feel the rhythm of life. He had happy feet, and he could make others happy by his dancing, too. And to make matters worse, Mumble has a mind, and he uses it! He defies convention and the traditional teachings, and that includes the religious teachings.

 

We want to label people, and define in our minds what we think they should act like if they have that label. I don’t know why we do it. Maybe we are trying to make things easier on ourselves, like Pilate was trying to do with Jesus.

 

Here. Try these on in your mind.

 

Quarterback. Does a certain image come to mind?

Cheerleader.

Straight-A student.

Lawyer.

Priest.

U.S. consumer.

Pro football player.

Nurse.

Actor.

Fighter pilot.

Therapist.

Gay man.

Doctor.

Engineer.

Artist.

House painter.

 

Here’s a label George Clooney gets to live with for another year. “Sexiest Man Alive!” Wow, how do you live into that? Don’t ever get married again, for starters.

 

Do you think Jesus would have ever put one foot in front of the other if he thought he had to get out of bed each morning and live up to “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”? Wow!

 

We’re complex people. We don’t fit labels very well. I know this guy who paints houses. He’s made a career out of it, in fact. Didn’t just do it for a few years to work his way through college, or something like that. He’s done it for many years, and keeps doing it. I don’t know him well. I see him maybe once or twice a year at parties; we travel in similar circles. Whenever I sit down to talk to Mark, I sort of have to remind myself that he paints houses for a living. He’s interesting, real, smart, vulnerable, a good listener, committed to his own growth, asks good questions. In short, he doesn’t fit my stereotype of someone who paints houses. He blows my stereotype right out of the water, as a matter of fact. And that’s great! I need my stereotypes blown out of the water! Mark has found a calling that works for him, but that calling does not define everything about him, any more than my calling as a priest defines everything about me.

 

JESUS’ EXAMPLE

 

For those of us who are striving to follow Jesus, and believe me, I think that is a very worthwhile thing to do, we would do well to try to follow him when it comes to this whole business of being true to self: discovering or re-discovering that inner essence of who God is calling me to be, and living out of that.

 

To get back to living out of your essence or true self, you have to peel off the masks, the roles, the labels, the expectations that others have for you, or that you may have even put on yourself

You have to ask not just the question, “What would Jesus do?”, but also, “What would God have me do? What is God calling me to be? What rings true for me, when I live out of a God-centered place?” These kinds of questions, when we listen for the answers, will lead us - if we take some risks - to a place of authentic, truthful, and abundant living. And yes, living out of that authentic, who-I-am-called-to-be place might lead to our deaths, as it did for Jesus. But you notice that he was given his life back again. And he didn’t wither on the vine, trying to live out someone else’s expectations of how he should live his life.

 

CONCLUSION

 

Maybe one of the reasons we call Jesus Redeemer, Lord, Messiah, and Son of God - just to name a few - is because he managed to stay truer to himself, and truer to the call of God upon his life, than anyone else who ever lived.

 

He challenges us to do the same thing. It takes some courage. It takes some faith. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. When you decide to live into who you are called to be, you’ll not only find yourself defying the conventions of the culture, you may very well find yourself defying the conventions of other people of faith. But it’s all worth it in the end, when you find yourself, or rediscover yourself, and live out of that place that is grounded in God, and in truth. For that is the place where your light will really shine. That is the place where you will discover joy and peace. That is the place where you will really be alive. And that’s where I want to be.