Isaiah 43:1–7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14–17
Luke 3:15–17, 21–22
Year C
I.N.I.
“But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine” (Isaiah 43:1)
In all my pastoral ministry, when I am need of a word from the Scriptures to offer at a bedside before surgery, in the face of chemotherapy, or before a any number of life’s transition, I quickly go to Isaiah 43 and read it: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2) I have been known to thumb through my pastoral care book or Bible in a parking lot, on the elevator, or on someone’s front steps after ringing the bell.
In Isaiah, God stakes a claim on the community called Israel and those claim through water and the Spirit. By virtue of our baptisms, God roots us in the river of the tree of life singularly and perpetually sealed.
“I have called you, Elizabeth, Jason, Dorothy, Walter, you are mine.”
When my pastor father is most ponderous, he utters my name. Not just Tim, not even Timothy, but both of my given names. As a child, of course I knew I was in deep trouble when Dad spotted the broken glass on the floor and in exasperation groaned, “Timothy John!” As an adult, if my dad has something nice to say about my sermons he himself reads aloud to my mother the minute they are posted on our website he will begin his email in all caps TIMOTHY JOHN. My father clearly claims me by giving voice to my name, my baptismal name.
On January 3rd, Twenty-three years ago after a wicked snowstorm socked Pennsylvania and the Giants were in the playoffs, a young couple exchanged their vows of faithfulness to one another in front of God and a cloud of witnesses in a church in Northwest Indiana. Now the language of wedding vows is heightened. When I ask couples who are getting married if they are nervous and they say yes, I affirm that by saying, “well, it’s pretty important to you, isn’t it?” And I often say that at the point of the vows everyone is straining to hear them, because everyone wants to hear about singular faithfulness and love, and the strength of life together. And twenty-three years ago on January 3 on my wedding day, my beloved spoke her full name and mine, giving weight to the declaration, “I Kari Denise, take you, Timothy John, to be my husband.” Kari clearly claimed me by giving voice to my name, my baptismal name.
There are times when my status is called into question. There are times when it is not self-evident who I am or what I stand for.
At the airport, time and time again, I am asked to show id. I have to prove who I am, with a drivers’ license or passport. I have been scrutinized, sized up, and questioned about my citizenship, my family of origin, or any variety of numbers assigned to me that identify who I am. My status and value is reduced to a piece of plastic or a booklet with an eagle on the cover.
There is an adorable four-year old in Chapel School who is curious and unabashed. I have been meeting with preschoolers at least once a month since September, and most of the four year olds have known me since they were two. The little guy, whom I’ll call Hakim, waits in line at the end of the school day in the hallway outside of my office. He peers in and asks, “watcha doin?” And I’ll tell him I’m writing. He will tell me how much fun it was to play outside and try to make a joke and we will both laugh. And then he screws up his face and puzzles, “what’s your name?” like he’s never heard it, like he can’t locate a meaning for what I do. And I’ll say, “Hakim, you know my name. It’s Pastor Keyl.” And he’ll respond blithely, “Oh,” like “whatever.”
The community in exile called Israel struggled with its identity. Without a place to call home, without the power to call the shots, as a minority population stranded and languishing in Babylon, they were susceptible to the voices that beckoned them to abandon God. It was as if they forgot who they were. It was as if they lost their footing, and that their status had been reduced to loser, or distractible, or beholden to Babylon.
God reminds the fearful and lonely people just whom they belong to. God stretches far and wide, north, south, east, and west to find and gather up the chosen, at any cost. God gives voice to the value and identity of the community as redeemed and precious. Through the prophet God says in no uncertain terms to the stranded sojourners, “I love you” (that’s in verse 4 of today’s reading if you need to know).
In meeting with confirmation youth this past week, as we began a new year together and a new unit on the 10 commandments, I suggested that the first commandment, “you shall have no other gods,” is couched in a promise that precedes the commandment which is “I am the Lord you God.” In his Small Catechism, Martin Luther turns around the negative “”you shall have no other gods’ in his positive explanation “We are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” I said to the youth that this means God is to be at the center of our lives rather than at the periphery. That means that as we put our trust in God, who wants the best for us, then we must put aside the things that distract us, demean us, or are the focus of our anxieties or our obsessions. The commandments, couched in promise, are meant for our well-being.
I invite you to renew your identity as God’s children, holy and beloved. I ask you to reject hatred and fear as a way of being. I invite you to allow the Holy Spirit to expand the reach of whom to invite to the community of the baptized, and recognize the gifted of a diverse and global humanity. I ask you to reject bigotry and prejudice as demeaning.
And as I have done many times before, I covet your stories, because as our lives are woven together in Christ through baptism, they become larger and grander, a way of salvation, peace, and hope that is epic.
Popular preacher Tom Long urges us to think big about God’s way in our world when he says
we…know that our little fragments and episodes are part a larger story, a holy story. We know this because we have been in worship, and one of the things that worship does is unfold the great sweeping story of God’s love affair with the world, from creation to the end of time, and then point the finger at every last one of us and announce, “You’re in this story. This is your story, too.” When we were baptized, we crossed the Red Sea with Moses and the Israelites, and we plunged down into the Jordan River with Jesus. Every Sunday, we walk right into God’s house, dragging along with us the anxieties and joys of life—like worrying about our kids and drugs or trying to figure out just which way to turn next in our job or feeling so grateful for that new grandchild we spent the week bouncing on our knee—and we place the whole confusing episodic tangle of it in the offering plate and say, “God, make sense of this.” And God takes the little half-baked subplots that make up our lives, the little loaves and fishes, and does a little rewriting and, behold, they have become part of the biggest, best, most hopeful drama of all. (from Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, © 2004, p 124)
As you come forward to join in communion with Christ and Christ’s community in bread and wine, I invite you to reclaim your identity and status by tracing the cross on yourself from water. Think or even whisper your full name and listen for God’s voice saying “I have called you by name, you are mine.” And live in joy with the redeemed here, eager for the Spirit to break out into the world in which we live and give witness, knowing that as Tom Long says you “have become part of the biggest, best, most hopeful drama of all.”I.N.I.
The Rev. Timothy J. Keyl, Pastor
Christ the King Lutheran Church
| CtK Home
| Back to Pastor's Page
|