who we are called to be

Identity and Vocation

For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, identity is a gift and a calling. We are creatures before we are anything else, fragile and corruptible yet made for a reason, with a unique part to play in the working out of the divine plan. Vocation - such a beautiful word - runs deeper than the usual identity markers. Vocation is fixed from the moment of conception (“before I formed you in the womb, I knew you”), and it is here, if anywhere, that our personality finds its stable center. Yet vocation is also fluid, telic, oriented toward change (“no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”).  (Carol Zaleski, The Christian Century, November 23, 2016, 35.)

Identity and vocation are both specific and generic, both ontic and telic, both being and becoming.

We both are, and are becoming, who we are called to be.

“Before you were knit in the womb, I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5).

Goal: to become fully human, fully Christian; to become who we are called to be.

We cannot become again the people that we thought we were but we can become the people we know we are called to be.

You are named both because of who you uniquely are and because you are called to become in Christ a fully human person.

(Max Depree — 'We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are.')

What am I if not a child of God?

 

What am I if not a child of God? We all have our identities that we cling to – roles, positions, authorities, relationships – that seem to tell us who we are. But every Christmas we can come home to a sense of our true selves, our true identity – as child of God. I am beloved and you are beloved. There is no question whom God loves best: he loves, you and me, all of us, beyond comparison.

What are we to do with this knowledge? Knowing that we are loved, we can carry a light – it may be small, but it is the light of the world – the beginning of faith, of trust in God and God’s love, renewed this year at Christmas. Love came down and dwells among us.

We cannot offer perfection: we can only offer ourselves, knowing that God will make even our imperfections a way for the light of Christ to enter into our lives.

Welcome beloved Child of God. Welcome all. Welcome to the household of God. Welcome to the church of Saint Alban. You are always welcome here.

What am I if not a child of God? I know that I am a child of God because I know that He is the Son of God.

Jesus, Lord at his birth, the one we celebrate this evening – the Nativity, the Incarnation, of God’s own Son, the one who brings into our world light and life, hope and love.

Through him we receive life. In him we live life to the full. Because this Child was born we know we are in God’s hands.

This Christmas Eve we are drawn together by one simple hope, one simple promise: that the love of God has shone into the world, and through this little Child, the abstract becomes real, the divine, incarnate.

The love of God becomes personal.

Because he is the Beloved Child of God, we know that we are God’s beloved children – all of us – and that is a rock-bottom identity that no one can take away from us.

God loves the world so much and the people in it so much that God freely chose to become human – to be born among us as one of us – and live in the universe, fully human and fully divine. Because God became incarnate in Jesus all creation is made holy.

Knowing Jesus is God with us, in the flesh, we know that we matter – eternally – and that what God made when God made human beings is good – good enough to be born into, good enough to live in, suffer in, and to die for; good enough to make, redeem, and make holy.

This good world was made by God, redeemed by God, and sanctified by God – made holy by God – the God whom Jesus taught us to call Abba, Our Father.

This night may we live into the mystery of the Christ Child and the joy of Christmas, knowing that we are his beloved children.

So tonight bring your gifts – the joys of your hearts, the fullness of your sorrows, the fruits of your labors, and lay them all at Jesus’ feet, and know that he will bless them and bless you – as you take up your lives again – and bless others through you as you share the love of him with them.