Remember who and whose you are. I have long thought that’s a pretty good line, and I don’t know how many times I have written or spoken it since I first stumbled upon it, I don’t know how or when. Over the years, I have changed my mind about many things, but not about this line. It’s the gospel in six words. It is like another great commandment that shines through all the others. Remember who and whose you are.
The other day, I listened to an interview with Desmond Tutu, the retired Archbishop of Cape Town, and one of the great souls of our time. Recalling three hundred years of colonial oppression in South Africa and the decades of struggle against apartheid, he mentioned how he discovered that the Bible could be such dynamite. Dynamite! His laughter is so beautiful, so infectious, so full of Easter. Dynamite, he said, and “if these white people had intended keeping us under they shouldn’t have given us the Bible. Because, whoa, I mean, it’s almost as if it is written specifically just for your situation.”
The interviewer asked him for a sample of the dynamite, and he said,
“Well, it’s actually right the very first thing. I mean, when you discover that apartheid sought to mislead people into believing that what gave value to human beings was a biological irrelevance, really, skin color or ethnicity, and you saw how the scriptures say it is because we are created in the image of God, that each one of us is a God-carrier. That no matter what our physical circumstances may be, no matter how awful, no matter how deprived you could be, it doesn’t take away from you this intrinsic worth.”
And then he talked about a small parish he served in Soweto while working for the South African Council of Churches. Most of his parishioners were domestic workers in the big homes of white families in Johannesburg. It was common for the white employers never to use a black worker’s name, even though he or she worked in their home every day. Their names, they said, were too difficult. And so women would be called “Annie” and most black men would be called “boy.”
Nobody calls a grown man boy because his name is too difficult.
Nobody robs a woman of her name except to remind her that who she is is defined entirely by those who name her as they please.
And what did The Rev. Desmond Tutu tell the people in that small parish in Soweto?
I would say to them, “When they ask, ‘Who are you?’ you say, ‘Me? I’m a God-carrier. I’m God’s partner. I’m created in the image of God.’” And you could see those dear old ladies as they walked out of church on that occasion as if they were on cloud nine. You know, they walked with their backs slightly straighter. And, yeah, it was amazing.[1]
This is the dynamite that blows away the lies. This is the dyamite that reminds us who and whose we are; and all who remember begin to walk with their backs slightly straighter, and the explosive news spreads as they tell it to their sons and daughters, and cross-stitch it on the receiving blankets of children yet unborn.
See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.
On Easter morning, we baptized Sarah, Miller, Boyd, Molly, Emily, and Morgan, and as they emerged from the water we called them each by name and by the family name we share; Sarah, child of God, we said; Miller, child of God; Boyd, child of God; Molly, child of God; Emily, child of God; Morgan, child of God: you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism, and marked as Christ’s own forever.
Remember who and whose you are. We come from different places, each with our own story; we come with complex and colorful personalities, with many layers of experience and expectation, we come with the lies we have come to believe and the truths we have forgotten – and the water washes away all that could keep us from being who and whose we really are.
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Dynamite! In love God has created, named, and claimed us; that is who we are. And what will we be? Held by the same love. Forgiven by the same love. Restored and made whole by the same love. We will be like him who is fully alive in the love of God.
Nothing is more important than remembering who and whose we are. Last week, Rabbi Kliel sent me an email with a link to an article his sister-in-law had written on the occasion of Yom Ha’Shoah, also known as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Toward the end of the article she wrote,
In college, I participated each year in a communal exercise to grapple with both the hugeness of the Shoah and its individual impact. Each year on Yom Ha’Shoah, we organized volunteers to read the names of the victims, in the middle of campus, for 24 consecutive hours. During my sophomore year, I took the 3 a.m. shift, and stood in front of the library in the dark, chilly April night, reading names into the quiet emptiness. In the midst of this rhythm, I stopped suddenly, my stomach sinking, my breath catching. For there it was: my own name. I have no idea who that Judith Rosenbaum was, where she was from, or how old she was when she died. Perhaps she was a relative, perhaps not. But I do know that reading her – our – name changed me. It brought me into the story in a new way.[2]
I just sat there after reading that paragraph, trying to imagine what it was like for Judith to find her own name among the names of the victims. Then I thought about how much of my life has been about finding myself in that story that is mine whether I want it or not. I saw myself standing in a dark, chilly night, reading name after name into the quiet emptiness, only I wasn’t honoring the memory of the millions who died by speaking their names; I was reading the names of the millions who pretended not to see, not to know, not to be responsible, and I asked for answers. And I tried to imagine what finding my own name among them would be like.
Yom Ha’Shoah was on Thursday, and in the evening, Nancy, Miles, and I were guests at a Passover Seder at the Jewish Community Center. We sat at table with Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We told the story of God’s liberation of Israel from slavery, we said the blessings, we ate the matzah, we drank the wine, we opened the door for Elijah, and we sang the songs. I don’t know what that evening meant to all the others, but I knew I was sitting at table with the healing mercy of God. It was a taste of the world to come.
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
We all come from different places, each with our own story; we come with complex and complicated personalities, with layers of experience and expectation, we come with the lies we have come to believe and the truths we have forgotten. Sin has a way of breaking us, all of us. Sin distorts how we relate to God and to ourselves, to other human beings and to our fellow creatures. Sin breaks what love makes, but greater than the power of sin is love’s power to renew, redeem, and restore. See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are and were always meant to be. We are children in the household of God, brought together not in patterns of our own making, but in the image and likeness of Christ. The patterns of our life together will not forever be defined by the walls of fear, prejudice and hate or the abyss of apathy between us and them, but by the love of God who makes all things new.
The more fully we remember who and whose we are, the more fully we will embody the kindness and courage of Jesus. We will laugh with the Archbishop; we will cry with Judith; we will walk in the company of those dear old ladies, and we will tell our children, all our children, that they are God’s own.
[1] http://being.publicradio.org/programs/2012/tutu-god-of-surprises/transcript.shtml
[2] Judith Rosenbaum, Strange, Inconceivable Fire: Leviticus and Holocaust Remembrance Day http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/judith-rosenbaum/strange-inconceivable-fire-leviticus-and-holocaust-remembrance-day_b_1429812.html?icid=hp_religion_dl_art