Rev. Dr. Joel D. Biermann
I John 3:1-3
November 6, 2016
Names are important. More than just labels, they are pieces of identity, part of what makes each of us the unique person that we are—that’s especially true of the name that was not given to you, but was simply inherited by you. The name that is yours by virtue of who your parents happened to be says something about you. Your cultural heritage and how and where you ancestors lived and worked can all be wrapped up in your family name. So, I guess it’s not surprising that people with the same family name sometimes decide to celebrate the fact by getting together for a reunion. When my wife and I are walking the circuit around Forest Park, we’ll often see them: crowds of people converging on a picnic shelter that has become the temporary home of some vast extended family. Music will be pounding, grills will be smoking, and coolers will be everywhere. On occasion they even have bounce houses and shaved ice stands—and, certainly, they all have the official family reunion t-shirt, at least the fully committed family members are easily identified by the common, usually ill-fitting, family shirt that they proudly wear. It’s been a long time since I’ve been part of a big family reunion. I suppose I might be missing out on something, but I’m not too concerned about it. I’m content with more intimate gatherings of family members and celebrations that don’t include picnic shelters, bounce houses, and t-shirts. Besides, if I ever want a big family reunion experience, I’ve got all of you, don’t I?
No, we don’t have official t-shirts this morning. And we don’t have grills and bounce houses. But, a family we are, and a reunion this is. It is, after all, All Saints Day. It’s like a family reunion or homecoming. Today, we remember the saints who have gone before—and there are a lot of them. And, today, we celebrate the saints that are still living—and there are a lot of them, too. Remember: a saint is not a perfect person. A saint is not someone who has been granted a superior status by church officials. A saint is not a person who does miracles or who never sins or who seems to be particularly spiritual and heavenly-minded. No, a saint is just a person who knows and trusts Jesus. A saint is someone who’s had her sins forgiven because she believes that Jesus lived and died and rose again to pay the price for her, making her right with God now and forever. Everyone who has faith in Christ is a saint. That makes you a saint, and that makes All Saints Day your day—well, yours and every other believer’s day, that is. In other words, it’s a great big family reunion.
That’s what we are, of course, we’re family, you and me together, we are the family of God in this place. We share a peculiar bond—much more than a feeling of kinship or camaraderie, we share a common name, a common heritage, and a common inheritance. We share all of this, because we share a common brother, and a common Father. Saints are bound together, united by family ties far stronger than the ties of DNA. Saints are the children of God. We are children of God. You are God’s own child. By God’s choice, by God’s action, and by God’s continued provision, you are who you are: a Christian, a child of God. It’s a high honor. It’s a stunning gift. It’s a real problem.
Well, at least there are times when it’s a problem. There are times when the children of God seem to be burdened by the designation or made uncomfortable by being held accountable to the name they’ve been given. You know, the “live-up-to-the-family-name” expectation. It can weigh heavily. Much is expected; and the children do not always live up to the family name they have inherited.
Certainly, that was the experience of the Old Testament believers. They were the children of Israel. Called out of Egypt, specially elected at Sinai, given God’s name, the children of Israel were the children of God—a holy nation, a chosen people, set apart from the world to be the family of God. But this status proved difficult for the people to bear. God’s call was explicit: “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” The children of Israel were hand-picked by God to be his own. They were given a name and a task that made them unlike all the other nations. They weren’t like the rest of the world. They were God’s children.
But, they betrayed that name and went back to old ways—the ways of the world. A golden calf, a full-blown idol that they made and then worshipped; perpetual dissatisfaction with God’s provision of food and water; a refusal to trust God’s plan and to rely on his conquest of Canaan on their behalf; a yearning to be like the nations all around; a choice to look like the children of the world rather than the children of God: these were the ways that God’s chosen people handled their holy status. You know the stories. The common thread through them all is the rejection of the plan of God, and the enthusiastic acceptance of the ways of the world. In name only were they children of God. In fact, they were children of the world. They were problem children.
As you consider Israel’s routine failure to live up to their name, you might be inclined to breathe a prayer of thanks that you don’t struggle with the same problems as the Old Testament children of God. We can thank God that we don’t collect gold and shape it into farm animals. We can rejoice that we receive God’s gifts with real joy and heartfelt gratitude. We don’t despise his benefits to us and we don’t disobey his direction…do we? The truth, of course, is that we are every bit as human as the Old testament children of Israel. Like them, we do succumb to idolatry, impatience, fear, and failure to follow God’s ways. The temptations may be updated, shiny, and sophisticated, but they are the same. In fact, one of the most dangerous temptations you face is the old temptation to want to look like the world around you. It’s a serious temptation. You’d rather not be odd or different. You don’t want to stand out from everyone else. Whether intentionally or not, most of us have been quite successful at blending in with the world around us. We don’t look any different than anyone else. And, that’s a problem. The Apostle John names it.
In John’s time, there was a definite and dramatic division between the church and the world. The world was dumbfounded by the church. The children of the world, bent on serving their own desires and oblivious to God’s will and purposes looked very different from the children of God who were living lives directly opposed to the norms and agenda of the world. John understood that when Christians live like Christians, they will always be out of step with the world. Christians should live such drastically selfless, humble, generous, pious, compassionate lives that the world will feel rebuked, shamed, and challenged by the very existence of such odd, non-conforming, people. That’s what John knew would happen. When people follow Christ, the world will not “get” it. The people of this world did not get Jesus—they couldn’t figure him out. His teaching, his ways, his very being threatened their comfortable, status quo, existence. So, they killed him. God’s radical way of grace and forgiveness is always a threat to a world founded on pride and self-preservation. So, those who follow Jesus, those who are God’s children, should be the same kind of people—a threat to the world, dangerous, disruptive of the social order, subversive. When John wrote, that’s what it meant to be a Christian.
Where do you fit? Do those around you feel out of step with you? Do you live in such a strangely Christian way that people wonder and worry about you? Do people describe you as one of those peculiar, odd, Christians who seem to challenge everything that the world takes for granted? It’s interesting how people can feel great pride in being known as part of Cardinal nation and will gladly, eagerly, proudly, endure endless grief from the rest of the baseball world; yet scratch their heads, or shudder at the thought of being recognized or labeled as a zealous or fanatical Christian who rejects the ways of the world. The great threat we face is not persecution; it is the temptation to blend-in. Christians are tempted to conformity and compliance, tempted to look and sound like everyone else. We give the impression that we’re just nice people who happen to believe in God and heaven, spend Sunday mornings with friends at church, tend to be socially conservative, and that’s about it. Other than some religious overtones, we’re just like every other good, solid, American pursuing the American dream, doing what everyone else does, just trying to be happy. We act more like children of the world, than children of God.
As God’s child, you should not only resist the world, you should be a threat to the world. You should be a threat to all that the world (even the American world) stands for—when it stands against God and his plan. Complicity with the world; complacency in the face of the world’s pretensions; comfort in the circles of worldly pleasure and prestige; these are the great unconfessed sins of the church, today. These are the sins for which you and I must repent. Like the children of Israel, you too have yearned to be like the nation around you. You have chosen to identify with the world, and have failed the name you have been given. You are to live up to the name God gave you; but the comfortable and easy way that you blend into the world and its ways declares a different name giving you your identity. You are a problem child, a disappointment to your Father, a disgrace. You are a problem child: not a child innocent, carefree, and full of potential; but a child helpless, hungry for approval, uncertain, selfish, dependent, needy. To be called child is not a compliment. It is a reminder of the truth of our own limits, your own neediness, your own dependence.
When you realize what God expects of you; and then recognize what you actually do in your life—when you see your failure to live like the child of God that God says you are, you can only do what broken and repentant children do: drop your gaze, hang you head, and confess your sorrow and regret for dishonoring the sacred name that you bear. Like a child before a disappointed and grieved parent, you have nothing to say: nothing but, “I failed you. I betrayed your love. I shamed your glory. I disgraced your name.”
And at that point, exactly at that point of your most bitter despair, when the searing shame burns white hot in your face, and the suffocating reproach swells into an infinite weight that threatens to crush your heart; precisely then, when all the weakness and foolishness and futility and crippling helplessness of a child flood over and through you, just then, softly and tenderly, your Father speaks your name, lifts your chin, looks you straight in the eye, and with a smile folds you to himself to surround you in his love and grace, and his warm, wonderful, wild, forgiveness. Such it is to be a child: possessing nothing, given everything. Such it is to have a father who still claims you and names you as his own. Such you are, right now…and such gifts your Father has for you. Some gifts can only be given when Christ appears and the whole creation is at last restored: resurrection, rejoicing, and the ultimate reunion—for that reunion there will be no ill-fitting t-shirts; you’ll get a robe of righteousness tailored just for you. But, of course, some gifts do come now—right now, here: membership in Christ’s body, the church, peace that sustains you through every trial, and a place set at God’s table with your name on it. Listen. He’s calling his children; God’s calling you now: “Come, dine with me. Come receive my gifts. Come, live as my child.” The saints are gathering at the rail. It’s time to feast together at the reunion meal. Amen.