The Rector's Weekly Column
Rev. Victor H. Morgan
At the moment, I, along with others from our church, are busy preparing for a conference to be held here in September. The title of the conference is “Identity is Central to Purpose.”
Without a doubt this intriguing title will be fleshed out in a number of different ways by conference presenters, but in simplest terms it says: We have to know who we are in order to know where we are going. Perhaps one of the reasons the Christian Church is so weak and ineffectual today is because Christians have forgotten who they are. They have lost their unique identity.
Who are we? Well, if we are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are sons and daughters of the God. Jesus is the natural Son; we are adopted sons. More than that, what is true of Jesus is now true of us.
Allow me to expand on this last thought. On Easter morning God the Father said publicly what he had said more privately at Jesus’ baptism: “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.” In the resurrection, Jesus was vindicated. In that mighty act, both the judgment of the Jerusalem council and the Roman tribunal (the first had judged Him a blasphemer, the second, an enemy of the state) were reversed. Jesus was said to be in the right. He really was God’s beloved Son – the Messiah.
But what does this have to do with us? Well, much: what God the Father said about Jesus at His baptism and later on Easter morning, He now says about each one of us. But how? After all, we often stumble and are, in the words of the General Confession found in the Book of Common Prayer, ‘miserable offenders’. Well, it works like this: when God the Father looks at us, He sees beyond our sin-stained self and views us “in Christ”. What is true of the King - that’s Jesus - is now true of His people. Moreover, what God did for Jesus on that first Easter morning He is set to do for us. When Jesus appears the second time, we shall be publicly acknowledged and vindicated. “This really is my son or daughter” will be the verdict. That is our identity, but what about our purpose? Well, surely this one is not too hard to see. If we have been incorporated into the family of the King, we need to learn how to live in King’s family. From identity flows purpose. I once heard the story of a headmaster at a parochial school who took a boy seen clowning around in the hallway into his office. After giving him an unusually severe, almost brutal, dressing down, the boy responded: “But you can’t talk to me like that.” “Why?” said the headmaster with not a little amazement. The boy’s answer: “Because ‘I am the child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” The headmaster found himself apologising. The boy was right. He was wrong. He had forgotten not only the boy’s identity, but His own. From Identity flows purpose and right behaviour. O Lord, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. The Rev. Victor H. Morgan is rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, Blue Ridge, Georgia. Copyright St. Luke's Church
