Who Are We, Really?

David Orendorff · John 1:1-18 · January 21, 2007

Back in Ohio, when I was young man and I was a Youth Pastor. Every so often I would play a game with my kids. I would pick a youth and look him or her square in the eye, and ask, "Who are you?" Usually, they told me their name. And then I would say, "That’s your name. It was given to you by someone else. It tells me what you are called, but it does not tell me who you are. Who are you?" As you can imagine, High School kids really hate this game. Just three or four years into adolescence they are wrestling out “who they are?” My questioning pushed them where they were most afraid and made them feisty. So I continued to push.

Often they would tell me they were a student at Delaware High School. And I would say, "That only tells me what you do. Who are you?" They would tell me things they liked; food, people, studies, sports, movies. I would say, “I learn much about you from the things you like. But those things are not you. Who are you?"

Now very frustrated, some of my kids would give me the "What kind of idiot are you look", give up on the question, and walk away. Other kids, more introverted kids, would stay with the exercise for yet a while. But even highly introverted kids had a tough time going to the next level of self awareness. Usually, it was not because they didn’t know who they were, but because they fear who they are. Many kids, and even many adults, see themselves, at a basic level, as failures, frauds and fakes There is a poem by Christopher Morley that might help us see better:

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature’s great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee ­

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretense!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life’s queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange Divinity still kept …

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time ­
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself! 1Bradshaw, John, "Homecoming", Bantam, New York, 1990,. p. 4.

 

John Bradshaw asks in response:

What happens to this wonderful beginning when we were all ‘Poetry itself’? How do all those tender elves become murderers, drug addicts, physical sexual offenders, cruel dictators, morally degenerate politicians? How do they become the ‘walking wounded’? 2ibid. p.4-5.

 

In his autobiography Nikos Kazantzakis writes:

A thin crust has enwrapped our upward-gushing souls, immobilizing them into humps, wrinkles, and humiliating habits. This soul which longed in the acutely quavering blaze of youth to conquer the world, which felt too constricted in its splendid adolescent castle, now sits shivering in one corner of a body all shriveled and leathery. 3Kazantzakis, Nikos, Report to Greco, Bantam Books, Simon and Schuster, Inc., 1971, p. 421.

 

And Robert Fulghum writes:

I know what I really want for Christmas. I want my childhood back. Nobody is going to give me that... I know it doesn’t make sense, but since when is Christmas about sense, anyway? It is about a child of long ago and far away, and it is about the child of now, in you and me, waiting behind the door of our hearts for something wonderful to happen.4Fulghum, Robert, “All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”

 

To make matters worse there seems to be a living voice in most of us, a sort of demon child who is a part of us, but also not of us, that takes pleasure in reminding us of our failures, berating us for our fraud, making us run from ourselves and each other, saying “See, this is who you are and now everyone will know. And oh, are you going to be lonely.”

Our greatest sin is not in smoking, sex, drugs, gambling, murder or hate. These are but symptoms, signs, indicators of our true sin. Our greatest sin is to believe the voice of the demon child, to believe that we are children of the devil; to believe our souls are enwrapped in a thin leathery crust, never to soar heavenward again. To believe this lie is to deny God’s creation in and of us, is to abuse and maim our neighbor; is to break God’s heart and the joy of our souls. To believe we are first failures, frauds and fakes is to continuously be wounded in our living. To believe the demon child is to fail that child in its clear call for care. The demon child doesn’t want our belief. Like any child, this child wants our love.

As a parent, when my children were small they would throw occasional fits, saying things like, "You don’t love me" and "I don’t love you" or even "I hate you" I learned to know that what they said was not what they meant. Behind the words was a child’s desperate grasping for assurance, for attention, for care, compassion and grace. So it is with that demon child that haunts our days and can rule our nights. The demon child is begging for love.

John, and all of the early church, had a clear view of who we are. John saw that “In the beginning...,” that is, once upon a time, at the very beginning of time, and yet before time, "was the Word." We say "the Word", John says, "the Λογοσ" Λογοσ being "the reason of God, the thoughts of God, the mind of God, the wisdom of God, the love of God." Λογοσ is the intention behind the speaking, the meaning for speaking to be. John says that with God from the beginning is a loving desire to create all that is, including me, including you.

Who are we? We are the thought of God made flesh. We are the wisdom of God made real. We are the love of God incarnate. We come from God’s loving desire; we are the creation of God’s intention, the purpose of God’s creation. We are the life lived by God on earth.

John also knows that we don’t see it:

(The Λογοσ) was in the world, and the world was made through (the Λογοσ), yet the world knew (the Λογοσ) not.

And John offers a way to sanity and joy when he writes:

To all who received (the Λογοσ), who believed in the name of (the Λογοσ), (the Λογοσ) gave power to become children of God, (children) who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of humanity, but of God. 5John 1:12-13

 

We are children of God.

Paul, that great evangelist to a world in pain, tries to tell us the same thing when he writes:

All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 6Romans 8:14
And if children (of God), then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with
Christ. 7Romans 8:17

 

And as if anticipating the demon child’s fear and denial he adds:

I am speaking the truth in Christ, I am not lying. 8Romans 9:1

 

What must Paul have endured that he had to say to a people loved by God, “I am not lying.”

Who are we? We are the children of God. Not children in the sense of being childish, but children in the sense of being of the house of God, being of the family of God, being of the power of God. This is the truth, I am not lying. God is love. And we, who are made in the image of God, are also love. Who are we?

A few years ago at the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with the relish to run the race to the finish and win.

All, that is, except one boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times, and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and paused. Then they all turned around and went back, every one of them. One girl with Down’s syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, “This will make it better.” Then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line. 9Jack Canfield and mark Victor Hansen, A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul (Deerfield Beach Florida, Health Communications, Inc. 1996), p. 70

Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for 10 minutes.

Who are we? We are children of the universe, made by God’s ever living Λογοσ, made in the very image of God’s love. We are first, foremost, and forever, God’s children, divine love made flesh. Shalom and Amen.