TEXT: 1 John 3:1-3

Luke 24:36-48
36 While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."37 They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.38 He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?39 Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have."40 And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.41 While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?"42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish,43 and he took it and ate in their presence.
44 Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you-that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled."45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,46 and he said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.48 You are witnesses of these things.

1 John 3:1-7
1 See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.2 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.3 And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.

MESSAGE:

Do you know who you are? Sure, we all know our names, but who are you? For some of us that can be a difficult question. Some of us would perhaps answer it in terms of what we do for a living. Others would identify ourselves by our education, or by our hobbies/obsessions. Others in terms of our personality type, and still others in terms of our family relationships.

How we come to understand ourselves-who we are-has a tremendous impact on the way in which we accept ourselves and in turn, accept and relate to others. Some people have such a high opinion of themselves that they are like hot air balloons with the burners going full blast, and others have such a low opinion of themselves that they could be scrapped off the sidewalk with a pancake turner.

"So, David," you ask, (you were going to ask weren't you?) "who are you?"

I'm glad you asked. I am a child. Oh, some of you thought that you knew that about me already, and have hoped that I would grow out of it. Well, frankly, I have been a child for some time and trust that I will always be one. However, I can't honestly say that I have always enjoyed being identified as a child.

Regardless of how old I may now be, I will always be regarded by my mother as her first born, her child. For more years than I care to recall I bristled at her reminding me of that fact. "I'm not a child," I would snap-whether verbally or by my actions, "I'm a grown adult and it's time you treat me like one." Then I would go off and pout.

Much of my identity and yours-for good or ill- through the years has developed as a direct understanding of who we are as children of our parents. Now as a parent for 21 years, that has become a frightful thought to me. If being the child of Jay and May Waugh shaped so much of who I am today, then what have I been and done as a father which has shaped my own children in both positive and negative ways? In my own case, as perhaps in most of yours, my parents did a pretty good job. Sure they made mistakes, but understanding myself as a child of Jay and May Waugh has given me a good solid place upon which to build my own particular identity. The security of growing up knowing that you are the child of someone who loves you goes a mighty long way to the development of a healthy understanding of who you are. Everyone has not been so blessed.

We are reminded daily in either conversations with persons or through articles in the newspapers that the identities which some parents pass on to their children are not always pleasant pictures. Sometimes, it is the dagger of a sinister word cutting to the heart. Sometimes it is the iciness of cold neglect freezing the heart. Sometimes, it is burning hatred searing the soul. Children are rejected, verbally abused, starved, physically molested, and even murdered by parents every day. For those who survive, their identities have been warped by those who call the victim "my child." As with all of us, such persons desperately need to know that they are children of someone who loves them if they are ever come to understand themselves as persons of worth.

But regardless of who our earthly parents are or have been, regardless of how good a job they did or didn't do, one of the great truths of the Christian faith is that God has chosen to relate to us with the love of a self-sacrificing parent for a beloved child. And although there are Christians out there who would like for us to believe otherwise, God is not like those mothers and fathers who will berate or belittle us with "don't you know what you cost me? Now make me happy and tow my line."

John wrote to that early group of Christians who were struggling with their identity, "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are."

For sure that means many things about our relationship to God and to others which we can not take time this morning to enumerate, but at least I want to remind us of a few things that it does mean for us.

There are many ways in which we try to win the love of another person, and for some, the love of a parent. We believe that if we do "thus and so" then the desired individual will at least accept us-if not love us. Regardless of whether or not such a plan will work in human relationships (and most often it doesn't), that is not the basis of God's love for us. On another occasion John wrote, " We love him because he first loved us." That means that we are of divine origin, that we bear a divine likeness in that we have been created in the very image of God, and as such we are the objects of God's divine love. We are not mistakes or afterthoughts or attempts to keep a marriage together or whims to try to stave off boredom.

We are the result of God's immeasurable love. If you love or have loved at all, then you know how difficult it can be to describe the amount of love which you have for someone else. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians his desire that they would "be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge."

To attempt to comprehend this, think for a moment of "beholding the sun." How can you fathom its power? For that matter you can not even stare straight at the sun for long without doing damage to you eyes unless they are shielded by some form of eye protection even though it is millions of miles away. You can know something of the power of the sun by feeling its heat, seeing what its light reveals and seeing something of its effect on life. But you cannot "behold" the sun in its full effect.

In order to behold the love of God, you must see what it has done. In Jesus Christ we have seen God's love for us. A love which does not shrink from sacrifice, which is not evoked by any form of lovableness on our part, which sighs for recognition and longs to see its likeness in us, and which will not be put off by sinfulness. "Behold what manner of love!"

This love has brought those who trust in God's incarnate act of redemptive love through Jesus to a place where we might boldly claim to be children of God simply because God has declared it so. We can claim the birth of having been born of God. As such, we love God as parent, and we in turn are to reflect God's character by living lives of righteousness. That doesn't mean that we always behave like a child, but it does mean that we always remember whose child we are.

There is both a present and future reality associated with being a child of God. You are a child of God and that cannot be taken away from you. It is a present fact for the Christian. Yet, you have not become all that you will be-"like Christ." "We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him…." Can you imagine for a moment what it would mean to be like Christ in the world in which we live and in the relationships which you have. Mr. or Ms. Maturity. Mr. or Ms. Perfection.

Well, maybe that does sound a bit fetched, but the reality is that we do begin to reflect the personality, the character traits, the mannerisms of those with whom we live in intimate contact. Well meaning folk used to tell me that I was getting to be more and more like my mother and father every day. As a teenager that was not an encouraging word for me as my Dad was 5'2" with a size 4 shoe and a big nose. I used to check myself out in the mirror pretty regularly just to reassure myself that I did not physically look like my Dad. But his personality, the love and compassion which he and mother shared for others, their commitment to God's call on their lives-those were traits worthy of reflecting.

Similarly, as we live in intimate relationship with God as child to loving parent, we begin to reflect the character of our brother Jesus to the world around us. Our union with Christ by faith makes us righteous, loving and just. In street slang, we are "righteous dudes."

In the "in between time" we stumble, and then move ahead, and even sometimes backwards and then grow some more as we develop and mature in our privileges and responsibilities as children of God.

There are numerous images used in the scripture to describe our relationship with God-people of God, sheep, lost, found, slave, servants, wanderers, disciples, a body and at times sundry body parts. But two of my favorites are used by John. One to which we will turn our attention when I get back from Zimbabwe describes our relationship to Jesus as "friend." The other is this one. We are assured that our relationship to God is that of a loving, nurturing parent to a deeply loved child.

Perhaps I have something of a "Peter Pan Syndrome," but I hope that I never lose all of the joy, wonder and trust that comes with being a child, especially being a child of God. I do not believe that one could want more security in knowing who they are than to know that. Trusting upon Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord is not some fairy tale Tinkerbell sprinkling magic glitter in the air over your head. Trusting Jesus is claiming the identity of your parentage-you are a child of God.

Clarence Jordan once said: "Faith is not belief in spite of the evidence; that's not faith but foolishness. Faith is life lived in scorn of the consequences." That statement indicates that we are to follow a better image of ourselves-an image which is ours as children of God-rather than believing the identities which would puff us up or level us flat. We may not know what we will be. That has not yet been fully revealed. But for now, go and enjoy being so with all of the privileges and responsibilities associated with your name-Christian.

PRAYERS:

In times of doubts and questionings, when our belief is perplexed by new learning, new teaching, new thought, when our faith is trained by creeds, by doctrines, by mysteries beyond our understanding, give us the faithfulness of learners and the courage of believers in you. Give us boldness to examine and faith to trust all truth. Patience and insight to master difficulties, stability to hold fast our tradition with enlightened interpretation to admit all fresh truth made known to us, and in times of trouble to grasp new knowledge readily and to combine it loyally and honestly with the old. Alike from stubborn rejection of new revelations, and from hasty assurance that we are wiser than our parents.

Save us and help us, we humbly ask of you, O Lord.

Benediction:

Go out into your neighborhood,
workplace or school,
extending the kingdom to the lost, poor and broken,
announcing the good news that in Christ,
the God of Love and Mercy has declared that all may be
Children of God.