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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
Easter — 16 April 2006Col.3:1-4“Identity Theft”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
It's an ironic fact of modern life that the same technology that brings new benefits for consumers also provides new opportunities for crooks!
Thus, if you go onto the Internet to pay your bills and buy things, you become vulnerable to fraud. Thieves can pick up your credit card numbers and your Social Security number and all sorts of personal information about you. They can then use this information to purchase items for themselves. In other words, on the Internet, the thief becomes you.
Last year, some nine million Americans were victims or identity theft in one form or another. I myself was a victim; criminals in Europe somehow got the number of an old credit card I hadn't used in a long time and they started making purchases with it.
The credit card company then tried to call me. Unfortunately, I kept ignoring the phone calls because I thought the calls themselves were fraudulent! Eventually, I confirmed that I hadn't made the charges and I was assigned a new number.
I was lucky. Internet hackers can create such a convincing phantom version of you that your old ID's are worthless: you have to get a new social security number; you have to re-establish who you are.
Now while this new form of crime is a great inconvenience to those who are afflicted by it, it can provide a helpful image of the difference Easter makes. Christians believe that on Easter Day, God raised Jesus from the dead.
Yet, for Christians, the supreme miracle of Easter isn't only about Jesus. Easter is also about us.
For Christ's resurrection announces our own resurrection. As St. Paul says, "you have been raised with Christ;" so "your life is hidden with Christ in God."
God raised Jesus from the dead. God will then someday raise us from the dead. And in raising us up, God makes us his own.
In a miracle of divine power, God steals our old identity! We are "hidden with Christ in God."
Our old mortal selves are seized by God's grace, and we are made into the new persons God wants us to become, bound for eternal life with him. As St. Paul also wrote, "When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory."
And, unlike technological identity theft, spiritual identity theft couldn't be more welcome. Especially for people today. For, Internet issues aside, modern people often seem strangely uncertain about what makes them who they are.
At one of our Lenten classes a few weeks ago, I mentioned an interview I had just given. I had spoken with a researcher who worked for a large advertising agency. The woman is a friend of one of my sons, and she was doing research on the views of typical "senior citizens."
She began by asking me what I valued most in life. She asked me how I felt about health, and about growing old.
Then, as the hour drew to a close, she asked me my feelings about Total cereal! From the meaning of life to cereal: for the ad agency, what I ate for breakfast was critical to who I was as a person.
But, of course, my identity as a human being goes far beyond my dietary habits. Who I am can't be captured by an ad agency survey.
St. Paul got it right: at the deepest level, we are "hidden."
This hidden part of ourselves is our true self. What is traditionally called, the "soul." Who we are in God's eyes–the best part of us, the eternal parts.
This self can't be captured in ID numbers or passwords or consumer surveys. It can't be captured by a journalist or by a resume.
Nor can your true self be taken over by other people. Your true self can't be taken over by your boss, or your teacher, or even your friends. They might try to influence you, but ultimately, there's a part of you that no one can reach.
Granted, there is a negative side to this essential privacy of the human soul. Having a hidden self can be annoying; because people may not understand you.
They may think they've figured you out. But they haven't, and you'll need to convince them that they're wrong — that you're really not the person they think you are.
But if your inner self is sometimes hard to convey to others — well, that fact is also reassuring. For it means that your true self won't be stolen by the people who try to push you around. What's hidden with God is safe with God.
Safe with God and free. Free from the domination of our number-crunching, manipulating culture.
For when Christ rose from the dead, he broke the bonds that tie us to the physical world. In Christ, we can't be reduced to numbers — or for that matter to gender or race or nationality.
None of these characteristics makes an eternal difference. Being risen with Christ, our identities have been taken by God.
That is why Easter matters to us in this life as well as after death. We no longer have to worry about "who we are!"
And isn't this a relief? For not only do people try to fit us into the identity they think we should have–we do the same thing!
So, for example, you might try to be the highest achiever at the office. Or you might see yourself as always the life of the party. Or you might identify yourself as a wise counselor.
There's nothing wrong with such ambitions in themselves. They only become a problem when you give them an importance in your soul that they don't deserve.
That's why Christians also look for guidance from the Spirit of God. They don't trust others to define them and they don't trust their own ideas of who they are. They let themselves be tested by the Spirit.
So the person who sees himself as the life of the party might really be called to be a friend to only one person at the party who is going through a rough time. The "counselor" might do better loaning a few dollars instead of trying to dispense advice.
Giving our identity issues to God, then, is liberating. When we are with Christ in God, we no longer have to worry about who we are.
We can leave the ID cards in the wallet. God knows us in our inner selves. God pardons the bad in us, God strengthens the good in us.
And God makes us into the persons we are meant to be, today, and forever.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.