Blarg!
John 3:14-21; Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 107:1-3,17-22; Numbers 21:4-9
Have you ever noticed that the conversation when two people first meet is nearly always the same? It usually, at least among men-folk since that’s my point of reference, something along these lines: “Hello, I don’t think I know you, I’m Mike.” “Hello, Mike, no we haven’t met before. I’m [whoever].” “Nice to meet you, [whoever]. What do you do?”
Now we’ve already gotten to the important part. Almost immediately, as if our identity is tied to it (which it kind of is in a lot of folk’s minds), the question turns to what one’s job is. Now for me, that usually means that the person who I was talking to starts treating me quite a bit differently from the third interaction on, once they know I’m a pastor. For most people, however, it’s just part of the greeting process. What someone does is closely tied to how we view identity.
This actually isn’t a particularly new phenomenon either. Look at the way our culture deals with surnames. Sometimes they’re regional — mine is from the region of Galicia in Poland; sometimes they’re patronymic, meaning they’re based on who’s son (or, less often, daughter) you are — Johnson, Andersen, O’Conner, Ivanovich. Just as often our surnames are occupational: Smith, Thatcher, Miller, Taylor. Occupation is so tied to identity that when the surname started to come into being, it was a natural way to identify people.
And yet, at least in this day and age, employment isn’t near as static as it used to be. Whereas in the middle ages if you father was a blacksmith you were a blacksmith, today the occupation of your parents matters very little, in fact even the kind of job you started your working years in isn’t likely the same kind of job you end with. Yet this question of what you do is still very important to us.
This focus on employment and identity often distracts us from another important part of our identity, our relationship with God. Our gospel lesson is the last part of a conversation Jesus was having with a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who you could call a pastor, about identity. Nicodemus wants to know who Jesus is, but Jesus ends up telling Nicodemus more about who Nicodemus is than who Jesus is.
First Jesus reminds Nicodemus of a rather obscure historical event recorded in Numbers: the bronze snake. See, the people of Israel had been complaining about, well, everything, so God sent snakes to remind them not to speak ill of Himself. Then they, somewhat sheepishly, went up to Moses and asked him to pray to God to have mercy on them. God’s replay was to make a metal snake and put it up on a pole, then whoever is bitten by the poisonous snakes could look at it and live. Jesus, tying that event to his own crucifixion, is reminding Nicodemus that the person who looks to Him will not die because of sin, but instead live.
Now that seems like a much more significant aspect of our identity than our occupation. As humans we are sinners, but as followers of Christ we are forgiven. In Ephesians, Paul expands on this. He writes, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world… but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.”
Paul is speaking about two aspects of our identity as followers of Christ: we are dead because of our sin, but alive because of Christ. Yet, as Paul continues, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — not by works, so that no one can boast[, for] we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
There’s a lot that tells us about ourselves — we are made by God, and saved by grace through faith and not ourselves, to do good works, which God prepared for us to do. We too often forget that part when we think of our identity in Christ. We’re not saved to sit in a pew and feel good about ourselves, we’re saved to do as Christ did — to love God and neighbor and to go out and make disciples.
That is our identity: followers of Christ and children of God. It’s more than an occupation or who our father is; wherever we go, whatever we do, we show others what God is like by how we act — by doing His will.