A Sermon for St. John’s Episcopal Church
Charlestown, Massachusetts
March 5, 2017
by the Rev. Thomas N. Mousin

Matthew 4:1-11

Just who do you think you are? That is a question we often ask of another when her or she is getting too big for their britches, or acting out of turn, or trying to make us do something we do not want to do. Just who do you think you are?

Of course, tone and inflection has a lot to do with what we mean by that question. I could ask it in another way, with a different inflection: Just who do you think you are? Asked that way, it becomes not an accusation or question made in anger, but instead an inquiry, an invitation to the one being asked to consider his or her identity.

Who do you think you are?

Answers abound.  They can be quite specific: I am a priest.  Or, I am a mother.  Or, I am a boy.  Or, I am an accountant.  They can describe groups and tribes we associate with: I am a Christian. I am a Jew. I am a Mason. I am a Republican. I am a Muslim.

They can relate to some of deeper desires and passions: I am a seeker. I am a poet. I am a singer. I am a lover.  Some of us may be quite sure of who we are. But frankly, is any one of us ultimately the best person to answer that question?

Yesterday, several of us had the opportunity to attend the memorial service for Ned Carleton at St. Michael’s Church in Milton. You may recall Ned – he was a member of our parish for the last couple of years.  Ned was also a part of the Black Seed Writer’s Group at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The director of that group, James Parker, gave the eulogy. He noted that there could be a remoteness to Ned, a side effect of his difficulty in hearing. But James went on to speak of Ned’s interests and skill at being a writer. I loved one anecdote he shared:

“Ned had a number of bees in his bonnet. He abhorred cliché; he was suspicious of buzzwords; lazy language, which means lazy thinking, horrified him. He took exception to some apparently quite harmless idioms: “walk a mile in my shoes”, for example. You know the phrase: “If you want to understand me, walk a mile in my shoes.”  Wrote Ned: “It would take a much longer journey. I have been walking for 75 odd years in my shoes, and my self-understanding is far from complete.”

Just who do you think you are? Not only are the answers many, but there is a good chance that when we are quite certain we have come up with a definitive and comprehensive answer, we will, like Ned, be reminded that our self-understanding is far from complete.

If there is a time in the year when that question is most intentionally posed to us here in the church, it is during Lent. These forty days of preparation for the Easter feast are meant to be a time of self- reflection – whether we are candidates preparing for baptism, or members of the Body of Christ who have moved through this season of repentance and prayer time and time again.

The number 40 was not simply chosen by some church fathers and mothers as a good amount of time to do this. The number, of course, has deep biblical resonance. Scripture tells us that it took the Israelites a very long time to answer the question: they had forty years of wandering in the wilderness after their liberation from slavery in Egypt for them to truly learn who they were – a people called by God – before they were ready to enter the Promised Land.

And today, we hear of Jesus, trying to answer just such a question in his own life. And here too the number 40 figures. We are told that he was led by the Spirit into the desert, where he fasted for forty days and forty nights. But before we look at that wilderness sojourn, remember what comes immediately before it. Jesus is at the river Jordan, where he submits to baptism by John the Baptist. And there, after being baptized, as he came up out of the water, “the heavens were opened to him and he he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

Who do you think you are? “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” A definitive answer. Which does make this next part of the story all the more interesting. No sooner has this moment of revelation, this answer, been given to Jesus, then it is that very same Spirit that leads him out into the desert.

And there, fasting for forty days and nights, he hears no voice of God. There is only silence. And then, another voice, another voice that in effect is asking him, “Just who do you think you are?

For if you ARE the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”

“If you ARE the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple, and the angels will bear you up.”

“And if you have any doubt about what it means to be the Son of God, then worship me, and all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor will be yours.”

Jesus had been given a definitive answer about his identity in his baptism. God’s beloved child. In the desert, he would be tempted to see only that truth, and keep himself from the very real experience of every human being.  In a sense, we might say that in the desert, Jesus recognizes his vocation: Beloved Son, with whom God is pleased, and human being, in solidarity with all humanity.

So he chose not to exploit miraculous powers.

He chose not to bargain with God: if you protect me from harm, then I will follow you.

And he chose not the way of power, but of self-giving love. In a sense, Jesus time in the wilderness was where God chose to walk in our shoes, in our experience, in our humanity. Jesus learned more about who he was in his wilderness sojourn. And we are invited to do the same as we once more walk the pilgrim way of Lent.

The only difference is that in some ways, our task is the reverse of the temptation faced by Jesus. Aware that he was the beloved, he was tempted to avoid being truly human. We, of course are truly human. We know the reality of temptation. We know the reality of succumbing to it. We know of our desire to be made whole, to free ourselves from the addictions or the behaviors that harm us and harm others. We know how often we try, and how often we fail. We know those things all too well.  But do we know the other truth about who we are?

In our own baptisms, we are given an identity when we hear these words: “You are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as one of Christ’s own for ever.”

Who do we think we are? We are Christ’s own.  While the season of Lent is sometimes seen as a season of self-improvement, more essentially, it is a season of self-definition. We pray, we give alms, and we fast, not to score points with God or with our own ego, but rather because Christians have historically found these practices to draw them closer to God and to an understanding of themselves as God’s beloved children.

We are tempted to respond to the worst of human impulses: to fear the stranger and the alien, to believe that we will succeed only by exerting power, to believe that we can only define ourselves by denigrating and putting down another. It is then, in those moments, that we are invited to remember just who we are.

It’s said that when Martin Luther felt oppressed by his conscience or plagued by doubt, fear, or insecurity, he would sometimes shout out in defiance, echoing Jesus’ words today, “Away with you Satan! I am baptized!”

I don’t know the original German, but perhaps those words could be translated another way: “Away with you Satan! I know who I am!”

For those who are baptized, and for those who are preparing to be baptized, these are words to live by. And yes, if we indeed walk in the way of Jesus, they may also be words to die by. But they will be words that truly define us.

Who do you think you are? God knows. May we also.

Amen.