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August 14, 2011
DOUBLE-CHECKING YOUR NAMETAG
Up until the day he died, Bob had a problem. He wasn’t quite sure who he was.
For forty years he had known quite clearly who he was … and if he were to have ever forgotten all he needed to do was walk down the street and there would be scores of people who would tell him who he was. And they would. They would actually approach him and say, “You’re ….” And they would tell him his name. Now they wouldn’t say,
“You’re Bob.” --- because that’s not how people knew Bob. They knew him by a different name … by a different title. They would see him in his Dutch boy haircut and his mustache … and maybe even in his broad jacket with marsupial type pockets … and they would go up to him and say, “Why … you’re Captain Kangaroo.” And both adult and child alike would extol a great fondness for this man who met them every weekday morning along with his pals bunny rabbit, Mr. Moose, Dancing Bear and, of course, Mr.
Green Jeans.

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But you know what? For the last 25 years of his life Bob Keeshan, despite how much wanted to be, couldn’t be Captain Kangaroo anymore. Not only did they cancel his show back in 1984 … but further back in 1969 when he was a little short on cash … Bob
Keeshan sold his rights to the name and character of Captain Kangaroo … he sold his rights to Captain Kangaroo to some big entertainment agency who never allowed Captain
Kangaroo to be Captain Kangaroo anymore. So Bob Keeshan had to become Bob
Keeshan for the rest of his life. “You’re Captain Kangaroo,” people would say. And Bob would legally have to say back to them, “No, I’m Bob Keeshan. Captain Kangaroo – the one you woke up to in the morning and entertained you and taught you and made you laugh and made you wonder – that Captain Kangaroo doesn’t exist anymore. I am no longer what I once was.”
I am no longer what I once was.
So who are you? That is to ask … who are you beyond your name? Those of you who carry a business card … what does it say on that little piece of paper about who you are? Account manager, vice-president, computer programmer, systems engineer, regional supervisor, administrative assistant … or if you don’t have one of those little cards … what do other people call you? Mom, dad … husband, wife … son, daughter … teacher

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… coach … committee member … customer … patient … resident … social security number 491-88-2754?
Who are you?
In this day and age of downsizing, rightsizing, early retirement, changing families, computer bar codes --- it may be that it’s getting harder and harder to know who you are.
And how often it is that I talk to people who have been suddenly downsized or rightsized or outsized or given the golden parachute into early retirement --- and it has left them to wonder who they are … with no title to put to their little card --- they wonder what’s life supposed to be for them. Moms and dads sometimes feel the same way when the kids leave the nest. Preachers feel it when they no longer have their pulpit.
So who has given you your title? Your purpose in life? And do they have the power to take it away? Sort of like ol’ Bob Keeshan … have you sold the essence of who you are to the highest bidder who within a moment can tell you are no longer who you thought you were? I am no longer what I once was.
Who are you?

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It’s a question I think Ezra is asking as we make our way toward the end of this important book – the people of God have returned to their homeland and they are attempting to rebuild the temple, rebuild their capital city, rebuild their homes, rebuild their lives. But the region is full of other peoples. People who do not share what is most important to them – namely their identity as the people of Yahweh – the people of the
God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the people who wandered the wilderness and received the law. The people of the Ten Commandments and the parting Red Sea. The people of the Temple. This is who they are. But now Ezra is realizing that this identity may not mean as much to them anymore because now the people of God are comingling with the people of the land. They are inter-marrying. They are becoming cross-cultural.
Now these days we don’t think cross-cultural is such a bad thing. The world has gotten pretty small. Marriage happens across racial and ethnic and religious lines all the time.
We don’t give much thought to it. But for the people of the exile – returning to their home – there was a lot at stake in maintaining who you were. Because who you were implied a relationship with God … and it implied a certain way you lived. So when Ezra learns of all this comingling and inter-marriage – he is mortified because the people may forget who they are. And there is a lot at stake in remembering who you are.
Do you remember who you are? Have you checked recently your nametag?

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Will Willimon speaks of when he was in high school every time he would leave home to do something at night – go out on a date, go to a party, horse around with some friend – his mother would always say farewell with the words: “Don’t forget who you are.” Willimon writes: “You know what she meant. She did not mean that I was in danger of forgetting my name or street address. She meant that, alone on a date, in the midst of some party, in the presence of some strangers, I might forget who I was. I might lose sight of the values with which I have been raised, answer to some alien name, engage in some unaccustomed behavior. ‘Don’t forget who you are,’ was her maternal benediction as I left home.”
Don’t forget who you are.
So the apostle John in his first letter to the New Testament community he is addressing says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are … Beloved, we are God’s children now …”
See what love the Father has given us? We get to be the children of God. Isn’t that amazing? We didn’t earn it. We didn’t apply for it. We didn’t win the lottery for it.
We didn’t save enough money for it. God the Father out of his love … calls us his children. The blessing has gone to the four corners of the word – God in Jesus Christ

6 wants to claim us as his children. He wants to put that nametag on us – “Hello, my name is … Child of God.” He wants this to be our identity. That of all the things that people might want us to be – God says … I want you to be my child. I want you to breath as my child. I want you to think as my child. I want you to walk as my child. I want you to act as my child. In other words, I want you to wake up every morning with the deepest sense of my love for you. I want you to be able to say that no matter what might happen, no matter what people might think of me, no matter what they might call me – I am nothing less than a child of God.
You see, that’s where the real life begins. When we take as our real identity … the fact that we are children of God … and we are children of God … because of the Father’s love. It is who we are … before we are anything else … we are the people who know that God is real and God is powerful and God is our Father in heaven and the Father loves us. God doesn’t want us to be his children so he can control us and order us around and obligate us. God wants us to be his children … solely because he loves us. And so when you are a child of God who you are is defined by that love. What you do is done out of that love.
You remember the Wizard of Oz and good old Dorothy and the scarecrow and the tin man and the lion … and they’re all on their way to the Wizard looking for something.

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Heart. Brain. Courage. Home. Through dangers, toils and snares they go … and they finally reach the Wizard and they discover that he has no power to grant them anything.
Instead he tells them that what they were looking for was already within their grasp … heart, brain, courage and home. I wonder with all the things we strive to become if what we are really after … is an unshakable sense of who we are. We want someone to give us our heart … our brain … our courage … our home. From early on we try to acquire our identity. We hope we can find it in people, position, power. But the truth is … identity is not acquired. It is to be given. And only God can give it. Only the one who knit us together in our mother’s womb has the ability to give us identity. And it is this God in
Jesus Christ who says, “I’ll tell you who you are … you are a child of God … you are the object of my love. This is your identity.”
That tomorrow morning when you head off to work … or to school … or when you stay at home … you get to say to yourself … before I am anything today … I am a child of God. And that being a child of God will inform everything I do. It will inform the deals I make. It will inform the way I treat people. It will determine how I use my money. The things I purchase. What I watch on TV. “Beloved, you are God’s children now,” writes the apostle. It’s almost as if we’re being told that we’re in a different family now. And, of course, we are. It’s what our baptism is all about.

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It was Jeff Jowett who said, “The real measure of our wealth is how much we’d be worth if we lost all our money.” And, of course, that’s the point of being a child of God.
We inherit the love and grace of God which gives us more worth than anything we could strive for ourselves.
Remember that great line at the end of A Death of a Salesman , the family of Willie
Lowman is gathered at his grave. Willie has lived a salesman’s life, going from account to account, deal to deal … trying to make something of himself. He’s disappointed all the important people in his life … most of all himself. He meets a tragic death and his son Biff stands over the grave and says, “He never knew who he was.” A lot of people are wandering around wondering the same question, “Who am I?” Checking and
Double-checking their nametag to see if it is someone they recall. In a couple weeks freshmen will be heading off to college … leaving home for the first real time. They will hear from professors things they’ve never heard before, they will have late-night discussions that they’ve never had before, they will experiment with things they’ve never experimented with before, they will try on this nametag and that nametag – nametags they’ve never claimed before. And it is all in the effort to figure out who am I? Or maybe more importantly, Whose am I?

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Interesting isn’t it – how compelled we feel to find our identity out there somewhere --- most often from strangers -- when likely long ago it was already given to us. When at some point the Holy Spirit led our parents, or maybe even ourselves, up to the font of baptism … drew us to the edge of the baptismal waters … and with the waters of grace trickling down our faces we were told – that we were children of the covenant.
Children of God. This is how much the Father loves us. We need not look any further to find out who we are.
An important person in my life died this past week. Senator Mark Hatfield, U. S.
Senator from Oregon. He was 89 years old. He had served in the Senate for 30 years. In college I had invited Senator Hatfield to be the keynote speaker at a Convention I was responsible for. I had invited him because of the kind of man I knew he was. He was unashamed of his Christianity as he sought to serve our country. He was guided by what he believed Jesus would do. When he arrived to speak we had the chance to talk and my conversation with him had a lot to do with my decision to enter seminary. His encouragement to enter church leadership was a big factor in my deciding to pursue the ministry. Senator Hatfield made it clear in his career that before he was an American, before he was Republican, before he was a politician – he was a disciple. Throughout his entire career he continued to take positions informed less by his party’s platform or

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All this because, at an early age Mark Hatfield discovered the love of the Father.
He learned early that he was a child of God. And he lived out of that identity. In his great book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place, he wrote: “Power and prestige could not be the goals which gave my life a sense of direction or purpose. Those values had to be relinquished if my commitment was to be authentic. The purpose of my life is to be faithful to Jesus Christ, to follow his way, and to be molded according to the imprint of his life.”
Molded according to his imprint on my life.
There are lots and powers and persons that want to mold us according to their imprint. It happens from the very beginning. But what happened at the very, very beginning was that the Creator knit you together and imprinted his image upon you. And then claimed you again in Jesus Christ. Loved you even when you wanted to sell the rights to the highest bidder.

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But these rights are never sold. Never sold. See what love the Father has for us?
That we shall be called … shall always be called … children of God.