Who Am I?

Brendan Murphy on January 17, 2023

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, RCL A
January 15, 2023

Perhaps you have noticed that personality tests are all the rage. Almost everyday online, and in magazines, I see ridiculous quizzes that claim by choosing between various vegetables, it can tell you what kind of reader you are – or something like that. Conversations with colleagues in religion(or other caregiving, world repairing professions) toss around Enneagram numbers (1-9) and Meyers Briggs four-letter combos (I’s and F’s and S’s and P’s) like it is a bizarre form of bingo. We can also, in all seriousness, even self identify our Hogwarts houses. Then there are whole corners of the internet devoted to these subjects, and their cross fertilization: what MBTI types are in what houses? (And they can be right on the nose! Why is that??) You can find graphics with Enneagram typing by desserts and beverages,and the typing of fictional creatures, everything from the Austen characters to Disney villains. All of that is a search, rooted in the same question of our texts today: Who am I? Who am I created to be by God, why do I struggle with my neighbor, who can I become, and how does that relate to community, freedom, and purpose?

The most popular personality tests may not be as ancient, or holy, or rigorous, or non-fictional as sometimes suggested, but they do continue to help us see ourselves and communicate strands of truth about our relationships. Some people are adventurers and others helpers, we all have different needs for interaction and organization, or not. Understanding something about our motivations and shapings – by nurture and by nature

– all of which are in God’s hands – can be liberating, especially when we approach it not as predestination,

but as hints and mercies for how we work out our role in this sacred story.

Every person in our texts today had a personality, a life that was echoes of several generations, and an expression of biology and psycology, and an encounter with what we think of as history, but was their reality.

The Isaian prophets, and their intended audiences, had loves and losses, tastes and tendencies. Paul certainly did, he may be the biblical person we have the most personality information about. We know much of his journey through the question of ‘who am i’. Jesus knew Simon – deeply. Later tradition assumes he knew him from the before the beginning began, and here called him the Rock – a personality nick name. Steadfast, been through heat and pressure, (perhaps thick-headed), and slow to change without a strong external force. John, Jesus, Andrew, Simon,and all the unnamed women and children and strangers who surround these gospel scenes, they had diverse needs and styles and characteristics – a rainbow of God’s children.

The gospels all agree that Andrew and Simon were fishermen. Were they fishermen because they enjoyed long days on a temperamental lake? Because mending nets gave them energy,and/or because it is what their fathers and uncles did? Or was that just the prelude to their answer to ‘who am I’? And did they leave their nets and follow Jesus because it was living into selves they had learned to ignore, or was their u-turn much like the sudden righteous wandering that maybe an aunt did? The day before they met John the baptizer: what were they struggling to understand as they made their commute? Maybe they labored through their tasks, because it didn’t hurt too much, and kept bread in their bellies. And then in the mystery of Jesus, did the discord of the warm up become harmony? These guys begin as followers; with no training for the mission that they began to claim that day. They became leaders – not because they knew what they were doing when they stood up,

but because they put one foot in front of the other.

‘Who Am I’ is a perennial question with sometimes ever changing replies. Our monthly movie this month, Wall-E, is very much about this vocational journey answering ‘who am I’? It is interesting how sentient robots

are a hearty vehicle for our questions of meaning and purpose. And, I didn’t plan it this way, but our book group selection this month, Pride and Prejudice, is also substantially about this same journey of matching the real self with purpose in our contexts. The answer to the question of ‘Who am I’ is that we are persons whose very selves and actions are intended to workout the will of God. Everyday we face an playlist of choices and possibilities, and only when the blinding noise of the status quo is silenced is there possibility of answering faithfully ‘who am I’. Only when we pay attention enough to loosen the grip of the systems that bury all but the royals in mud, only when we let go of their nonsense and embrace who God made us to be, are we free from sin drenched disaster. Getting to the honest center of who we are, desiring what God desires for us keeps us centered on that center, which is the will of God, and it is a will and purpose and meaning that demands a loving response. And it is this response that strives for the reign of God. ‘Who am I’ – you are beloved of God, whether it be peacemaker or reformer or loyalist. What am I to do – you are to strive for heaven on earth.

So I wonder – if any of you have ever taken a serious or helpful personality test?

Did you start it thinking it was malarkey and did that change?

How did it speak to you of discord and harmony, right and wrong,

Who am I and what am I to do?

There is a strange series of novels where main characters of novels are kidnapped (Thursday Next) – Jane Eyre not being in Jane Eyre is a complete disaster not only for the original book, but in the novel, a disaster for the world – far and wide. Not being who we are to be, in the pages of the book of life we are given, is a disaster.Personality tests and novels and life together as the church, can help us steer away from complacency

And discover the good news of who we really are and locating ourselves in our role in this story. Whether it be extroverts or Hufflepuffs or romantics, we are loved by God, shaped by God, and sent by God. Not to another time or place or story, but to this one. This week may we ask three questions: