Matthew 5:14-16 and John 1:29-42
There are some television shows Susanne and I want to preview before Katherine watches them. Sometimes it’s the show itself and sometimes it’s the commercials during the show. You may remember last fall I shared about a terrific movie we previewed about a spelling bee: Akeela and the Bee. I remember someone saying once that PBS was the only channel they would let their children watch by themselves. We want to see what Katherine is watching and so when the new season of American Idol began this week Susanne and I watched it after Katherine went to bed.
You may already know that American Idol is a nation-wide talent search for one individual, who will become a pop star. We hadn’t paid much attention to it until last year, when Katherine wanted to watch it. The season begins with auditions in a few American cities and a cross-section of America shows up for these—many with talent and many more with no talent at all. From these auditions people are selected to move onto the next step in the competition.
A young lady who was auditioning shared with the judges that she does impressions of famous singers. They asked her do one of her impressions, which they thought sounded very good. And then they said, now let us hear your voice. She started singing again, but they recognized it as another impression. They stopped her and said we want to hear you. She paused and then began singing again and this time it was her own voice. The judges listened to her and then complimented her saying that her own voice was better than her impressions of other singers. They moved her on to the next level of the competition.
How often are we like that young lady doing an impression for others? Or to ask that another way, do you do different impressions of yourself for the people around you?
I don’t mean characterize that in every case as wrong. Sometimes it’s necessary and practical. You’ve been up all night with a sick child and you’re exhausted, you feel lousy, and you still have to make that presentation to your coworkers. You’ve gotten terrible news that morning about a loved one and you still have to meet with prospective clients that morning. You run into a neighbor at Kroger’s and you say everything’s fine even though almost nothing right now is fine.
We all know what it’s like to show the world something on the outside that’s different than what’s on the inside. Some of us are good at it and some of us are only good at it some of the time. Maybe you want to keep things private or you worry about burdening someone else with your problems, or you’re uncomfortable when the spotlight is on your troubles.
There are a couple of things Jesus said that I think speak to this. The first happened when Andrew took his brother Simon to meet Jesus. Andrew had been a disciple of John the Baptist and that’s how he first meets Jesus. The reading from John is early in Jesus public ministry, and it’s John (the gospel writer’s) account of the first time Jesus meets these two fishermen brothers. Jesus’ first words to Simon are these: “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas,” which John reminds us means Peter.
John Calvin writes that Jesus gave Simon the name Peter because of what he would become not because of his past accomplishments or failures. He would become the leader of the early church. Peter is Greek for rock.
Jesus does the same for us. As followers of Jesus we too are given a new identity, and everything else about us is secondary to that name Christian. Paul writes about this. He writes that in Christ everything is new and all things have passed away. A modern-day way of saying this might be: what part of new don’t you understand?
Like Simon Peter, you and I are now identified by our future in Christ. And that means our best self is not the impression we do of the person with everything put together or the impression of the happy person or the confident, secure, worry-free, strong person. Our best self is the new creation we have become in Christ.
When a community of faith can come together and recognize that we are all followers of Jesus and who don’t have to do impressions for each other as put-together, nothing’s-wrong-here people then we have begun to mature not only as Christians but as a community of Christians. When we can do that, then we are what Jesus called the light of the world.
You are the light of the world, Jesus said. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on a lamp stand so that it gives light to all in the whole house. I hear this as a challenge to let go of the impression we do in life, which are the bushel baskets that hide the light. The light is our true self in Christ shining into the world. I hear this as a call to authenticity—authenticity before God and with each other.
Generally when people are good at impressions, they are asked to do them, or they’re comfortable doing them. The judges on American Idol may have been the first people to tell that girl that they would rather hear her own voice than any impression she could do. I say that because she looked surprised when they told her that her own voice was her best voice. Isn’t that how we should encourage each other? We are all broken people who walk a common path, and we don’t have to pretend we have everything put together or figured out or under control—but we follow the one who does. What a spirit of grace that would generate.
Martin Luther King said an individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
It takes a lot of energy to do impressions for each other and it takes energy to catalogue the past successes and failures of others. Impression and cataloging only keep us in narrow confines. So what if in this new year we rose above that and didn’t worry about those things any longer, and we discovered ways to celebrate that we are named for what we are now, not what we have been?
What could we do for the broader concerns of all humanity with all that redirected energy? Let’s find out together? Thanks be to God. Amen.
