Who God Says You Are

Mark 1:4-11

At some point in your life you’ve probably questioned your existence. There are a lot of ways to do this, just take the concept of existence and pair it with one of the 6 question words. How is it possible that I exist? This is probably the most basic of all existential questions. Some people concern themselves with trying to figure out when everything came into existence along with the how it came to be. That seems less important to me than that moment when we become aware of our existence and recognize we didn’t have any say in it. We can question why we exist, what is our purpose? There are a lot of ways to answer this, and a lot of ways to doubt the answers that we, or our societies or our religions, come up with. Based on how we respond to this question of purpose, we’re prone to wonder how we fit in. Where do I belong? All of this ultimately settles, or unsettles us, on the question of who: “Who am I?”

For people of faith, there is help for confronting these questions with a grander sense of our place and purpose in Creation. But the help doesn’t make our doubts any less painful or frightening, in fact doubting our faith can even make us feel like failures. What I hope we’re starting to realize, however, as we search and study the Scriptures of our faith together, is that our faith, at times, is designed to make us doubt. I’ll explain what I mean. As I said before, there are many ways to answer the questions of existence. It’s oversimplification, of course, but I want to put those answers into two categories: there are the ways the world answers these questions, and the way that God answers them. When I speak of the “world” in this sense, I’m describing the answers to which we are influenced by sin, the tempting answers. Our faith is designed to make us doubt these answers.

When Jesus taught his disciples that they were “in this world but not of it,” this is what he was getting at: you have different answers for the questions of place, purpose. We also like to talk of being “called by God.” If I were to call you on the phone what would you do? And don’t say put it on silent…you’d answer. I hope. A call prompts us to answer. So, when God calls us, so also are we are being prompted to answer.

Matthew and Luke begin their Gospels with birth stories, but Mark begins differently. Mark begins with John the Baptizer calling people to be baptized as a sign that they were changing their hearts and lives, or perhaps we could say calling people to be baptized as a sign that they were changing their answers to the questions of existence. Then Jesus shows up to be baptized. So was he doing this to show that he was changing his heart and life? Maybe a better way to describe his baptism is as an affirmation that he was answering God’s call with his life, that he was aligning his existence with God’s purposes.

Whereas Matthew and Luke have an angel pronounce to Mary that she will conceive and bear God’s son, Mark’s Gospel is less concerned with how Jesus came into existence, but Mark’s Gospel does tell us who Jesus is. Jesus is God’s son not because of an immaculate conception, but because God tells Jesus that is who he is. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In Mark, Jesus’ identity is established through his baptism. Just so, our baptism is a sign and seal of who we are and whose we are. “Jesus is who God says he is. So also are we who God says we are.”[1]

If you’ve ever struggled with any of the questions of existence, if you’ve ever felt diminished by doubt, if you’ve ever been anxious or depressed, then you know how important our answer to the question “Who am I?” can be to our sense of self, sense of worth, sense of value. It is my hope, then, that when you struggle, you keep your baptism in mind. Our baptisms matter because with them we are marked by the Spirit, claimed as God’s own, and from thenceforth, no matter our doubts, our identity, worth, and value is held in the permanence of God’s love for us. Our baptisms mean we are who God says we are: beloved.

[1] Williamson, Lamar Jr. “Mark” from Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.