Remember Who You Are

Isaiah 51.1-6

Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah, who bore you, for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song. Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation, for a teaching will go out from me and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly; my salvation has gone out, and my arms will rule the peoples; the coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope. Lift your eyes to the heavens and look at the earth beneath, for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats, but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

I wonder what’s the best Disney movie. Actually, I don’t wonder, because I know what it is.

The Lion King

Why is it the best? I could talk about the animators spending months observing animals in the natural habitats in order to render them perfectly in living color. I could talk about Elton John and “Can You Feel The Love Tonight?” I could talk about the hilarity of Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean, as the Zazu, the majordomo to the King. But the truth is this: The Lion King is the best Disney movie because it’s not an original story. They stole it from Shakespeare. The Lion King is just Hamlet!

Both stories follow a young prince whose father, the King, is murdered by a jealous uncle who steals the throne. Both princes are visited by their father’s ghost, urging them to reclaim their rightful place. Moreover, both stories have a comedic duo who speak more than they know to those who are receiving the story - Timon and Pumbaa are Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.

And both narrative hinge on the pivotal moment when the King’s Ghost speaks to the Prince and they are told to “Remember.”

James Earl Jones nails it in the Lion King when he says, “Remember who you are.” Because, by remembering, Simba will know “You are more than what you have become.”

That’s the wonder of Hamlet and the Lion King, the central character has to look backward in order to move forward.

“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt.”

That’s the sentence with which the theologian Robert Jenson begins the section titled “The Triune Identity” in Volume 1 of his Systematic Theology. And, in that one sentence, he says everything you need to know about everything that follows. It took decades of theological reflection before he could ever write something like that.

“God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt.”

The crucial word in the sentence is “whoever.” With that one word Jenson strips from us our certainty that we know what, when, where, why, and how God is because, God is a who.

That might not seem like an important distinction but it is the difference that makes all the difference. God is not an idea or force or rule that simply exists in the background along with all the other nuts and bolts of the cosmos. God is active, reflective, purposeful, transformative, and transfigurative.

Another version of Jenson’s sentence is this one: God is whoever created you, having first created creation for you.

They’re both bold claims.

God is whoever worked wonders such that a subjugated people called Israel were delivered out of their captivity in Egypt and they were led to the Promised place. God is whoever broke through the chains of death so that death no longer gets to say the final word. God is whoever made sure you existed because existence wouldn’t be the same without you.

Not to get too Philosophy 101, but nothing has to be, including us. But that we are is such an absurd gift in this chaotic cosmos. Even on the difficult days, at least we get days to experience and, God willing, the sun will rise and we’ll get more days.

In all of these sentences we discover that God refuses to be anything other than God with us, that God refuses to leave us to our own devices, and that God is bent on reminding us of these primary truths because we are fickle and forgetful creatures.

Listen to me, God says through Isaiah, remember who you are! Consider the crag from which you were created, the dirt from which you were dug. Think about Abraham, your father, and Sarah, your mother. They were nobodies until I made them somebody’s, namely mine. They had no hope in the world until I, the hope of the world, knocked on their door.

I comforted them and I will comfort you. I will comfort Zion, I will bring peace to those among ruins. I will make a way where there is no way. I’ll transform the desert into Eden, I’ll turn graves into gardens, I’ll fill the world with exuberance and laughter and joy and singing.

Listen to me, God says through Isaiah, revelation is flowing through me, my actions are shining like light in the darkness, my salvation is showing up in your situations. Justice is on the way. Even people in faraway places in faraway times will look to me and see hope, real and lasting hope, hope you can hold. Everything can fade and falter and fracture, but my salvation will last forever and it cannot be stopped and it is for you.

These are the words Isaiah shares with God’s people in exile. They’ve lost it all - their homes, their language, their customs, their food, their stories, and their identities. And the prophet begs them to remember who they are because, by remembering, they will know that God has been, is, and always will be in the business of deliverance.

Or, to quote the Lion King again, “You are more than what you have become.”

Abraham is a septuagenarian when God shows up and calls him to go to a strange and faraway place, when God chooses him to be the recipient of the covenant. And from that point forward Abraham makes one mistake after another. He doubts God’s promise, he tries to take matters into his own hands, and much worse. And no matter what he does, God refuses to abandon him; God bails him out over and over again.

Jacob swindles his brother Esau out of his birthright, and bamboozles his father into giving him the blessing. Jacob loses his family, he loses his home, he loses everything because of his own self-righteousness. God literally has to wrestle with him on the banks of the Jabbok and knock his hip out of joint to help him see the truth of his sin and for reasons that only God can explain, God still blesses him with a new name - Israel.

Over and over and over again in the strange new Bible God shows up and God speaks up for those who need to see and those who need to hear the truth of God’s goodness: You are more than what you have become.

To put it another way: If God could get all of them through what they were going through, God will get you through too.

The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther really struggled with all of his reforms. He regularly doubted what he was doing and whether or not what he was doing was actually working. And whenever he felt like he had reached the end of his rope, he would look at himself in the mirror and say, “For God’s sake Martin, remember you are baptized.”

He basically stole that practice from this bit in Isaiah.

He had to look backward in order to move forward.

I wonder if your life feels like a mess. If it doesn’t, well good for you. But, sooner or later it will because the world has a knack for piling it on. And even if you feel like you’ve got it all worked out, that you can handle whatever the world throws your way, God weirdly delights in turning things upside down too.

But here’s the Good News of the Gospel: God in Christ Jesus is more powerful than any mess you can ever make. You are free from whatever you’ve done or left undone, just as the Israelites were delivered from captivity in Egypt, and just as Jesus was delivered from death.

You are more than what you have become.

The church exists to remind you of that promise again and again because otherwise you will forget. And even if you don’t hear it in church and, again, you should hear it in church, God will communicate this Good News with you by any means necessary.

God will show up in a random comment from a friend, or in that final acknowledgment from your boss, or the unexpected hug from a kid, or a Disney movie from 1994, or the right song showing up at the right moment, or the perfect sunrise that makes you want to weep because how could something so beautiful exist just for you to see it?

God will get you through what you think is a dead end or a lost cause or a broken path because God was, is, and always will be in the deliverance business. Now, to be clear, when it happens it will probably not happen in the way you want or even a way you would like.

Abraham found out he was going to become a father to many nations when he was already the age of most grandfathers. Jacob had to wrestle with the Lord and walk for a limp for the rest of his life. Every person who has ever received a blessing had to trust that God would be true to God’s Word - they had to make mistakes before they could see God’s unwavering grace.

Do you see what this means? There are no lost causes in the Kingdom of God. There’s no sheep so foolish that God won’t leave it all behind to go track down. There’s no action or inaction that can ever compare to God’s action through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit for you and with you.

You may not see it, you might not even believe it, but the church is going to keep reminding you of the wild and wonderful truth: You are more than what you have become. Amen.