Identity – March 23, The Fifth Tuesday of Lent

This morning I was getting ready to get into the church elevator and I saw a line of kids from the preschool.  I noticed they had their jackets on and so I asked the first student in line if they were going outside.  He quickly replied “yeah, and I’m… I’m Spider-man” as he unzipped his jacket to reveal a Spider-man t-shirt underneath.

In reflecting on this interaction I got to thinking about us and how we identify ourselves.  This kid, in his imagination thought to himself that if he put on a Spider-man shirt then he could identify himself as Spider-man.  He didn’t excitedly tell me that he had put on a Spider-man shirt.  No, he told me very emphatically “I am Spider-man.”  Somehow in that kid’s mind putting on the shirt formed how he identified himself.  I wonder, do we ever think like this?  Look at what Paul says:

Galatians 3:26-29 TNIV

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

What this little kid said this morning reminded me of this passage.  Paul says “for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”  I really think this little kid gets it and somehow we overlook this all the time.  Just by the fact of wearing his Spider-man shirt he identified himself as Spider-man.  Why do we so often forget this when it comes to Christ.

In our baptism we have put on Christ and yet so often this identity is lost on us.  Instead of identifying ourselves with Christ we identify with the world.   Instead of living like we are clothed with Christ we act and prioritize our lives like we know nothing of Christ.

Sure, this little kid was acting out part of his imagination, but putting on Christ in our baptism is not imagination, it is reality in the truest sense.  What is real for us is that we are in Christ and the more we identify ourselves in this way the more we can allow the Spirit of God to work within us.  The more we learn to re-identify ourselves the more we can continue to be transformed and shaped.

During Lent we journey with Christ to the cross.  We learn, during this time, to put away our old self-identity and to realize that we are in Christ.  During this Lenten season we learn that we have put on Christ and we discipline ourselves so that we may more fully act like it.  It would be good for us to learn a lesson from this small pre-schooler so that we may live out the reality of our baptism – that those who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ.

Closing Prayer:

O Lord and master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.  But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.  O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother or sister for blessed are you always.  Amen

– The Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem