Of all the decisions we make in life, none is more significant than the choice we make about who we will allow to tell us who we are.  Jeremiah was in a fix.  God has given him a task.  He was to be a prophet.  He was to speak the truth to power and culture.  Someone had apparently told him he wasn’t up to it.  Maybe when he was very young.  Maybe a member of his family.  Almost certainly, it was someone close, someone whose opinion he respected.  Whoever it was who had told him that he was and never would be anything more than just a boy, he had believed them.  Now, he was reporting back to God what he had chosen to believe about himself. 

Jeremiah’s real challenge was not his assignment from God, as significant as that was.  His real challenge was to make a new decision about who he would allow to tell him who he was, who he would allow to shape his image of himself.  Who tells you who you are?  Have you ever actually made a conscious decision about that?

There is a new, quirky B-movie that is somewhat taking the youth culture by storm, Napolean Dynamite.  It was made for a paltry $400,000 but is almost certainly going to rake in millions, with some people going to see it six and seven times and more.  It’s nothing more than the story of a young man in high school who is what most people would call a geek.  If you’ve ever felt awkward being a teenager, just trying to find a place to fit in, someone to accept you and love you in what can be a brutal class system in the world of high school society, you might discover yourself in this movie.  I know I did. 

On the surface, Dynamite is a comedy and I found myself laughing out loud.  Beneath the surface, I discovered a more poignant stream of reality as I found myself watching the embarrassment, humiliation and pain of people who live every day swimming upstream against the current of a culture that tries to keep them in their place when all they really want is a sense of dignity, self-worth, a place to belong and someone who cares about them.

Cameron has already gotten onto me about taking the movie too seriously instead of just enjoying the humor.  But, frankly, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t take life too seriously!  Yet, as the movie both sadly and humorously demonstrates about the real life too many people live, nothing is more serious than making a decision about who you will allow to tell you who you are in this world, what your worth is, your place in the pecking order, if you will.

As I understand the words recorded in Jeremiah’s prophecy, this is the word of the Lord.  No one has the right to tell you who you are in all of God’s creation but the God of all creation.  “Now the word of the LORD came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.’  Then I said, ‘Ah, Lord GOD!  Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.’  But the LORD said to me, ‘Do not say, ‘I am only a boy’; for you shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, says the LORD.’  Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me, ‘Now I have put my words in your mouth’ (Jeremiah 1:4-10).

There are, at a minimum, two reasons why personally accepting this word of the Lord as his word to us is so very important.  The first is nothing less than the danger of worshipping at the feet of a false god if we do not.  A false god is anyone or anything to whom we assign the power to declare our worth to us.  We will worship whatever it is we believe gives our lives meaning and worth.  If our worship is directed at anyone or anything less than the God who created us then, no matter what or who that is, it is a false god and we have become idolaters.  Worse, we will constantly be trying to remake ourselves in the image of whatever we think gives us our worth.

Napolean Dynamite has an uncle who is stuck in 1982, the last time he played high school football and the last time he felt that his life had any meaning.  From the way he dresses to the way talks to the way he wears his hair, it is both humorous and sad to see the way he has remade himself in the image of something that has been gone for over two decades.  Yet, it is the only thing he believes could ever give his life meaning again, to be back in 1982 playing high school football again.  He lives oblivious to the fact that his dream to go back to another time keeps him from living and enjoying the only life he actually has.  

Again, in the movie, it’s funny.  In real life, there are no words to describe the sadness of watching someone live their life imprisoned in the image of something that can never be again and never could give their life meaning.  More than one life has been ruined, more than one church destroyed, more than one marriage dissolved, because of people worshipping at the feet of false gods who have no right to declare their worth to them.

These are words one father was reported to have written to his son as he went off to college.  “Please remember who you are and whose you are.  Please never sell yourself short, or let others sell you short.  You will never be less than what God has made you or blessed you to be.”  Do you believe that? 

That’s all I hear God saying to Jeremiah.  That is what I hear him saying to me, to us and to our church.  This God, this God who created all that we see, created us, too.  We are no accident.  We are here because he wanted us here.  And, no matter what anyone else may ever say.  No matter what our own experiences with success or failure may ever tell us, this God who created this magnificent world and gave us a place in it for this moment in time, this mysterious, all-powerful, all-loving and all-knowing God, well, this God is the one who tells you who you are.  As the apostle Paul wrote generations after Jeremiah’s prophecy was recorded, “It's in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ,...he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone” (Ephesians 1:11, The Message).

The danger of worshipping a false god is only one reason why making the conscious decision to allow God and God alone to tell us who we are is so crucial.  There is another.  We have a mission in this community and in this world.  Only when we have discovered our worth in Christ, can we declare to others their worth in Christ.  It is impossible for us to give others what we do not have ourselves.

This is such an important time in the lives of our students and teachers.  Everyone is starting back to school.  If you ask people who the most influential people in their lives were, more often than not, on that list will be at least one or more teachers.  Teachers have such awesome power, not just to educate, but to bless and empower, to dignify.  In some cases, a Christian teacher is the only Christian influence in the life of a student.  To say that we should pray for our teachers is such an understatement.  Just the same, I sometimes wonder if we appreciate what power we have as a church to bless this community. 

We launched our new After School Ministry this past Monday.  It was so thrilling to walk with those thirty children across the street from the Jonnson School and escort them into our building for the first day.  As you may know by now, we only have staff and funding for thirty students at first.  We had over sixty applicants for those thirty spots and ended up accepting thirty-seven children.  One of those thirty seven was a little boy we were told about by the principle of the Jonnson School, Paige Connelly.  She called Judy Lewis to tell her that this little boy’s parents had instructed the school staff to just send her little boy, about a third grader, across the street to the Burger King where he was to wait from 3:30 until 6:00 when his parents got off of work and could pick him up.  Paige called Judy to ask if there was any way in the world we could find a place for that little boy.  Of course, Judy just made a spot for him. 

I haven’t been able to get that little boy off my mind this week.  What a gift of God he is to us!  We now have the privilege of blessing his life, of bestowing a sense of dignity on him by telling him, indeed, showing him, that he is too important to us to let Burger King take care of him.  Who will tell this Burger King boy who he is?  I hope that someday he will look back on this moment in his life and remember a church that showed him just how important he was by making an investment in his life.  We actually have the chance to do that now and there is no way of knowing what a difference it will make in his life or his family’s life.  We can now say to him what the father said to his son as he went off to college.  “Please remember who you are and whose you are.  Please never sell yourself short, or let others sell you short.  You will never be less than what God has made you or blessed you to be.”

Sometimes, when I am studying scripture, it helps me to paraphrase God’s word, to put it into my own words that make it even more personal to me.  I’ve done this before for you with other scriptures.  This is the way I chose to paraphrase Jeremiah’s word for Cliff Temple.  “Now the word of the LORD came to Cliff Temple saying, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to your community.  Then we said, “Ah, Lord God!  Truly we do not know how to speak, for we aren't a mega-church with great resources.  We only have so much and even have a hard time making our budget sometimes.”  But the LORD said to us, “Do not tell me who you are.  I have told you who you are.  Your words of self-condemning do not have power over my blessing.  You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid of the difficulties you will encounter, the problems to be solved or the sometimes overwhelming obstacles, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord.”  Then the Lord put out his hand and touched our mouths and gave us words to say.  And the Lord said to us, “Now I have put my words in your mouth.  What more do you really need?”

Jesus once said, “‘You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32).  I struggled for years to know exactly what he meant by that.  And, though I think there is more there than will ever meet the eye or ear, I’ve come far enough in my walk with Jesus to believe the “truth” that sets us free involves this much.  You will never truly be free until you come to that sacred moment of surrender, a moment of true spiritual transformation, when you decide that Christ and Christ alone will be the one who tells you who you are.

Would you like to come to that moment today?