There are two questions every one of us will all have to ask and answer at some point in our lives.  Who tells you who you are?  And, upon what or whom do you depend as your resource for power and hope?  How we answer those questions will both grow out of as well as shape our faith in God, our perception of ourselves and our relationship to others in this world.  So, who tells you who you are and upon whom or what are you depending as your resource for hope and power to make it through this life?

You could write a doctoral dissertation on 1 Corinthians 1:18-21 and never come to the end of its meaning.  You could be Tom Hanks on a deserted South Sea island with only this passage of scripture for reading material.  When you were finally rescued four years later, you still would not have probed its depths.  This is the deep end of the truth pool.  Yet, probing its depths is essential to us if we are going to be able to answer these two questions in any way that leads to hope. 

This much is fairly self-evident.  The ways of man are not the ways of God.  Conversely, the ways of God are not the ways of man as he works out his divine purposes in this world.  “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”  Which means that, if we are going to answer the questions of identity and resource in a way that is truly Christian, we are going to have to live with the awkwardness of doing things backwards and swimming upstream against the cultural current. 

Backwards.  Isn’t that what Jesus was teaching in the beatitudes?  “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit . . . the meek . . . the merciful . . . the peacemakers.’”  Backwards from the way of the world.  To be truly blessed, which means to know the joy of our life being affirmed by God as one that was worth living.  How can we live like that?  Only when we know for certain who we are and when our resource is the life of God found in Christ alone.

Some, even within the Christian community, quietly mock the words of Jesus’ beatitudes as too idealistic, too unreal.  But, if we choose not to follow Jesus’ teachings, if he is not the source of our identity and hope, then, what will be?  If we choose not to have faith, then what are our options?  Where will we turn?

There was something about standing over my father’s casket this week that brought those questions back to me, as though I had never asked them or answered them.  Why is that?  Maybe it has something to do with this.  There has never been a time in my life when my dad went away and didn’t come back.  Never a time when he was more than a phone call or a few hours drive away.  Standing over his quiet body, I had to ask, what does this mean for me?  Who will be there for me in that place where only my father once stood?

Mothers certainly play their own role in the development of a person’s identity and security.  No one could possibly question that.  Yet, no one plays the role that only a father can fulfill.  A father does so very much to imprint a sense of identity on his children, teaches them who they can trust and whether the world is a safe place to live and explore.

Griffin was telling me that, at John Brown University, a new section of sidewalk was poured to replace a section that had broken.  The school hired a student to camp out overnight at the work sight to make certain no one came along and put their handprint or initials in the concrete before it dried.  Once an imprint is there and the concrete sets up, it’s there to stay forever.  It’s much that way with our fathers.  If they imprint on our still malleable spirits that we are of worth and value, that imprint stays with us a lifetime.  If they don’t, no one can come along later and make up for it.  What our fathers do or don’t do to shape our sense of identity and security is with us to stay until the day we die, with the grace of God our only hope if our earthly fathers failed us.

Standing over my father’s casket, I reflected on the imprint of my father’s hand on my soul.  His imprint is indelible.  Before the concrete set up, he made certain that I knew that I was of worth and that I had something to offer this world that was of value.  He also impressed on me in countless ways that I can trust God for everything I will ever need.  My father was not perfect but that is my own private sermon.  But, those two things he did well.

Not everyone has had that experience.  When they have rounded up those responsible for all of these murders and carjackings in our community of late, what they will discover about them is what they already know about all people in prison.  Ninety percent of all people in prison in the United States grew up without a father in the home.  Not everyone who grew up with a father is doomed to a life of crime.  But, those who choose a life of crime have that sad fact in common.  The imprint the lack of a father made on their soul is so devastating that, by the time they reach adulthood, about all that can be done in many cases is to just lock them away.

A pastor I know well has a young high school lady in his church who plays in her high school band.  This past Halloween, the band was allowed to dress up in any Halloween costume they chose for the Friday night ball game instead of their traditional uniform.  The pastor asked her what she would wear for a costume.  She said she was going to wear a white T-shirt with pieces of trash attached all over it.  “That’s interesting,” he said.  “What are you going dressed as with a white T-shirt with trash stapled to it?”  She said, “I’m going as white trash,” she said.  She tried to make light of it.  But, the pastor knew the story of this young lady’s home life, of her absentee father who was terribly abusive whenever he was around.  His imprint on her is also indelible, leaving her to believe of herself as nothing but white trash.

Only the gospel has the power to undo the imprint of an abusive father.  The gospel that promises that those who have nothing and who choose not to use this world to make up for what they do not have but instead choose to use what they do have to bless those who have even less will discover the irrevocable blessing of God to be theirs.

It’s backwards, isn’t it?  Yet, hear it again from Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church.  “Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.”

You don’t have to believe that way.  If you do not, what do you have left but yourself?  Is that enough. 

Melissa Etheridge is a pop singer with a very rough, edgy, gutsy kind of sound to her music and lyrics.  A religion writer for the Chicago Sun Times recently interviewed Etheridge about her spirituality.  In response to the questioning, Etheridge “begins by taking apart religion.  She disses her father, the church and the church’s God.  She characterizes the denomination in which she was raised as purveying ‘white-bread religion-lite and she dismisses dogma, creed, hell, the Jesus Christ myth and Baptists.”  She went on to say, “My faith is, I believe, I know that I am on this Earth, and I am an energy that is moving forward . . . and I’m in control.  I believe that and I have faith in that” (Marty E. Marty, “Me, my church and I,” Christian Century, January 25, 2005, p. 47).

She boiled it down pretty well.  If you dismiss God and everything about him, you only have yourself left.  Yet, I believe that, when you find yourself to be the one in the casket others are staring at, you will discover how inadequate only your self can be.

Over against Etheridge’s faith is the Christian confession, “He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus.”  We have Etheridge’s confession and we have the Christian confession.  Which of those two most accurately depicts your confession of faith?  One is “in-sourcing,” reaching only within for what one needs.  The other is “outsourcing,” accepting by faith the resources that come from outside of ourselves, from God and from God alone.

When Jesus told the Pharisees of his day that they needed to repent or face the reality of missing God’s eternal plan for their lives, he wasn’t just being mean to them.  He was just saying that unless they stopped trusting only in themselves to make life work, stopped in-sourcing, they weren’t going to find the life to which they believed themselves entitled. 

Now, I’m not there yet.  I haven’t arrived.  But, I can honestly say that I am taking those awkward steps every day toward the hope that is mine in Christ, toward more outsourcing than in-sourcing and it is bearing fruit.  And, I can show you from scripture what “outsourcing” looks like.

Paul once wrote a prayer of his for the Ephesian believers that we have come to accept as universally true for all followers of Christ.  “I pray that . . . you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance . . . and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe” (Ephesians 1:17-18).  In Christ, I have hope, riches beyond description and great power.  That means that, even though my steps are awkward, I don’t have to live a life out of control, impotent in the face of overwhelming odds.

It is also true that, “through him (we) have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18).  All that we need God has and we have access to all that God has. 

When I was a little boy, my great uncle Charles was a vice-president at a bank in Beaumont, Texas.  Dad took me to visit him one time and while we were there Uncle Charles asked me if I’d like to see inside the vault.  When we got inside I saw this cage, like a giant jail cell, with piles and piles of sacked money behind the bars.  Uncle Charles leaned down and whispered to me, “There’s probably a million dollars in there.”  I’d never seen a million dollars before, and haven’t since.  But, that day, I felt pretty special.  Not everyone got to go inside the vault and see where the bank kept its treasure.  But, I had access to it because I knew Uncle Charles. 

All that God has, all the riches of his kingdom, are accessible to us because we know the son of God, Jesus himself.  We have access to God!  There is nothing you need heaven doesn’t have.  And, if heaven has it, you have access to it now.

And, as we prepare to face life’s final mystery, we have these promises, too.  We “believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died” (Ephesians 4:14).  We also believe that “if we have died with him, we will also live with him” (2 Timothy 2:11). 

Even though I have preached many funerals, I have to admit that I still have many questions about life after this life.  I found those questions coming poignantly back to mind as I stood over my father’s casket and wondered what he is now experiencing.  I wonder what our experience will be the first instant after we close our eyes on this side and open them on the next.  I don’t know.  What I do believe, what I trust, what I have hope to believe is the promise of God that my physical death will not be the end of my life.  God has promised us life beyond death.  We have hope.  We have access.  We have confidence in our eternity.  The steps of faith may be awkward but the journey is well worth it.

So, what do I mean by “outsourcing”?  I’m talking about coming to the place where we no longer trust in ourselves alone, in our ability to manage life and the creativity, wit and skill to keep it all together.  I’m talking about trusting a source outside of ourselves, specifically, the source of life in God through Christ.  I’m talking about a radical, personal dependence on Jesus that literally transforms the way we think, act, speak, live and even how we face our own mortality.

And, that begins with answering these two questions.  Who tells us who we are and upon whom are we depending for the source of power and life and hope we cannot create for ourselves?

When a parent dies you sit around telling stories; you relive your childhood in forty-eight hours.  We spent lots of time telling stories this week.  Like the moon pie story.  Mom used to buy them in boxes of six or eight.  Those nasty pieces of round cake with marshmallow fillings drenched in cheap chocolate.  I am certain that if I ever have bypass surgery, the surgeon will retrieve something from one of my clogged arteries that the lab will identify as moon pie residue.  I can say that at least those pies serve as a marker for how my tastes have improved since childhood.  But, back then, they were a treat.  When mom set them out, they disappeared quickly.  Sometimes, so quickly that, unless you were there when the box was opened, you missed out. 

One night, we were sitting at the table just having finished dinner.  We all three remember dad casually reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out the cellophane-wrapped moon pie.  Earlier, in order to make certain he got at least one, as soon as mom had opened the box he squirreled one away for dessert.  When he pulled it out, we all died laughing.  All of us laughed.  Even mom, when it was hard for her to laugh.  We all laughed hard and long.  In fact, in my memory, that is the one time we all laughed that hard and that long.  As an aside, I will say that was the only selfish thing I ever saw my father do.  On the other hand, I also remember him wearing the same suit to church, the only suit he had, for years.  I didn’t understand until I was a father the price a parent will pay in order to provide for their children.  So, I’ll forgive him the moon pie!

There was another story, too.  We remembered the time Darlene started dating.  I have to tell you that I don’t envy those who parent daughters.  I’m not sure I’d survive turning my daughter loose to the clutches of teenage boys.  But, dad did one thing to give himself peace of mind.  He told my older sister that if she ever found herself in a situation on a date where she didn’t feel safe, all she had to do was get to the nearest phone and call home.  Dad promised her that no matter where she was and no matter how late it was, if she needed him, dad would come find her and bring her safely home. 

To my knowledge, my sister never had to take dad up on his offer.  But, just his promise helped her to know two things for sure.  She knew that she was of invaluable worth to my dad.  She also knew that she could never be so far away that dad wouldn’t be willing to come and find her.  She knew her identity to be of priceless worth and she knew she had access to a source of power and hope.

That was the imprint my dad put on my sister’s soul.  That is also the imprint our heavenly Father wishes to put on yours and mine.

So, I ask just one more time.  Who tells you who you are and what is your resource for power and hope to make it through this life?

Have you ever answered those two questions?