Seven year-old Kaden Collins and her mom, Michelle, stopped by our house the other day. Kaden had not met Beau, our dog, before. Kaden fell in love with Beau instantly, like all people do! She took note of the freckles across the top of his snout. Her mom said, "Look! He has freckles just like you." Kaden thought for a brief minute and said, "Yeah. But, I don’t have a tail that moves."

Kaden, as she should at her age, has begun to get a clear sense of herself as distinguished from any other being on this planet. That she is a unique individual with unique gifts, abilities and characteristics as a creation of God. That, though others have freckles on their nose, no one has her freckles.

My prayer for Kaden is that she will not lose that sense of being the unique creation of God. That she will not lose herself in trying to conform to anyone else’s idea but God’s of who she is or should be while she is on this earthly journey. For too many, even by the time they are Kaden’s age, that battle is already lost because their life’s journey becomes about proving themselves through conformity to some other being’s ideal instead of expressing themselves as the unique and beautiful creation of God they are.

Something about Jesus is very appealing to me. He seemed to have a very clear sense about his unique relationship with his heavenly Father and a very clear sense about what time it was in his life. As John recorded, "Jesus knew that his hour had come . . .." Do you know what time it is in your life?

On National Public Radio, I recently heard the story of a woman who lives in a very remote region of India. She didn’t know for sure how old she was. She guessed that she was about forty-five. After talking to others who knew bits and pieces of her life’s story, it was concluded that she was at least seventy-five. Not the only person on the planet who underestimated her age whom others did not!

She’s not alone. Some 45,000 people are born every day into this world for whom their will never be a written record of their birth. That’s 16.5 million new people every year wandering the planet not knowing where they are chronologically in life’s journey.

How much of our identity centers around knowing when our life started and where we believe we are in life’s journey? If we did not know for sure how old we were, when our life journey began, when would we celebrate our birthdays? How would we know when it was time to go to college? Would we go when everyone thought we should or when we’re we were actually educated enough? When would know it’s time to get married? When it met everyone’s expectations or when we were actually mature enough? In everything, from family to health to education to financial planning, there is no part of our lives that is not shaped in some way by knowing what time it is in our lives. Can you imagine not knowing how old you are?

Jesus had a deep sense of knowing uniquely who he was and what time it was in his life. John recorded that "Jesus" knew "that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God . . .." Jesus was about to be crucified. This was his Last Supper. In the crowd is the betrayer.

What would you and I do if we knew those things?

What do we do when we feel threatened? Withdraw? Hoard? Build bigger defenses? What did Jesus do? John actually records that as well. "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him."

Jesus was about to be betrayed and killed and, instead of moving toward self-protection, he got up from the table where he would eat his very last meal and served others. He must have known something we don’t know. What was that? He had come from God. He was going back to God. That God had given him all things. That no one and nothing in all of creation, as Paul would later celebrate in his letter to the Roman church (Romans 8), could separate him from God’s loving, redemptive and eternal purpose. If we know those things, what more do we really have to know? If we know those things, how does that change our lives? If our lives have not changed from when we first professed Jesus, is something missing?

All withholding from others grows out of fear that somehow or another we will lose if we let go. Fear that someone can take away from us what matters, like our identity or our security. True servanthood grows out of knowing that those things, who we are and what we must have, what is absolutely essential, God has already provided or will provide when we truly need them.

Jesus knew that and in a moment when most of us would have been looking for a place to hide or a bigger weapon for defense, Jesus got up from the table and demonstrated what true power looks like, even when, especially when, it’s being threatened.

Kaden has a friend who happens to be our next door neighbor, Nick, who is eight years old. When Kaden’s mom brought her to church. Nick was with them. My office door just off the main entrance to the church was open and Kaden and Nick just walked in. Nick has only seen me in the backyard at my house. He knows my dog, Beau, better than he knows me. He loves Beau! When Nick saw me in my office, he said, "I didn’t know you lived here." Kaden’s mom stepped in and gave Nick a framework for my identity. "That’s Beau’s dad." When Nick got ready to leave, he said, "Bye, Beau’s dad."

"Beau’s dad"? I’ve been called worse. I know I’m more than my dog’s dad, but not much more than that to Nick. What do people call you? In William Sloane Coffin’s book, Letters To a Young Doubter, he asks a young college student, "Who tells you who you are?"

One reason we come to worship every Sunday, one reason we take the Supper, is to reclaim our identity in a world that is constantly trying to strip it away. To rediscover that, as Coffin writes in his book, Credo, "We are not called to prove ourselves, but to express ourselves. And, oh the difference between proving and expressing!"

When I first came to Cliff Temple eight years ago, this seems this is what I was thinking. Looking back, I think I was trying to find some way of trying to help you prove to the world that this was still a great church. Over time I realized that had to change. If we are truly God’s children, and we are where we believe we should be, to whom do we owe proof of anything? The question should not be about how can we prove ourselves but about what time is it in this church’s life and, at this moment in time, how can we most honor God by expressing who we are, whether it proves anything or not?

Expressing ourselves as what kind of church? Where race and sex and ethnicity and religious heritage really don’t matter. That we really believe what is recorded in ancient scripture, in the apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatian church, that in Christ there is no Jew nor Greek, (Hispanic, Black or white), male nor female, slave nor free, for you all are one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28). That what matters is that you are interested in joining us on the journey toward whatever it is God is calling us to be.

Not that we lose our unique identity, but that our uniqueness is celebrated as part of the larger tapestry of God’s creative design.

A church where we can actually discuss difficult social issues, even from the pulpit, like divorce and homosexuality and war and social justice, where the answers are not always clear for everyone and yet everyone is still invited to listen to the voice of God within their own conscience and speak their mind and still be respected.

Those to whom we have tried to prove ourselves, well, they seem to still be waiting on more proof, like the jury is still out. Those to whom we have expressed ourselves already have all the proof they need because what we have expressed is what they need. Like the approximately 1000 people who weekly benefit from our different ministries but never darken the doors of our sanctuary on Sunday mornings in this worship service. From the After School Ministry, ASC3ND, to the thriving Child Development Center, to the Charter Schools from which dozens of children and youth find their way into our mainstream ministries to The Well, Urban Cathedral, Misión Bautista Central and not even counting the thousands who are cared for through the Goslin Care Center.

Jesus was not trying to prove anything the night of the supper. That he was right. That he was better. That he more powerful. Nothing. He only seemed interested in expressing himself, as the servant of Holy God he was. How do you spend most of your life’s energy? Proving or expressing?

We were all so proud of Phil Berry when he was featured in last Sunday mornings Dallas Morning News. He has given his life and career to helping others. He has received many well-deserved accolades as a result of that article. If you were to ask Phil what his birthday was, he’d give you two answers. One is the date of his physical birth. The other is the birthdate of his transplanted liver that saved his life less than twenty years ago, when an angel told him, in his darkest moment, "Now, it’s your turn." There is no way to know how many millions of people will benefit from Phil’s work to further organ donor transplant since the angel spoke to him.

We all have two birthdays, or should. One is the day we are physically born. The other is the day we discover the unique meaning of our existence in time and eternity. For most of us, that day comes long after our public of profession of faith and baptism.

It is not mine to tell you what you need. For each of us, it is a very personal life-long journey on the way to discovering the distinction between what we need and what is essential. I do believe that life for us is horribly diminished until we begin learning the difference between those two things.

Is it possible that the things we believe most needful are not really essential? It’s not mine to tell you. It is only mine to tell you that the promise of God is that, what is essential, is already ours. It is not something to be earned or a reward for a job well done. It is God’s gift to us where we stand, or fall, or walk or crawl, where we are born and where we die to be raised again to new life. When we truly believe that we can stop stuffing ourselves at the Table as though there were no tomorrow and get up from the Table, and start washing the feet of others.

Since moving to Dallas, my connection with my youngest son, Cameron, a senior in high school this year, has been severed more than I anticipated. This past week, I called him and asked him if we could have dinner. He was available Thursday evening. I drove to Rockwall and we had dinner.

We talked about his work and his church. He asked me about me about Cliff Temple. "How are things going, Dad?" All of that led to a conversation about how following Jesus doesn’t always mean you know where you’re going to end up at any given moment. One of the joys of your children growing up is getting to have adult conversations with them, especially about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. I told Cameron I wasn’t sure what was coming. When he was ten years younger, I would have given him answers that made him feel safer. Now, it’s time for adult talk. "I’m not sure where all of this will lead, Cam." And, he said, "It’s kind of fun not knowing where you’re going."

We spend an enormous amount of our energy and resources trying to squeeze the last drop of unpredictability out of our lives. The sad thing is that, we largely succeed and in the process rob ourselves of the joy that comes from living on faith’s edge.

This is what the scripture has taught me this week. It comes in the form of a question formulated well by Brian McLaren. McLaren says, that, for true followers of Jesus, the real question is not, "Are we there, yet?" but, "Are we making progress?"

Who tells you who you are? What time is in your life? Are you making progress? Jesus is as much about helping us answer those questions as he is getting us into heaven and keeping us out of hell.

Do you know who you are and what time it is? Are you making progress?

Well?