Who Are You?
One of my favorite traditions of the Church is to name the child at baptism. In the Church where my three children were baptized, the pastor said to me, immediately before the baptism, “Father, name your son/daughter.”
Two things are happening in this event. First, the pastor is asking me, as the head of my family, to declare the name of my child, publicly. (when I speak for our family, my wife’s point of view is highly regarded and often conveys wisdom superior to my own; this is not a unilateral declaration by the father) Secondly, the Church is declaring her power over all other powers on earth, even the State. All of my children had valid birth certificates at the time with legal names, but their true name and identity is a possession of the Church.
My children can get new driver’s licenses, get married, sign checks and get a passport but they are forever who we declared them to be at their baptism. We claim that as belonging to Christ and the Church. They can live contrary to that and they can even repudiate that, but it is all a matter of identity.
Reader, you must answer a very important question in your life as well… who are you?
Are you MAGA? Are you a liberated feminist? Are you a parent? Are you a victim of trauma? Are you a deer hunter? Are you a Corvette owner? Are you an influencer? Are you a huge fan of a sports team?
Have you noticed how all these groups want to embed themselves so deeply into your life that they often replace your very identity, so that you have no real self apart from them?
Personally, I am a husband, a father, a priest, a homeowner, a fan of a few sports teams and person who has lived in a lot of different states. But none of those is as valuable as my identity as a son of God. The one identity, given to me in my baptism and in my faith in Christ, is being a son of God. Even being a priest is secondary to my identity as a loved son of God.
Jesus said to his disciples in John 15 (and says this to his disciples today) that “you are my friends.” The Apostle Paul develops this even further in Galatians 4, saying “So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
The story of the Bible is one of the children of God thriving, despite earthly adversity, under the loving guidance of Our Father. This is no mere transaction. This is The Living God adopting us as His children, named as His Own Forever.
Fittingly, at the conclusion of our baptismal liturgy in the Anglican Church, we often say something like ‘you are marked as Christ’s own forever.’ I can think of no better identity.