Imagine...identity

Jeff Ellison is a member of St. Paul's Episcopal Church. 

For the stewardship campaign this year, the stewardship team is asking each of us – you, me – to imagine who you want to be in your spiritual life and what it is you hope for St. Paul’s future.  What is it to imagine?  I think of imagining as looking at the world and seeing it differently than it is now.  It is hope for the future (“What would it be like if – ?”), and it also fills in things we don’t know with what we imagine them to be.  So the word “imagine” will be the topic to ponder this year.  And we’ll do it in a unique way.  We’ll look at the word “imagine” – seven letters – as an acronym that stands for seven different words.  Each Sunday, one of us – today, it’s me – will share a few things on one of the words in that acronym.  The first “I” word in “imagine” is “identity.”

So what is my identity?  How do I identify myself?  How do I imagine myself to be?  This is not something I think about often (or perhaps ever, in the conscious, deliberate way I have since being asked to speak on this).  But pondering it, the things that come easily to mind are what I am to others: I’m a father to my boys and a son to my mother.  I’m a brother.  I’m a friend and occasionally a best friend.  How I relate to others is part of my identity.  It adds to my concept of self, of who I am and who I imagine myself to be.

Part of my identity – of who I am – includes how I imagine God and how I imagine my relationship with God.  That relationship with God brings me here, to St. Paul’s.  Every one of us has a story of how we found this place.  For some, we were brought by our parents or by a friend.  For others (I count myself in this group), we just found it, this small building, sitting on a hill, that a town grew up around; I walked into this place out of curiosity, to see what goes on here, asking how is God present in this place. 

In your personal story, the reason you came here may merely be interesting history.  The person who brought or invited you may have passed away or moved on.  But you’re still here.  This reminds me of the story of Ruth, who when her husband died, was urged by her mother-in-law to go back to her own people.  But Ruth said no.  She told her mother-in-law: don’t ask me to leave you.  “For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God.”  Ruth claimed as part of her identity the community she had married into, even though her husband – the one who brought her to that community – was gone. 

In the same way, we are part of St. Paul’s – it is part of our identity – even though the reason we first came through that door is not what brings us here today.  For instance, I am here not because St. Paul’s is a small building on a hill, although it is that.  I’m here searching for God and, in blessed moments, finding God.

What brought you here?  How is St. Paul’s part of your identity?  How do you look for God – how do you find God – here?