Our Identity - A short address prepared to A Late Evening Office St. Columba’s Parish Church Sunday 9th January 2011

I continue to be amazed with the ways in which businesses, banks and government have to find out if we are who we say we are. Passports, bio-metric data, pin numbers, micro chips, finger prints, reference numbers, passwords, usernames, numbers, survey forms, our credit history, plastic cards, key fobs ... and all the rest

We are increasingly told that we are to protect our identity from being stolen - we are to shred documents, not to share pin numbers and to protect our plastic card.

Just last week I went in to register to rent out a DVD - I had to go in with my Passport, utility bill and sign a form

Our identity is crucially important.

We are complicated beings - we may be brother or sister, husband or wife, friend to some, mother or father, granny or grandad, we may be in charge of some others, we may be under the charge of others at work, we may be owners of cars, we may be tenents, we may be customers of this or that store. Each person we meet on a daily basis may have different expectations of who we are and what we are about.

In our Gospel reading this evening we have skipped over 30 odd years from where we were last week - from the Christmas story to Jesus beginning his public ministry. We see in this reading how crucial Identity is.

God the Father, in Jesus’ baptism identifies who Jesus is and what he thinks of him

His identity was confirmed...God's son.

He was identified as the focus of God's love.

He was identified as being very pleasing to God.

Before Jesus does all the amazing things he did in his ministry the base, the foundation is founded upon his Baptism.

There are huge problems in our society today when people, young and old forget about their identity - or who try to make a new identity for themselves.

Core to all who have been baptised is that we have been given an Identity - we have been given a Christian Name, we have been identified as the focus of God’s love and we have been identified as being very pleasing to God - that is the very core of Christian teaching.

But we need to own that truth, we need to trust that truth and we need to put it into practice.

Who are you? You are a child of God, the focus of his love and with you God is well pleased.

Yes we do stupid things, Yes we let him down time after time but we also are a people who believe in forgiveness and Grace. Thanks be to God. Amen