They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

If you are ever vacationing in Myrtle Beach, SC, as Debi and I were a few months ago, you should take an evening and attend the Alabama Theater. There is a musical show that they do and it’s fine, it’s OK, but there is a comedian who plays the role of Ricky Mokel, a fairly simple soul who “thinks about things” and the conclusions he comes to, concerning our contemporary culture, are brilliantly absurd and painfully accurate. And whenever the emcee attempts to inject a note of reality into his thinking Ricky will say, “You don’t know”.

And of course he is right, there is so very much in life that you and I just don’t know.

Here’s an experiment I like: think back half a lifetime ago, the math is simple divide your age in half. Now think about the second half of your life, thus far, if it has all turned out pretty much the way that you thought it would, I would be surprised, because mine sure hasn’t.

Life doesn’t ever work out the way we plan, stuff happens and the changes are the only constants, the unexpected is what you can always count on.

But there is one thing that doesn’t change in our lives and that is the integrity of our God-given identity. Who we are is, at every given moment in our lives, the sum of who we have been and who we are becoming.

That’s why the old philosophical cliché of “who am I?” remains a necessary question, we need to be sure that we are being who God created us to be, we need to continually search for ourselves.

But that is never as easy as it sounds, we become alienated from ourselves in this world of great stresses and great miracles, that all compete for our attention, se are confronted, continuously, by the vast scope of life itself in the 21st Century.

Once upon a time, when I was young, life was manageable, we lived in places and while we knew of other places and broader problems, they weren’t with us constantly through email and internet and CNN. Things have changed. We’ve broken out of our villages and communities and the world belongs to us but the world is too big for us.

We have become addicted to information, Facebook and Twitter and cellphones and smartphones all keep us too informed about the trivia of others, too distracted by the ability to “know” things – anything and everything can be Googled – while we neglect that central question of life, “Who am I?”.

Who are we, as individuals? I don’t mean the roles that we play, parent, child, spouse, friend, worker, neighbor, but how do all of those pieces fit together, with integrity? How do we integrate our relationships and our faith and work into a single identity? When all of the labels and titles are stripped away, who are we?

I have known a lot of people, too many people, who never quite figure that out and so they spend years and decades and lifetimes just playing roles, and when the roles are no longer theirs – when their children grow up, when their parents or spouse dies, or when their marriage comes undone, when their jobs are no longer the definition of who they are - then they discover that they are hollow and lost.

And the integrity of our identity is not only singular and individual, the question needs to be continually asked and re-asked: who are we, as a Church? And today I don’t mean Church as the great and Universal Body of Christ, I mean, very specifically, in Clover Hill, who are we and what are we becoming?

Is it time to make changes? And how do we do that without alienating each other? How do we do it and still have the right to carry the name of Christ? How do we emulate his gentle firmness with people?

Is it time to sit tight, draw back, to wait in the moment, allowing others to act, until it is our turn? Do we trust God to use other people, in ways that we don’t understand, or even like very much, at the moment? Do we trust other people to speak and act faithfully if it means a different priority on worship or education or mission or stewardship than ours?

Our morning lessons that present us with three very different, diverse models of faithful living, models of integrated lives, three widows, each used by God in a very special and holy way, each a valuable model for us.

The first was Naomi.

Naomi was an advocate of change, the painful circumstances of her life were unacceptable to her, she was not going to be defined by her role and her situation.

When her husband and sons died in the distant land of Moab she may have complained about the things that had happened to her, but she also took action. She packed up and headed home, back to Bethlehem, at least there she would be surrounded by the people who knew her and knew her dead husband and sons, they would provide the comfort and safety that strangers and new acquaintances can never match.

The older I get, the more appreciative I am of Naomi’s desire for familiar people. One of the great blessings of life that I have known is that there are people who have known me for 30, 40, 50, almost 60 years and they care for me, they provide a context for me to see the meaning of my life. That’s what Naomi found as she took her grief and plopped it down in the streets of Bethlehem. But Naomi also realized that she needed to provide that same sense of comfort and safety to Ruth, the second widow. And Ruth’s situation was just the opposite, she had left all of the people of her life’s history behind, her identity became a part of Naomi’s identity, her history became intertwined with Naomi’s history.

Naomi provided Ruth with change through her meddling, loving scheme that provided the family linkage right to the birth of David. Ruth, on the other hand, was a go-with-the-flow sort, she let her mother-in-law plan and play her little games, she did what she was told, she made herself available to Boaz and she waited to see what would become of it.

And what became of it was the birth of Obed and the birth of Jesse and the birth of David and generations later, in that same little town, the birth of Jesus.

Perhaps that is a guide for us. When we are in a Naomi-like position, when we can – by our words and actions – make life better for others, then it is time to step up and do it, and when we are in a Ruth-like position, when we have done all that we should to help ourselves, then it is time to allow God the space and time to work out the details of the plan that he has for our lives and for the generations to follow us.

To be active for the benefit of others and to be passive for our own benefit, two good lessons from two good widows.

And then there is the third widow.

A poor widow came and put in two small coins, which are worth a penny.

The anonymous woman whom Jesus was watching that day, as she put her two half-pennies in the offering, the anonymous woman whom the world would say had little to give, was hailed by Christ as the model of giving. She gave not the leftovers, not the spare money in her budget, she gave all that she had.

Now I know it’s budget season and if I were a good fundraiser I would do something useful with this story, but the story of the widow and her two pennies is far more important than what we put in the plate, this is a story of integrity, this is where all of the pieces fit.

This woman could have given less, but she didn’t, she responded to God’s call upon her.

This woman could have made a big deal about her giving, but she didn’t. She simply and humbly did all that she could with all that she had.

And she became legendary; her story has been told and retold for 2000 years.

And the story comes down to us.

What are we doing with all that God has given us?

Do we need to put more in the plate? Yes, sure, of course, but more importantly, do we need to pray more, listening for what God has to say instead of telling God what we think should be done? Do we need to forgive – rather than criticize - more? Do we need to love – rather than ignore - more? Do we need to be joyful – rather than miserable - more?

If we do all of those things, the money stuff will all fall in place, we will discover who we are and we will want all of the pieces to fit together so that we can be the people God created us to be, not these make-believe people, holy, not hollow, men and women.

“Who am I?”

The question is important because our identity, our relationship with God, creature and creator, is the one thing that we actually can know.

You see our identity is not what we do, nor is it how we feel about ourselves, out identity is not found in psychology, it is found in Theology.

Who you are, in the heart of the God who created you, is your identity and time can’t change that and the economy can’t change that and your health can’t change that.

And how do you get to that point where you know the answer to that old question “Who am I?”?

Well, you don’t.

You start there.

There are some things in life that are right there at the beginning, or they are never there.

If love and trust are not present at the start of a marriage, you aren’t going to grow into them. You will enhance them, but they are the essentials at the start.

If a quarterback or a new governor doesn’t start out with confidence, it isn’t going to be found in the heat of the action or the pressures of the office.

If Naomi wasn’t sure that there was a better life for her in Bethlehem, if Ruth wasn’t sure that her time would come, if you and I don’t start out by realizing that we are the beloved children of God, nothing good and wonderful happens.

Ricky Mokel is right “You don’t know”, we don’t know what comes next, we never do. But we do know that we don’t have to work at being God’s beloved children, we have always been that.

We love God because God loved us first.

I remind you of the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?” “That I belong to my faithful Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

That’s the beginning, not the goal, and once we lock on to that everything else falls in place.

So we start with our faith, we believe that we are loved by God or we don’t, and our faith is personal and intimate and communal, and we don’t learn faith from our experiences we bring our faith to our experiences. It is the shape and size and scope of our faith that determines the nature of our experiences.

And when we know who we are, we will have integrity, everything we do and everything we are will fit together as we find ourselves and each other once again.

They named him Obed; he became the father of Jesse, the father of David.

Clover Hill Reformed Church 1834-2009 A 175 Day Scriptural Companion Dear Friends, As we progress through our Anniversary Year, I invite you to join together in a shared reading of scripture. I have selected 175 passages, from Genesis through Revelation, that have had special meaning in our Congregational life. Go Here