Church of the Incarnation

I don't know about you, but the voices from the playground still ring in my ears. Remember dodge ball? You're defenseless in the middle of the group and everyone around you is intent on knocking you out, looking for your weaknesses so they can exploit them. Or Red Rover. The other team calls you over, but you know they've called you because they think you're the weakest one left on your team and as soon as they call you, they do everything they can to keep you out. So many of the classic playground games seem to have the same goal as the short-lived game show which asked a series of questions so that, at the end of each round, the hostess could point to one unlucky contestant and declare, "You are the weakest link. Good-bye!"

If we're honest,didn't most of us secretly believe we were the weakest link? And didn't we live in fear of having our weakness and worthlessness exposed to the others? Remember being called to the board to solve a math problem? Or being asked to read a passage out loud for the class? Or being asked to hold up your artwork and explain it to the class? For that moment, everyone was focused on you, ready to laugh at the slightest sign of weakness on your part.

Some of you probably have parents who've been able to counteract the messages of the schoolyard with their unconditional and unwavering belief in your skills and creativity and goodness. But most of you probably have parents like mine, dedicated and loving folks who've been so wounded by their own schoolyard messages that they don't know how to convey anything better.

One of the nicknames my father had for me growing up was "dum-dum Jenny." I tell you about this not because I need reassurances about it and not so you'll feel sorry for me but in hopes that my story will help you recall your own. I was never anything approaching athletic and I was so shy and gangly that I was never one of the popular kids. But from the very beginning I did well in school. That was my one thing. So when my father called my academic skills into question with his "dum-dum Jenny," I felt like I was the weakest link, like I had no redeeming qualities. His nickname played right into my deep fear that I really was worthless and hopeless and no good. And of course, it doesn't take a psychiatrist to figure out that my two masters degrees are, at some level, my continued effort to disprove the nickname.

Those voices still echo in our heads, don't they? And every bad grade, every promotion we don't get, every party we're not invited to, turns up the volume on the voice that says, "You are the weakest link. Good-bye!"

Imagine hearing instead, "You are my child, the one I cherish, in whom I take great delight."

This was how the patriarch Abraham described his son Isaac. You know the story of Abraham: at God's command, he packed up his wife Sarah and his entire extended family and left Haran to go to the land God would show them, the land of Canaan. In return, God promised to make Abraham the father of a great nation, a nation through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed. It was every man's dream: enough sons to till the fields and tend the goats, providing for the older generation and ensuring that the family would live on. Abraham already had a son by his wife's maidservant, but he longed for a child by his wife, a true firstborn son, someone to carry on the work Abraham had begun, and someone to receive Abraham's final blessing when that time came. A son would be a companion in the toil of daily life, someone to share each day as an equal. But Abraham and Sarah were getting older, and year after year they remained childless. Well beyond child-bearing age, they eventually gave up hope of having children of their own. Abraham resigned himself to working alone all his days and to being the last generation of his family.

But God came to Abraham again and again promised him a son of his own and a great nation of descendants after him. Realizing the physical impossibility of this, and too much a realist to believe something so far-fetched, Abraham laughed. But God was faithful, and Sarah bore Abraham's son. All his years of hoping and praying for a son had not prepared Abraham for the joy Isaac brought him. God saw the bond between father and son and called Isaac, "Your son, the cherished one, in whom you take great delight" (Genesis 22:2).

Jesus, thirty years old and ready to begin his ministry, goes to the River Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist. And the heavens are opened to him and God Almighty, who created everything that is, whose very breath gave life to the first person, God said of Jesus, "This is my son, the cherished one, in whom I take great delight" (Luke 3:22). And with that Jesus is sent out to his ministry. Not with "Dum-dum Jesus." Not with "Red Rover, Red Rover, we pick you because we don't think there's a chance you'll be able to come over." Not with "You are the weakest link." No. Instead, God Almighty declares Jesus to be the precious one he's been hoping for forever, the culmination of God's dreams.

God speaks these same words to each of us, too. God speaks them in our Baptism. God speaks them in a sunset, when the sky becomes a watercolor wash of pinks and oranges and golds. God speaks them in the deep and pure love in a pet's gentle eyes. "You are my child, the cherished one, in whom I take great delight." God speaks these words to us in the Eucharist each week. We come to the altar rail and lift up our empty hands, fearing that we're the weakest link. And God fills our hands with his own body and blood, the sacrifice he made to tell us, "You are my child, the cherished one, in whom I take great delight."

God has always spoken these words to us. Isaiah reminds us today that the Lord God, the very one who created us, who imagined the idea of us, says to us, "Don't be afraid. I've called your name not because I think you're the weakest link but because for me you're the only link. When you hear those schoolyard taunts telling you you're not good enough or smart enough or strong enough, I'll be with you, whispering my love into your ear. I am the Lord God, and I give all of the wealthiest, richest kingdoms in the world in exchange for you, just you." (Isaiah 43:1-4a) Because you are my child, the cherished one, in whom I take great delight.

Amen.