Christianity is about identity. And, our identity tells us two competing and yet complementary things. We are special in God’s sight because God made us and freed us. And we are indelibly flawed such that we need God’s continual Grace in our lives. This Grace frees us over and over. This act of continual liberation is part of an ongoing covenant with God and with one another. And, our part of the covenant is to remember our place of honor and to be humbled by it. All of this tells us that we are as good as anyone else, but no better. We are as valuable as anyone else, but no more valuable. We are as important as any other person on the planet, yet we are not more important.

This week I found myself rooting against the United States’ Olympic basketball team. The unparalleled dominance of Americans in this sport came to a screeching halt when first Puerto Rico quite unexpectedly defeated us, a team with some of the greatest individual players alive. Why? How? The team was stunned. The coach was stunned. People watching were stunned.

I have become increasingly embarrassed by our rash and brash behavior in the world. I feel increasingly discomfited that America seems to always ask first, “How does this benefit me?” and “What’s in this for me?” and “Why should I care?” We ironically invoke moral language to self-serving ends and run from it when it judges or hold us accountable for our actions. We do this time and again. We do it as a nation and, unfortunately, we do it as individuals. Now, I’m not saying that there are not generous people in this country. Part of the problem, it seems, is that we are gravitating toward a world view that allows for no subtleties, no shades of gray. We have become a reactionary people. There are certainly wonderful people and our nation is a great nation, but our power and privilege – important things to our greatness – are the very things that challenge us. This is the challenge set before the Jews so very many years ago. How are we to respond…how are we to act…how are we to be…how are we to exist given our privilege, our dominance, our power, our position? This question is not only before Americans, but I think it sits especially before Christian Americans. It is set before us every day, in little and in big ways.

We, Americans who consider ourselves Christian, are part of an ancient and ongoing story. This story tells us that once we were no people. Once we were a people without God, that is, for Bible writers, we were a people with no identity. Then we became. We were claimed by a great God. We were given promises of liberation and plenty. After a time of great trial when we lived under the oppression of a great nation, our God had the might and power to deliver us from slavery into newness. A people with no identity became God’s people. This is allegorical, it is metaphorical, for many it may be literal. It is the essence of our story. But it does not end there. It just begins.

Once we were delivered, we were given responsibilities. We were to remember our God – the God of liberation – and we were to be a humble people offering hospitality to others as we remembered the hard times of our own past. We were to act justly to those in our midst who lacked food, money, shelter. Rules and laws grew out of this compassionate way of life. But over time, as many of us became comfortable, we began to use and abuse the very laws born to bring compassion so that we could maintain our comfort and to keep the lowly low. We lived by the letter, but not by the spirit, of the Law. Thus emerged our prophets. These people shouted, wailed, and pleaded for a return to compassion, for us to remember compassion, for us to remember God. In Jeremiah God asks, “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far form me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves.” We become that which we idolize. We chase the God of justice and compassion and we become just and righteous. We chase empty values and we become empty. Why did we forget God? Why did our ancestors become worthless? The prophets give us the answer: They forgot their story. They did not tell the story. “They did not say, “Where is the Lord who brought us up from the land of Egypt, who led us in the wilderness, in a land of deserts and pits, in a land of drought and deep darkness, in a land that no one passes through, where no one lives? I brought you into a plentiful land to eat its fruits and its good things.” The people, us, stopped telling the story. And consequentially, we forgot the story altogether.

The prophets are not just mean people. They are faithful people, sad people, angry people who are calling us back to our covenant, the very essence of our story, the core of our identity. The judgments of over 2000 years ago ring true today. We indeed have forsaken God, every time that we have forsaken one another and the earth given to us to care. We have forgotten God, our fountain of living water, that which is necessary for health and life and we have dug for ourselves cisterns, cisterns that are cracked and can hold no water. We have become haughty and arrogant. We have lost our humility. We have forgotten our story. We have lost our identity.

In the midst of the cry for faithfulness Jews and Christians part ways. Jews found one answer to faithfulness and Christians found another. For those of us who follow the path of Christianity, we find faithfulness in and through Christ. Perhaps we differ on how faithfulness comes in and through Christ, but all (or we all should) find that somehow, in the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus or Christ that grace is born again, anew, differently. God’s spirit pours upon us claiming us once again restoring us to covenant. In the Letter to the Hebrews the author (who is very most probably not Paul) enjoins us to be a faithful people – faithful to covenant. “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for doing that some have entertained angels…Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them. Let marriage (I would probably change that to loving partnerships) be held in honor.” Over and over the author reminds the people to be a faithful community.

Luke, written about the same time as the Letter to the Hebrews, tells us a parable from the mouth of Jesus. He tells us that “all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” He tells us something a little more revolutionary, though, “when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Both the author of the Letter to the Hebrews and the author of Luke follow the mission of the prophets reminding their communities and us even today that our covenant with God, our liberator, obliges us to extend compassion and justice to one another, hospitality and care to one another, love and respect to one another.

When we remember our story and our place within it, we are not humiliated, but we are humbled. Our story states very clearly over and over that God loves us, that we are valuable and valued, that we are important and loved. These things could not be true if our story existed to humiliate us. No, our story humbles us. It tells us that our greatest figures Sarah, Rebecca, Moses, David all fell short of perfection…far short. When we fall short, when we make poor decisions, we have not strayed far from the great mothers and fathers of our tradition. However, just like them we are faced with the challenged to change – to repent, to turn around – and to enter back into right relationship with one another and our God. To know our story is to be humble and whole. As we look ahead to the Fall we will have opportunities to learn more about our story, to engage our story, to experiment with our spiritual journeys, to be proactive in our work for justice and compassion, and to explore and discover who we are. Please take advantage of these opportunities. Listen to your prophets and hear the story of Jesus. Let’s learn our story and be humbled. Amen.