Rector’s Note: A Question of Identity-8.20.26

The College of Congregational Development that Rector’s Warden Deborah Way, Rosalinda Ibañez-Memba and I attended this summer set a lot of wheels spinning in our collective heads and left us with numerous models that we plan to share with you this year.

One theme that was especially interesting to us was that of identity. Our understanding of who we are and whose we are as a parish shapes what we have in common, the work that flows out of our mission and vision, and our sense of being part of something bigger than ourselves. For a church, identity addresses the question, in whose name do we serve?

A clear identity also helps a community sort the gifts and needs that God is calling it to use and address. And it makes us mindful of the places where we are called to receive from others, where we accept the grace of God to go beyond our limits.

This year, we will introduce a variety of ways to dive deeper into our identity as the people of St. Peter’s, and as the Episcopal Branch of the Jesus Movement (as our former Presiding Bishop Michael Curry liked to call us).

Deborah Way will get us started this Sunday with a sermon on recognizing the gifts flowing out of that identity, gifts that she has discovered in her lifetime as an Episcopalian.

A few forums this fall will help us creatively explore those questions of Episcopal and Anglican identity further.

It’s important to have our identity front and center as we consider questions like:

• How are we called to serve the needs of those around us in this political and economic climate?

• How do we vision and plan for improvements to the building, to the spaces we worship and learn in?

• How do we steward parish resources, and tend our ministries, including when to start a ministry and when to draw one to a close?

• And most importantly, how do we bring the love of Christ and the Good News of loving God to those who need it most?

  
  

But identity isn’t just a parish thing, or a collective thing. Many of us are negotiating identity in individual ways as well.

“Don’t get old!” one parishioner warns me repeatedly, while others chime in that it’s still better than the alternative.  We all know that our identities change with age, and our senior years bring on a whole new way of regarding ourselves. The physical changes and ailments that are part of aging don’t typically feel like a privilege. Entering times of receiving, when we were so used to being givers can be really jarring.

Several parishioners, especially among our youth, are negotiating identity in ways that most of us didn’t have the language for when we were young.  Some have discerned gender and accompanying  pronouns that are different from what was assigned at birth. Some have changed their names. And many families are hoping we’ll all try a little harder to get the words and names right. Because these are sacred and fragile changes and a great deal of well-being and self-worth is contained in them.

This cultural moment of political and social disruption has many of us looking at our political identity with new eyes, wondering how to square it with our faith and how to express our faith in political conversations. It’s important to remember that the very act of being a citizen in country and world is a political act that will be formed by our identity as Christians. Churches are also places of diversity, where we can have conversations across difference, sit in the discomfort that the gospel can dish out, and relish the common ground of familiar and beloved prayer and song and movements.

For those who are joining St. Peter’s from other faith traditions, determining whether to be formally received into the Episcopal Church is a question of identity. I know it was for me. Finding moments of clear definition and arrival in the ongoing spiritual journey helps shape our self-understanding as individuals who are uniquely beloved of God.

All of which is to say that now is a good time to prayerfully dive into these questions of who we are and whose we are in a community of love, support and faith.

A clergy colleague of mine in Boston likes to say that believing is not a prerequisite for belonging or beloving.

Belonging and beloving. Those are maybe two of the best words for Christian identity I’ve heard in a long time.