The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on March 21, 1982. The title is, Who Are You?, and the scripture references Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 through 10. 

Back about 20 years ago, there was a piece of absolutely zany English humor that became quite popular. A group by the name Beyond the Fringe recorded a record. You may have run into it.

One of the bands on the record began this way. I'll do my best Joe Kitts for you, all right? I don't think I'd try this if he weren't on the other side of the world.

But it began this way. I could have become a judge, but I just never had the Latin. I just never had it for the judging exams.

They're very rigorous, you know, very rigorous indeed. They're noted for their rigor. So I became a miner.

The mining exams are not very rigorous. Not very rigorous at all. They only ask you one question.

They say, who are you? And I got 75% on that. I wonder if someone were to ask you this morning, who are you?

How you would score. Well, I'm John Howe. No, that's your name.

Who are you? Well, I'm the rector of Toro Episcopal Church, Fairfax, Virginia. No, that's your job.

That's your vocation. But who are you? Well, I'm Karen's husband.

father of Catherine, Jonathan, and Jessica. No, those are some of your relationships. Who are you in the midst of them?

And you see the point, don't you? My name could change. My job could change.

Time or tragedy could change my relationships. Who am I in the midst of all of that? It's a fascinating question from a biblical point of view.

We were considering just last week that one of the things that I am called to be is a living stone among living stones in a living temple. Fascinating to trace through and see the way in which Jesus describes his church and begin to think, that's who I am? That's who we are?

I want to come to that same question in the light of this morning's epistle reading, and I think you might find it helpful to turn with me to the book of Ephesians. The opening chapters of Ephesians are so rich, they are so full that we almost choke on them, yet I'd beseech you to come back to them time and time again and to try to do some feasting on them. Let God work this into our lives.

One way to get at it, what Ephesians is really about, is by keeping that question in mind. Who are you? Who am I?

Who am I called to be? Who does God say that I am? If you've never done this, let me suggest a little piece of homework to you.

I'd suggest that you could do this with almost any book, but perhaps especially with Ephesians. Go through and underline, not now and not in those Bibles, but when you get home in your own alright underline or put a circle around every time that it uses the phrase in him because I want to suggest to you that for the Christian there is no answer to the question who am I apart from a broader understanding who am I in him who am I who are you who are we in Jesus Christ. You see, in Christ I've got a new name.

In Him I've got a new vocation. In Him I've got a new relationship that doesn't change. Or if it changes, it deepens with the passing of time.

And tragedy only makes it sweeter. Who am I in Him? Just for instance, take a look at chapter 1.

Verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. I wonder if you believe that this morning. I wonder if you realize it.

I wonder if you really know that that's so. That in Jesus Christ, right now, present tense, God has already blessed us with every spiritual blessing. It's not somewhere in the future.

It's right now. It'll get richer. It'll get deeper.

Right now, every spiritual blessing is yours if you dare to believe it, if you dare to walk into it. Verse 4, Even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. Do you know that God knew your name?

Wrote you upon the palm of His hand, as it says in Isaiah. Held you as the apple of His eye before the foundation of the world. He chose you.

You didn't choose Him. He chose you. and He destined us, it says, in love to be His sons and daughters through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of His will.

Look at verse 6. To the praise of His glorious grace which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved, in Him, in Christ. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.

You have that right now in Him. It's amazing. You can talk to folks who have been active in the church, faithful, loyal members of the church, served on this committee, on that committee, taught Sunday school, sat on vestry, considered themselves committed Christians, and you say, do you right now know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you have the forgiveness of sins?

And they say, well, I hope so. I'm working on it. No. In Him, you've got it.

If you're in Him, you've got it. The forgiveness of sins. It's not a matter of I'm working on it.

You can't possibly work on it. It's a gift in Him. If you're in Him, you've got it.

Take that as absolute foundation fact. You can go on. Passage after passage.

just in that first chapter, in Him, in Him, in Him. That gives us a background for the question that I'm raising this morning. Who are you?

In chapter 2, the passage that we heard read to us answers that question in terms of at least three things. What is my condition? What is my position?

And what is my mission? Don't you like that? my condition, my position, my mission.

Before we understand who we are, though, we've got to back up just a little bit and understand who He is. If the whole thing pivots on being in Him, then who is He? Paul writes verse 15, For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him that you may come to know who He is.

Now, you already know Him. He's writing to Christians, and yet He says, I pray that you might come to know Him better. And then He says, having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He's called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints.

So first we've got to understand who He is, and then we begin to understand who we are in Him. Do you follow what I'm saying? That's the agenda for the morning.

That's a big one. My prayer is that you might know what you have in Him, who you are in Him. And first you've got to understand who He is.

Book of Ephesians, the New Testament generally, the Gospel on which you and I, I trust, are betting our lives, says that Jesus Christ is Lord. Right now. Right now.

We say the word so easily. Jesus is Lord. That's the earliest confession of the Christian church.

That's the one thing, out of all the disagreements that Christians might have with each other, that's the one thing that they agree on. Jesus is Lord. But what does it mean?

It means He's in control. It means He holds my destiny in the palm of His hand. It means that He holds this nation in the palm of His hand.

It means that He knows the end before anybody else does. It means that whatever threatening thing appears on the horizon, He has not abdicated the throne of the universe. It means that there's no doubt as to who wins.

Christians say Jesus is Lord, and yet so much of the time we behave as if Paul Volcker was in charge of things. You know, or Ronald Reagan held our destiny in his hand. Or Leonid Brezhnev.

Or David Stockman. We need to pray for all of those folks, but they don't hold our destiny. me.

Jesus is Lord right now. Do you really believe that? Jesus is Lord right now. Listen to this word from Isaiah.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and we are accounted as dust on the scales. Dust on the scales. Behold, he takes up the fine dust.

The islands are like fine dust. Little dust, not even big dust. Little dust.

All the nations are as nothing before him. They are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness. Paul says, I pray that God would give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.

Listen to what he says. That you might know what are the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe according to the working of His great might which He accomplished in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made him sit at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. And he has put all things under his feet and made him the head over all things for the church.

Jesus Christ is in control right now. He restrains the exercise of His awesome power that we might have the freedom to make some choices for Him or against Him. But never let it slip into your mind or into your heart that things are out of control.

He knows exactly where it's going and He holds it in the palm of His hand. That's who He is. He's Lord.

Above all rule, above every name that can be named. And in the light of that, who are we? Chapter 2, and you.

And you, he made alive. You, he made alive when you were dead through trespasses and sins in which you once walked. Now I'm on something very basic this morning, and yet somehow it's terribly elusive to most people.

I wonder if you realize that the principal categories in Scripture are not good and bad. They're not right and wrong. The principal biblical categories are life and death.

You either are alive to God or you're not. Do you remember our first parents? were told, in the day you eat of it, in the day you eat of that forbidden fruit, you'll die.

And we read that story and we sort of scratch our heads. We say, now wait a minute, what's going on here? God said, in the day you eat of it, you'll die.

And they ate of it and they went on living for years and years. Had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. What's going on?

Their bodies went on living. In the day they ate of it, they died. you see God is our life God is the author of life the source of life the sustainer of life and to rebel against him to turn against him to reject him to disobey him is to turn our backs on life itself and to walk off into darkness and death the only alternative and so the terrible irony of the situation was and is that here they were wandering around breathing, sleeping, talking, corpses.

Spiritually. I wonder if that's really settled into your understanding. When it does, the whole Bible is going to come open to you in a new way.

Until it does, it's going to be obscure. You see, the prophets never come and say, if you do this, you're going to die. That's not how they speak.

What they say is, you're dead in sins and trespasses. You didn't even know it. It would be laughable if it weren't so tragic.

You're dead. Isaiah says, behold, we are as dead men. David says, create in me a clean heart and put a new and right spirit or life within me.

Jesus sums the whole thing up when he says you need to be born again. Nicodemus doesn't have any idea what he's talking about. He's thinking in physical terms.

I have to get back into my mother's womb? No, no, no, no. I'm not talking about your body. you're spiritually dead and you didn't even know it.

Can you imagine that? James Michener wrote a novel a number of years ago called Hawaii. One of the little vignettes in that book is the story of a young bride by the name of Kinau.

And Kinau is an absolutely gorgeous young woman only it's discovered that she has leprosy. And in the Hawaii of the 1870s, there was no treatment, no cure for that disease, only banishment. And so they put her off on one of the little outer islands called Kalawao.

And for four months, no sign of the disease appeared on the outside. You can imagine, for four months, she was fought over by the men, envied by the women. And then suddenly it all burst forth.

Michener writes, in February 1871, the virulent leprosy that abided in Canal broke loose, and within the space of a few weeks, she became a horribly riddled thing, and of course she died. That's not a very pretty picture, but that's a picture of you and me, biblically. That's a picture of all mankind, biblically.

There may or may not be open lesions on the surface. but inside there's a leprosy of spiritual death and sooner or later it's going to burst forth and you, Paul says you he made alive when you were dead in sins and trespasses unless you understand that you haven't even really begun you're dead unless God does something about it as I say, it would be laughable the whole history of mankind is a history of walking corpses laughable were it not so tragic verse 4 chapter 2 but God but God there's the beginning of the good news you can't appreciate the good news until you know what the problem is Jesus said those who are well no need of a physician. It's those who are sick.

Now, don't think that he meant by that that there were some who were not sick. He said, but unless you know that you're sick, you're not going to appreciate the cure. Unless you know that you're dead, the gospel is never going to have any impact on you at all.

Let me put it another way. Do you understand that the good news of Jesus Christ is not simply that a man died and came back to life again. The good news is that you and I, who were dead, have also been resurrected in Christ.

You and I have come back to life again. That's who we are. We're dead people that God has made alive.

That's my condition. But God, who is rich in mercy out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses made us alive together with Christ. Praise God.

He did it. He did it all by Himself. Do you know that a dead man cannot possibly bring himself back to life?

That's the first part of the answer. Who am I? I'm a dead man made alive by Jesus Christ made alive by the mercy of God that's my condition my condition is that I was dead and I've come alive again if you're in Christ this morning you're somebody who has been dead in sins and trespasses who has been raised to new life but more than that as if that weren't enough more than that by grace have you been saved and He has raised us up with Him and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Not just dead and made alive again but seated with Him at the right hand of the Father. That stigers my imagination. I don't know what it does to you.

I can barely comprehend And what it means for Jesus to right now be at the right hand of God above every name that can be named, above all rule and power and dominion and authority and glory. And then Paul says, and I'm there too. Right now.

That's my true position. Is at the right hand of the Father with Christ. I share what is His.

Oh yeah, I have to work it out here. but my true position is in the heavenlies. What in the world does that mean?

That means that when I pray if I pray according to His will I pray with the authority of Jesus Christ Himself. Is that going to affect the way you pray? Not just, oh Lord, please, please gimme, gimme let it be so.

I have the authority of Jesus Christ when I'm praying according to His will in His name at the right hand of the Father God gave me to know that a man was about to die last week and I prayed against it lots of other people did too and God saved his life in a miraculous way and those who were here Friday evening heard testimony about it. Do you know that prayer makes a difference? If you're in Christ, you have the authority of Jesus Christ.

Now you better be sure you're praying according to His will. But we move in His anointing and it makes a difference. How about if He commands us to do something?

We say, Lord, that's impossible. And He says, yeah, I know, I specialize in that. It's not something that I do in myself.

It's what I do in Him. You understand? It's interesting to read the Gospel lesson.

It really is a commentary on this very passage, this very truth, this foundation truth. See, Jesus, it says, knew what He was going to do. He knew that nobody was going to go home hungry that afternoon.

He knew what He was going to do. But He set them up. It says he called Philip aside and asked him, where are we going to get bread to feed this group?

He knew what he was going to do. But this he said to test him. Philip didn't pass the test too well.

He said, ah, it beats me. And then Jesus stepped in and took the five loaves and the two fish and broke them and broke them and broke them and fed the multitude. Baskets full left over.

We were studying that very passage earlier this week, and Neil made the remark, he said, 12 baskets, probably one for every doubting apostle. Isn't that lovely? Do you understand what that test involved?

Philip, if you know who you are in relationship to me, you will have the privilege of taking those five loaves and those two fish and feeding 5,000 people with 12 baskets full left over. Philip didn't believe it. So he didn't get the blessing.

When you know who you are in Him, the impossible becomes reality. But you've got to trust it. You've got to obey it.

You've got to move out in the strength of that, In the light of that. See if somebody doesn't offer the fish. The people are going to go home hungry.

If the servants won't fill the water jar. Then the wedding party is going to end. There will be no wine that day.

If somebody even a shepherd boy. Won't believe God to stand up to Goliath. Then the Philistines are going to trample the army of Israel.

If the priests won't step into the Jordan. then the waters are never going to part. If the paralytic won't stand on his feet you can bet he's going to remain on his pallet for the rest of his life.

If you won't believe God with your tithe how can he open the windows of heaven and pour down an overflowing blessing upon you? It's not who you are in yourself. It's who you are in relationship to him.

In relationship to him I sit on the right hand of the Father, I share the authority, the power, the glory of Jesus Christ. It's not what I do in myself. It's what He does through me.

That's my position. And what's the purpose of all that? That His works would be accomplished here on earth.

The passage ends, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not because of works, lest any man should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. It's not because of good works, but it is for good works.

Did you follow that? We are His workmanship. It's not because of what we've done, but it's in order that we might do what He wants us to.

Not because of good works, but for good works. So many people have this backward. You know, Christianity is a matter of earning my way into God's favor.

Not a chance. Paul repeats it twice in one paragraph. For by grace you have been saved.

What is grace? Free, unmerited gift. you did absolutely nothing to earn it you can't earn a gift if you earn it it's not a gift if it's a gift you can't earn it for by grace you have been saved through faith it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast but it's given to you in order that you might do good works alright in order that you might accomplish his purpose in order that He might accomplish His purpose through you.

That I might be, that you might be the instrument of His will here on earth. So, who am I? My condition is that I'm a sinner saved by grace.

I'm a dead man made alive again by the power and mercy of God. My position is that I'm seated at the right hand of God in the heavenlies, along with Christ Jesus himself, and I share his glory, I share his authority, all that is his is mine, right now and forever. And my mission is that I'm created in him for good works, that I might carry out his purposes, here on earth.

You see, they only asked me one question. They said, who are you? And I got 75% on that.

How did you do? Let's bow our heads together. Father, we stand on holy ground.

Having just spoken these words, I'm awestruck by them. we recognize that these things are not matters for intellectual comprehension Paul's prayer was that the eyes of our hearts be enlightened Lord we pray that with him we pray that as we meditate upon these things we would see more clearly than we ever have who indeed the Lord Jesus really is. And then with no less wonder, we would come to understand who we are in relationship to Him.

To the praise of Your name. Amen.