23 August 2026
The Rev. E. Scully
At the Core of Who we Are: God
Sometimes when I read the Bible I get the feeling that God knows us – we frail, fallible and often foolish human beings – very well. It seems that God knows us better than we know ourselves.
God is ultimately the author of this world and of our lives. God has a large story of creation, creativity, love, and salvation into which God invites us to write our own stories within God’s bigger plotline, and to discover for ourselves the roots of who we are in this story. We have been authored by God, with God writing so much of our own particular stories as women, transgender persons, men, queer and straight, of various physical statures and different abilities and skills, of various cultural and linguistic traditions. The beginning of any identity quest rests with God. Whatever in turn I may author with my life, I am only, truly, a co-author, building on the story that God has already told.
Remember your foundations, says the prophet Isaiah. At the beginning of who you are is the rock from which you were hewn and the quarry from which you were dug. There will you find some cues to who you are. Not in a direct paternal and maternal blood kinship lineage, mind you. Rather, it is in Abraham and Sarah’s faithfulness to God and willingness to risk the adventure begun in their lives by God that shapes us in foundational ways. We too, like them thousands of years ago, are called and shaped by God. Their faithfulness is the rock that makes our own faithfulness and willingness to risk the adventure of our own lives with God, even going into unknown places with God. To have faith at the core of one’s identity is to be able to trust God’s guidance through the unknown. Even to be ok with a long journey into the unknown.
The Psalmist sings of God’s enduring love and faithfulness that to him has been reliable and palpably real and trustworthy through difficult times. To have this vision of God and to have this faith at the core of one’s identity is to know that I am deeply valued by God. That God has created me with dignity and that I am worth rescuing. God’s steadfast love endures forever and God will not forsake any of what God has crafted in love, including us.
God values us beyond what we can understand. And God is continuing to author us – to shape and form us through the Holy Spirit.
Today’s second reading takes us into this idea. We might say that St. Paul had his own identity issues – having been a well known persecutor of Christians, then literally getting knocked off his horse by God and confronted both with God’s love and by his own sin (that’s the way it usually goes with God!). Paul became deeply attentive to the workings of God’s grace as the Holy Spirit transforming the real lives of real people, starting with his own. One of the many things we can learn from St. Paul is that God desires us to grow into the fullness of the stature of God’s beloved children growing ever closer to God. And the closer we grow to the God who authors us, the more our minds will be renewed through God’s enlightening of us, so that we can perceive the reality of God’s work in ourselves and others better and better – this is a part of the gift of discernment. To have this at the core of one’s identity is to grow the true humility of self-knowledge equally along with attentiveness to the distinct gifts that God is growing in others. It is humbling, in ways that are beautiful.
Today’s relatively brief Gospel reading is so full of so many different stories that I can only choose one window into it this morning. On the one hand, Jesus himself might be seen to be overly concerned with his own identity in the sense of how he has been perceived and received. To some he might sound like an insecure performer: did I do ok? What are they saying about me?
But Jesus’ question to his intimate followers wasn’t about checking on his market value or the reputational stakes. If I lean into my opening line today – that the Bible teaches us that God knows us perhaps better than we know ourselves – I can see Jesus as the Wisdom of God actively discerning the wisest course in ministry in the time that he has left. The crowds whom he has encountered, being mixed bags of fragile and sometimes foolish human beings, also have deep needs, deep desires for healing, for liberation, for release from poverty and suffering. How easy it is for our desires and insecurities to project onto others with certainties about who they are. The more one’s foundation is insecure, the more one is certain to project one’s needs into a situation and to come to perhaps too-easy conclusions. Who do they say that I am? No surprise, really, that the crowds have projected their own hopes onto Jesus: that he is a new prophet or a reappearance of John the Baptist.
But who do you say that I am? Peter’s proclamation rises up immediately in the narrative, simple, straightforward, right on truth: Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Peter’s proclamation, like the faith of Abraham and Sarah going out on their God-led adventure, becomes a rock, a touchstone, a foundation for us all. His are grace-authored words.
What if something closer to holy wisdom is actually happening here? Having consulted a number of good scholars on this passage, the best that I can glean is that Jesus’ subsequent order to the disciples not to tell anyone further of this truth is simply because the story is not finished yet and there is so much that the crowds are still not understanding. They are really going to have a hard time with what comes next. Jesus has yet to do more teaching and healing, and then will withstand arrest, and suffer torture and death. Jesus has yet to rise from the dead. The story is not over yet.
Peter is able to proclaim not because he knows the end of the story – in fact, Peter will be one who will kind of obstinately get in the way at times when he gets up on a high horse a few times, and then when he three times denies being a follower of Jesus. Peter is able to make his proclamation through grace alone, not from his own putting-together of the pieces of a story that is still being told. Despite – or perhaps because of – his own weakness, Peter is in this moment of his proclamation deeply in touch with the truth about God and also about himself – that this truth about Jesus is what truly matters.
To have grace at the core of our identity is to allow God to move in us with the illuminating clarity of the grace that can see God for who God is, that can give our minds over to trust the workings of the Holy Spirit, that can proclaim Jesus as God.
All of these divine realities form us as individuals and as community here at St. John’s and wherever we bring God’s love. May our proclamation of what is true to the Gospel remain focused on God’s Good News, rooted in grace, and guided by the Holy Spirit.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.
As our parish musician, he provides both support and leadership so that a variety of parish programs can find musical expression and attract participation. When our handbell choir is in season, he is one of our ringers. At parish dinners, he provides popular piano music for the guests to dine by. For both worship services and concerts, he will rehearse and accompany vocal and instrumental soloists from our congregation on piano, organ, or even accordion.
Angus Sinclair was appointed Director of Music of St. John the Evangelist on February 1, 2023. Having graduated in 1981 (Honours B.Mus.) in organ performance from Wilfrid Laurier University, he went on to distinguish himself as a church musician, recitalist and accompanist touring in both Canada and the UK. For over 40 years Angus has served parishes and congregations throughout Southwestern Ontario as director of music. He experiences his present appointment to St. John’s as a welcome homecoming, both spiritually and musically.