Dr. Sean Michael Lucas

New St. Peters PC, Dallas, TX

October 26-27, 2007

Who Are You?: Understanding Identity

When you think about who you are, what comes to mind?

• Son, upper middle class, suburbs, two parents married 38 years, one sister
• Moved many times, mainly up an ddown the I-95 corridor between Washingong DC, and NYC.
• Husband, married nearly 14 years, four children
• Became a believer when a teenager–unusual religious journey
• Pastor with scholarly bent; historian with a pastor heart
• Writer and reader–love Mark Twain and Wendell Barry
• Gardner
• Avid sports fan–Indiana sports teams
• Springsteen, U2, country music
• Trucks, Fords, but when I follow NAsCAR, I am a Gordon fan.

Three Key Aspects to identify.

Belierfs

• the core understandings that form and motivate what and how I practice; they are also reinforced by these practices and by my stories.

Practice

• The regular activities that I engage in shape my understanding of myself and the world.

Stories

• narratives that help to make sense of what I believe and what I do.

“Identity Crisis”

• When someone is having an “identity crisis,” he/she has become disillusioned or is experiencing dissonance within her core.
  • Perhaps produced through a lengthy questionaing of previously held beliefs.
  • Perhaps caused through an interruption of key practices that reinforced identity.
  • Perhaps result of a disillusionment with the master story
• A version of this identity crisis would be the “mid-life crisis.”

Identity Formation in “Modernity” and “Post-Modernity”

Pre- and Early Modernity

• Social relations and family connections
• Trade generally passed on through generatons.
• Church connections more by birth than over belief.
• Identity fairly stric==pre-determined by others and before birth.

Late and Post-Modernity

• Social mobility, loss of extended and nuclear family.
• Trades determined through interest,
• Church connections determined by belief less than birt; challenge to lay on any type of denominationalism
• Identity radically dynamic-self-created through choices

Forging Christian identity

The transition from “non-religious” [non-Christian] to “religious” (Christian] identity.

• New Beliefs–from Idolatry to faith in Father, Sond, Spirit (1 Thessalonians 1:9)
• New Practices–from non-observent to observant (Ephesians 4:17-24)
• New Stories—from “self-determined” to divinely determined within the story of Israel and the Church as found in the Bible.
• The forging of Christian Identity is varied and common
  • Varied:
    • No two transitions are exactly the same
    • No two experiences of sin, grace, faith, repentance are exactly the same
  •  Common:
    • The need experience by all human beings is the same
    • The Gospel embraced by all believers is the same
    • The grace granted to believers is the same
•  The means for forging Christian identity (Acts 2:42-47)
  • Word
  • Sacraments
  • Prayer
  • Fellowship

Tomorrow, I’ll post Saturday night’s outline.