On coming out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” (Mark 1.7-11)
He assumed numerous identities over many years, none of them real. He became so adept at making people believe he was somebody he wasn’t that he once did surgeries on a naval ship, having convinced everyone that he was a trauma surgeon. Right before going into the operating room, he hid in his room to speed read a textbook on general surgery. Fortunately, nobody died from his surgeries.
Over the years, he presented himself as a civil engineer, a sheriff’s deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, a Benedictine monk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher. One explanation for his ability to pass himself off as someone he wasn’t was his photographic memory and his high IQ.
His real name was Ferdinand Waldo Demara, although most of his adult life was spent using aliases. Late in life, when he took a job as a pastor of a church in Oregon, after getting a certificate from a Bible school, parishioners weren’t sure if he was genuinely a pastor or if he was conning them, so he resigned his position.
Two decades before his death in 1982, a book about his earlier impersonations was written, entitled The Great Imposter. It became a bestseller and a year later a movie, having the same title, was made about him, starring the popular actor at that time Tony Curtis. When asked why he decided to become an impostor, Demara said his motivation was “rascality, pure rascality.”
Truly, Demara’s life was one for the books, his numerous impersonations so convincing that he fooled many people. If someone became suspicious, he operated under a simple philosophy, “The burden of proof is on the accuser.” In the end, he died destitute, allowed to live in a hospital where he had worked as a bona fide chaplain for several years, none of the patients none the wiser about who he was.
Hearing his story, one is left to wonder, not so much if other people knew who he was–clearly most did not–but if he knew who he was deep down, after all the fake personas were removed. With so many faked personas worn over the years, maybe he had lost his real self, or maybe he had decided his real self was to be an imposter.
Demara’s story, if nothing else, reminds the rest of us of the importance of knowing who we really are and then deciding to be true to ourselves. Without that knowledge and practice, we end up being a chameleon, a person who changes his or her persona to blend into whatever is popular at the moment, changing selves like people change clothes, depending on what the weather is outside. As we know, the word chameleon comes from a lizard that is able to change colors so that it can blend into the environment.
And while changing colors works well for a lizard, it doesn’t work so well for people, where a constant change in personas results in being known as a hypocrite, fraud, shyster, or any number of other less than attractive names. Of course, many such chameleons aren’t bothered by the name-calling, choosing the benefits over the costs.
Our scriptures today pose us with a similar self-examination of who we want to be, presenting us with the situation of someone who knows who he really is and who lives his life in an authentic and real way, always true to himself, never changing just because the wind has shifted direction. That person, of course, was Rabbi Jesus, whose identity is revealed to him and to us in the selection from the sacred texts.
The scene that is presented to us is at the start of the gospel of Mark, who breaks from other evangelists by beginning the story of the Galilean Teacher, not with his birth, but with his baptism. His entrance to the world stage is simply stated in these words by the evangelist, “It happened in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.”
That baptism, less a symbol of cleansing for the Teacher, as it was for John’s followers, and more a symbol of his sharing the fullness of our humanity, represents his immersion into the depths of what it means to be a human, to be one with us, as his name Emmanuel implied, “God is with us.” He, the divine one, has joined us in the mud and muck and mess of humanity.
Coming out of the water, the heavens opened, a voice from above saying to him, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” The evangelist doesn’t just say that the heavens parted, but says they were torn open, using a Greek word schizomenous, which means to divide, to cleave, to split, from which we get the word schizophrenia, or a split personality.
Using that word intentionally, the evangelist presents the hermetic seal between heaven and earth splitting open, like a sharp ax might do with a heavy chunk of firewood. In that moment, God threw open the gates of Paradise, the Spirit descended in the form of a dove, and humanity was told through a voice that we are all beloved sons and daughters of God, his son having joined us in our humanity when he sank into the deep of the Jordan.
In that scene, minimally described by the evangelist but of maximal importance, we are given our first lesson in learning who we are. We are beloved children of the Most High God, the one who created the heavens and the earth, who breathed his life breath into our mouths, and who loved us from the first moment that he laid his eyes upon us, as we stood wobbly on our new feet, the mud streaks still running down our backs.
Born at the same time that the Galilean Teacher died, and becoming a leader of the Roman Church in its nascence, Clement of Rome put before the earliest followers of the Galilean this proposition, “I say to you that the word of God became a man so that you might learn from a man how to become a god,” a proposal so startling and so daring that the only possible response when hearing it is either to shake in our shoes like the disciples did when coming face to face with the glorified Lord, or to take off our shoes like Moses did when coming face to face with the burning bush.
Our individual baptisms serve that one important purpose–to remind us of the fundamental truth of who we are, that we are beloved by God, called a son or daughter, and called to live in this world in such a way that we always make clear our identity as his child. So long as we stay true to who we are, living and loving as the Galilean Teacher showed us how to live and how to love, we will not lose our sense of self, substituting a false self or selves for the real self.
Honestly, it is not easy, especially in our times, an age where imposters are a dime a dozen and where fake people are the coin of the realm. We find ourselves surrounded by bad examples of people giving away their birthright for a bowl of stew as Esau did, or selling their souls for twenty pieces of silver as Judas did, or forfeiting their friendship with God for a bite of fruit as Adam did.
In the midst of all the duplicity and hypocrisy and chicanery, One stands before us, coming up from the mud of the Jordan, inviting us not to stay stuck in the mud, but to rise with him, to listen to the same voice he heard, a voice reminding us of who we are in the depths of our being, beloved, embraced, saved.
Turning a deaf ear to the outer voices around us that always call to us to become less than we are, we listen to the inner voice that always calls us to become more, more like the Teacher, more like the God of love. Sometimes that is the surest proof of discipleship–listening to the right voice.
It’s good to remember that mud is slippery, it’s slimy, and it soils everything it touches. If we wallow in the mud or sling mud or become bottom feeders, we have fallen far short of our identity as a child of God, making it near to impossible for others to recognize us, opening us up to the criticism of being a fraud, the image and likeness of God on us hidden beneath a glob of mud so thick nobody could see it without soaking us under a water hose for a week.
Years ago, when Bush 41 was president, he visited an elementary school in Arlington, Virginia. A small boy, only eight-years-old, sitting in a chair next to Mr. Bush, asked him if he really was the president. Quick on his feet, the president pulled out his wallet, took out his American Express Card, and handed it to the little boy. The little boy, wearing glasses, carefully read Mr. Bush’s name on the card, returned it to him, and accepted that he was who he said he was.
While it worked for Mr. Bush, for those of us baptized in the waters of the Jordan, we have to do more than pull out a credit card to prove our identity. A credit card offers nothing but a name, just like the word Christian offers nothing but a name. A name may be sufficient to identify us for airport security, or a doctor’s appointment, or an eight-year-old curious boy, but it is insufficient for the follower of the Galilean Teacher, who asks us to show who we really are by our godly words and by our good actions.
If we have any question as to what that means, he offers us a clear example by his words and by his way of living in the world, showing us through both what it means to be a beloved son. Hearing the voice declare him beloved, he listened to the voice everyday, allowing it to guide him on his way, helping him become who he was meant to be–God among us. And so he fed the hungry, healed the sick, and welcomed the sinner to his table.
Now, we have a decision to make, the biggest of our lives, because it determines, in the end, who we are. Will we come up from the water, hear the voice call us beloved, live in that way everyday, or will we stay in the deep, unable to hear the divine voice calling us, living far beneath our calling as a son or daughter of the Most High God? Who do we choose to be?
A number of years ago, during a presidential campaign, one of the candidates for the highest office placed a disappointing third in the Iowa caucus. Reflecting on his loss, honest in his self-assessment, he told reporters he planned for the rest of the campaign to return to, in his words, “who I really am.” If we, like him, find ourselves speaking and behaving in ways that do not reflect who we say we are as followers of the one baptized in the Jordan, then the answer seems clear enough. Like that candidate, it is time to return to who we really are.
–Jeremy Myers
Sunday Brunch 