11th Sunday after Pentecost
4th Sunday in “Behind the Mask: Our
Christian Identity”
Agent Carter and Christian Identity
August 9, 2015
Isaiah 29:13-16; Canticle of
Mary; Acts 19:11-15; Mark 1:21-24
(You can also watch it here: https://youtu.be/J2XfDZrqz1A)
Today is the end of our superhero summer sermon series,
so if they haven’t been your cup of tea, you can now breathe a sigh of relief
that next week will be back to normal.
Personally, as a preacher, it’s been fun to have something different to
organize my sermon around. And today is
my favorite of the four superheroes we’re looking to learn from this
summer. Technically, though, Agent
Carter is not a superhero. We first meet
her in the “Captain America” movie, where she is an officer with the SSR, the Strategic
Scientific Reserve, a top secret government agency, and among those involved in
turning Steve Rogers into Captain America.
By the end of the Captain America movie, Agent Carter and Steve are
planning to go dancing, a date that never happens because Steve crashes the
enemy’s weaponized plane into the Arctic and is presumed dead. This past spring, the ABC television network
picked back up with Agent Carter’s story, moving it ahead a year to 1946, after
World War II is over. She is still
mourning Steve’s death and, now that the men who survived the war have returned
home, she is relegated to secretarial duties with the SSR, in spite of being a
great agent and the equal of any of the male agents.
Agent
Carter struggles with knowing her gifts and graces and not being called on to
use them in the workplace. She knows
what she can do, but her boss just keeps asking her to file papers and get the
coffee. Being underestimated is what
many people have said is Agent Carter’s superpower. While others dismiss her as “just another
pretty face,” Agent Carter knows she is far more than that and uses that misjudgment
to her advantage. At the beginning of
the season, she was frustrated and angry at being dismissed out of hand. She was looking for her identity and
validation from others, wanting the respect of her colleagues. By the end of the season, she’s accepted who
she is and knowing herself what she can do is enough, even if it’s not
recognized by others, including her boss.
Agent Carter has enough self-respect and self-confidence that it doesn’t
matter if anyone else knows her value; she knows who she is and she knows her
value. She doesn’t wear a mask, or try
to be anyone else, or seek to justify her existence from anyone else. Agent Carter is herself, whether others
recognized her or not.
Knowing
who she was and having confidence in that was also a lesson that Mary, the
mother of Jesus, must have learned. We responsively
read her canticle this morning, a poem often called the Magnificat, from the
first word in Latin. Mary magnified the
Lord, she proclaimed the greatness of the Lord, because God had noticed her and
looked on her with favor. Mary knew she
was carrying God’s son, she knew God loved her, and she knew God had chosen her
to be Jesus’ mother. She also knew that
wasn’t obvious just by looking at her.
She knew she looked like an unwed pregnant teenager, who had either
cheated on her fiancé, or the two of them had gotten together before the
wedding night. That was what others
thought, and Mary knew that and she knew that wasn’t the truth. Her identity rested in God and God’s
Word. She knew who she was, and she knew
not many other people would recognize it or accept it, much like Agent
Carter.
Knowing who you are, accepting who you are, and accepting
that others may not recognize or accept who you are, are key to a mature
Christian identity. As people who follow
Jesus, just like Mary, our identity and validation come from him. If we ask the questions that Isaiah asks in
our Old Testament lesson this morning, “Who sees us? Who knows us?”, the answer is God.[1] The example Isaiah gives is someone who tries
to hide their plans from the Lord, who carries out their schemes in secret,
thinking no one sees them or knows what they’re doing, and Isaiah essentially
calls them a fool. Nothing is hidden
from the Lord. God knows the number of
hairs on your head, the number of days in your life, and what you’re
thinking. Just like Mary, God has
noticed you as well. The standard
opening prayer in the Anglican/Episcopal church recognizes this and starts each
worship service with the prayer, “Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all
desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.”[2] There is nothing God doesn’t know, he knows
your secrets, he knows the deep desires of your heart, he knows who you
are. He
knows who you are because he created you.
We are not self-made people. We
are the created, part of creation; we are creatures, not the creator. “Can something you have made
say, ‘You didn't make me’? Or can it say, ‘You don't understand’?”[3] “Does a book say to its
author, ‘She didn’t write a word of me’?
Does a meal say to the person who cooked it, ‘He had nothing to do with
this’?”[4] No! Beloved,
you are wonderfully and fearfully made, by God[5]. And God says you are
loved. God says you are loved unconditionally. God says he created you to be you. He didn’t create you to be someone else, he
created you you, with your own gifts
and graces to offer a hurting world.
Whether other people recognize and accept those gifts and graces is up
to them, not up to you. Like Agent
Carter, your skills and abilities may be underestimated or underutilized, and
that’s ok. You can rest easy, knowing
who you are and what you can do, without either seeking validation from someone
else or carrying a chip on your shoulder.
God says, “you are enough.”
Knowing who you are is also
important because there may come a time when someone who asks you. Paul prays in Colossians, “Let your speech
always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer
everyone.”[6]
This comes up in our New Testament reading this morning from Acts. Some of the Jewish high priests are copying
Paul, using the name of Jesus Christ, like Paul, to heal people. And one of the evil spirits argues back,
asking, “Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?”[7]
If you were to be asked that, how would you answer? Jesus I know, but who are you? Just like with Captain America, I thought
about using integrity with Agent Carter, but again, I couldn’t do it. You see, part of the Agent Carter storyline
is her friend, Howard Stark, a weapons-maker who is being investigated by the
SSR for selling his arms to the enemy.
Stark is actually being framed and asks Agent Carter to find out who’s
behind it. In her investigation, Agent
Carter thwarts and betrays the SSR’s investigation. She knows she’s doing the right thing, but
she’s not always going about it the most honorable way. It’s that age-old question of ‘do the ends
justify the means?’ She knows Stark is
being framed, she knows the SSR has the wrong guy, and because they won’t
believe her, from their point of view, she turns traitor in order to find out
the truth. Sometimes the answer to ‘who
are you?’ depends on the situation in which you find yourself. You are always beloved and claimed as
Christ’s own forever; yet we may wear many different hats during the course of
our lives. However, the hats don’t change the core of who you are. Stay true to who you are, who God created you
to be, even as you move through the different phases.
Finally, who you are has to do with whose
you are. You are God’s. Who do you say that God is? During Jesus’ ministry he was often taken as
one of the prophets, instead of as the Son of God, and there’s a conversation
he has with the disciples.[8]
He asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they say,
“Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one
of the prophets.” Jesus asks them a little closer, “But who do you say that I
am?” And good old Simon Peter answers, “You are the Messiah, the Christ, the
Son of the living God.” Who do you say
that Jesus is? Since your identity is
bound up in his, it’s important to know who he is, as well. If you belong to Jesus, and follow Jesus, who
is Jesus? In our Gospel reading this
morning, the evil spirit identifies Jesus as “the Holy One of God,” or “God’s
holy messenger.”[9]
Our opening hymn used all kinds of names to describe God, from almighty
King to Ancient of Days to incarnate Word, to holy Comforter.[10]
And I’m not saying that you have to have a complete, comprehensive,
lengthy description of God. It’s enough
to say that God is God and I am not. God
is the creator, and I am the created. I
know who I am and I know who I belong to, “I know the one in whom I have put my
trust,”[11] and it’s not me, it’s not you, it’s
not work, it’s not a church, it’s not a country. The one in whom I have put my trust is God
and God is the primary source of my identity.
The theme verse I chose for this sermon series was from 1
John, “See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are
called God's children, and that is what we are! Because the
world didn’t recognize him, it doesn’t recognize us.”[12] The world didn’t recognize
Agent Carter, it didn’t recognize Steve Rogers until he became Captain America,
and Spiderman and Superman both hid who they were so that they wouldn’t be recognized. We don’t hide. We don’t flaunt who we are, but we don’t keep
it a secret, either. We may not be
recognized and accepted, but that’s ok, because God knows us. God created each one of us and our name is
written in his book of life. It’s ours
to accept or not, but I can tell you, being you is enough. And so whatever may come, recognition or
obscurity, praise or criticism, activity or silence, we can say with our last
hymn, “it is well with my soul.” We come
as we are, to quote our middle hymn, and our Lord says, “Hey you, I know
you. You are my beloved child.”
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