Who We Are
AM Psalm 25 • PM Psalm 9, 16
Exod. 18:13-27 • 1 Pet. 5:1-14 • Matt. (1:1-17), 3:1-6
I have been using this strange stay-at-home time to read Herodotus. As a card-carrying historian I am more than a bit embarrassed to admit I have not read him before, but there it is. He’s pretty wonderful. It is history as the usual—wars and regimes and plots and shenanigans—mixed with strange tales and descriptions, some of them possibly true, of cultural mores of different peoples of the classical Mediterranean world. Typically for that time, anyone of importance is invariably identified by lineage. It’s not Glaucus but Glaucus, son of Hippolochus, not Codrus but Codrus, son of Melanthus. Who you were and where you stood depended on whom you were from.
The book of Matthew opens with the lineage of Jesus, the three sets of fourteen generations to show that he was descended directly from Abraham through David. It is meant of course to establish his bona fides in Jewish prophecy, and it is in line with classical identity through ancestry. If you were whom you were from, Jesus was a serious big shot.
We then skip ahead a bit to John in the wilderness, belted in leather and eating locusts and baptizing those who seek him out. We do not know just what that entailed, some form of ritual cleansing, but it brought me to our baptism and its meanings, which are many. I am sure you have noticed that when the priest lovingly ladles the water, s/he uses only the first name of the recipient. It's not “Jane Ellen Smith, I baptize you...” but “Jane Ellen, I baptize you.” That is because in baptism we take on a new identity that has nothing whatsoever to do with our family tree.
I am not Elliott, son of Dick and Betsy, but Elliott the Christian, “Christ’s own forever,” and as is true for us all, I am bound to Christians everywhere and from across time, including the future. That’s our family now, and beyond it we are committed also to live out our vows, without exception, among and for everyone else, among other things by respecting the dignity of every human being.
It is something worth remembering at any time but especially in the season of Easter—and perhaps even more so in this time that calls for us to identify with and care for everyone around us, even if that means just staying home and reading Herodotus.
Written by Elliott West
Elliott teaches history at the University of Arkansas. He has been a member of St. Paul’s for more than twenty-five years.