(35) Fake ID

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Fake ID, originally shared on July 27, 2020. It was the thirty-fifth video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   We’re now in a place during the pandemic where case increases are being driven by young people in LA. In some places, they are up by 100%. There is widespread talk and various groups of people, including doctors, calling for another full shutdown of a month or more. A hospital in Texas has formed a death committee, like an ethics committee, do decide who of their patients should be given their limited resources, i.e. who should live and who should die.

   I’m happy to report that masks do seem to be becoming more common. People seem to be realizing that wearing a mask, along with other precautions like handwashing and social distancing, save lives. It saves jobs and strengthens our economy. It is a visible sign that we care about the community, the common good. In some places, masks are required.

   Masks are now being made with colorful prints, corporate logos, skeleton teeth, folds or no folds, in many shapes and variations, and political messages. You can buy a mask with the lower part of your face printed on it, so people know what you look like, which I actually find kind of creepy.

   I shared a meme the other day that I saw online of a guy wearing a hat and sunglasses, and a mask. The meme was captioned, “The Future of T-shirts” because on his t-shirt was printed the guy’s face without a mask, and his name, and an arrow pointed to his face saying, “It’s Me.”

   Sally and I had to go to our bank last week to take care of some business that had to be done in person. We walked through the doors wearing masks, and no one triggered an alarm, or screamed and fainted, or had any reaction at all.

   Wearing a mask, however, creates a question about our identity. How can people know it’s us when we’re wearing a mask?

   Pat Sajak, the host of Wheel of Fortune, early in the pandemic, last April, put a post on Twitter about wearing a mask: “No one was recognizing me when I went out wearing a facemask. Had to resort to carrying an 8x10 glossy of myself. Celebrityhood can be challenging.“

   How can people tell when we’re laughing or frowning, or sticking our tongue out, or whatever?

   Here’s a picture of me when we bought our first masks. You can tell it was months ago because I had a recent haircut.

   Am I laughing, smiling, sticking my tongue out? You can’t tell.  (I’m smiling.)

   More significantly, how has the pandemic changed our identity, our sense of ourselves and who others think we are, during what we used to call the new normal, and by now is beginning to feel like, just “normal”?

   The pandemic has made us question who we are.

   Who are we if we can’t work? Who are we if we can’t hang out with our friends and family? Who are we when we regard everyone as a potential carrier of a deadly disease? Who are we if our role has changed in our family or among our friends?

   We may be receiving public assistance for the first time. Driving through long lines to receive free food. We may be looking for free medical testing, or school supplies, or questioning whether or not to go work and risk the life of our families or to be unable to provide for them.

   We may be nearly paralyzed, knowing that the rent or a house note is coming due this week, and we don’t have any idea how we are going to pay it.

   Or, we may be relatively safe and comfortable and sacrificing to help others, or feeling guilty about not doing enough, or just waiting to see what comes next.

   Is that us? Is that who we are?

   Christians have answered that question by going to the beginning, when God created everything out of nothing through an act of God’s will. God created human beings to be different from the rest of creation.  

   The Bible says, right at the very start:

*Genesis 1:26-27

   We can know who we are because we know whose we are.

   Whatever circumstances you are in right now, they do not define you. God defines you.

   God defines you, and that identity determines what you do to make the world better for everyone. It’s not a matter of “what do I have to do?”, but “what do I get to do to the glory of God?”.

   This is how God defines you, how God gives you your identity:

The Psalmist says,

*Psalm 8

   The world wants to define us as consumers, and when we no longer consume or consume enough, the world says we are a failure. The world defines us by our strength, by our health, by our stock portfolio, by our possessions. The world admires fame, power, physical appearance, abilities, contacts. The world wants to give us a fake ID.

   God says that all these things will fail us now or in the future. They cannot sustain us because they cannot be sustained.  

   Have you ever carried a fake ID? I did, until recently.  Sally and I went to visit our son in San Diego when he was in law school. We had some time, while he was in classes, so we decided to visit the San Diego Air and Space Museum to see the Star Trek exhibit.

   When we got to where the tickets where being sold, I pulled out a card from my wallet and showed it to the ticket seller. It said, “Official Starfleet ID Card”. It had come in the mail with a bunch of stuff and an invitation to join a Star Trek fan club. I kept the card.

   I said, “Do I get a discount with this?” He laughed a little and said, “No.”

   Everything about that ID was fake, and it did not gain me entrance, much less a discount, and rightly so.

   I worked in an aluminum manufacturing plant for some summers when I was in college. I worked in the factory that sanded, primed, and then baked Teflon onto pots and pans. At one point in the process, the goods were stamped on the bottom with the manufacturer’s logo, Mirro Aluminum. Sometimes, however they were stamped with the logo’s of other companies, as part of a manufacturing sub-contract. There were several different logos, but they were all the same pan.

   This is how the world works. The world only values us for what we can do for them. The world wants to put its stamp on us.

   The world wants to give us a fake ID, it wants to tell us that we have no value in and of ourselves.

   God tells us that every one of us is dear to God, worth giving God’s life for as fully human and fully God in Jesus Christ. It’s been said that if you were the only person on earth, God would still die for you. God loves you.

   God does not fail us. God accompanies us through our struggles, God abides with us, is steadfast in whatever the conditions of our lives. God endures, our relationship with God is alive, God is alive and God is for us.

   When I was in seminary in Berkeley a pastor named Floyd Shaffer came and did a workshop on clown ministry. Then we were invited to go into San Francisco and, well, clown around.

   He said that clown make-up only hides our appearance. Because we are unrecognizable, however, our true self can emerge.  

   Masks allow people to engage in all kinds of disgusting behavior. Hypocrisy is when we present an appearance to others that does not match our inner self. Actors in ancient Greece didn’t wear makeup, they wore masks. The Greek word for mask, therefore, is the root for an English work, “hypocrite”.

   Integrity is when both our masks and who we are are the same.

   God calls us to live like that, with integrity. We are called to allow God to form our inner selves and outer selves to be the same. No fake ID’s.

   Do you carry your identification? Can you?

   Our true ID is not carried in our wallets, or in our purses or our backpacks. It is known to God and it is carried in our hearts, because God put it there.
   We are made for relationship with others. So, who are we if the people we are around regularly is very limited, or we are alone?

   We are the Lord’s. That is our identity.

   We are bound together in Christ even when we are physically apart. We have been given faith, a living relationship with the one true living God. That relationship never goes away. It is who we truly are.

   Paul writes, in his letter to the Romans:

*Romans 14:7-9

   Reject the identity that the world wants to give you. It’s fake. It leads to Sin with a capital “S” (to separation from God) and death. Turn to God and know who you truly are, whose you truly are. Open your heart to the living waters that are the person of the Holy Spirit and allow God to turn you into your true self, to true belonging, and to true life.