In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Several years ago my mom started getting strange phone calls from California threatening legal action for not paying her bills.  This was pretty strange given that we didn’t live in California.  Not too long after they started, she had to get fingerprinted to be a coach for the high school swim team.  While she was there, her name was flagged and her fingerprints were run against one Sharon Shaver, who had a warrant for her arrest in California and Oregon for fraud.  It turns out there was another Sharon Shaver, born the same year, but with different middle names that was doing some bad things, and there was a case of mistaken identity.  Sadly, this sort of thing probably goes on more often than we realize.

The Federal Trade Commission estimates that 9 million Americans have their identity stolen each year.  Credit Card fraud, phone, bank and finances, ID’s all can be stolen or used against us.  Some of you might even know someone who has been a victim of this crime.  Most of us probably have no idea what to do if something like this would happen.  How do you get your life back if your identity has been stolen?

The Israelites in our Old Testament reading were struggling with this question.  Their identity had been stolen, and they didn’t realize it until a lot of damage had been done.  They looked all over for the thief, blamed several others for the crime – the nations around them, trouble makers within themselves, even God Himself, when the whole time they had done it to themselves.  If we were to back up a chapter, we would read of Israel’s failure to hear and to see because of their sinfulness and continual rebellion against God.  They threw off their identity and traded it for something else.  Their sin had stolen their identity and they didn’t even know it until they were exiled from their homes, cut off from their families, aliens in a pagan land. And that same theft and fraud is still going on today as our sins, the devil, and the world try to steal away our identity, and who we are. God will not bless those who cast His name aside or exchange it for a name that is flashier to the world, as a marketing ploy, or an attempt to glory in our own ego.

Whatever Israel’s blindness and insensitivity may have been in the past, through their wandering around without a sense of identity, God speaks to such a people through His Word to remind them whose they are. God’s relationship with His people is where their identity stems from. Much can be endured if we have a sense of destiny borne out of a particular identity.  But if that identity is lost or stolen, all that is left is a sense of hopeless, a lack of purpose and direction in life.  It leaves us with the deepest pain of exile, the fear that their sense of identity, the glory of being a people called out by the eternal God, was after everything, just a fantasy. If you don’t know who you are, and whose you are, you can’t know where you’re going or what life is even about.

But the God who has named Israel now gives His own names to Israel as indicators of the character that redeems them, that supports them throughout their lives as His sons and daughters. God does not say that there are no floods or fires, but He does promise that one can survive them because of His presence.  When we are challenged by our sinfulness, when thieves come to steal our identity from us, God is right there with you. As much as Israel is the Lord’s, the Lord is Israel’s. This reciprocity is what God’s covenant is about: Israel is God’s people, and He is her God.

From this relationship, a new identity is created, it is formed, when God puts His name on His people.  Sinful people shape idols, but God is the true shaper. The sovereign and holy Creator is also a hands on artist who molds people as a potter shapes His clay. Like all artists, He signs His creation with His name. By doing so, He connotes ownership. By signing His name, He possesses that which He has created.

Today, we remember Jesus being baptized and beginning His journey that took Him to death on the cross and the grave before He came back to life on that first Easter.  We hear the words of the Father speaking of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” And today, we are reminded of our own baptism, when God placed His name on us, when He spoke of us that we are His sons and daughters that He is well pleased with us for the sake of Jesus.  All that belongs to Christ by nature, He places in water of Baptism, so that it may be ours by His grace.  When we are connected to His death and to His life. As the apostle Paul reminds us in our Epistle reading today, “We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of life…  For one who has died has been set free from sin.  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him… So you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:4, 7-8, 11).

For God, no price is too high to pay for the redemption of His own.  He could go to any length to buy our identity back from the sin, death and the devil that seeks to steal it.  It was not ultimately Egypt, Cush and Seba that God gave up as a ransom, He gave up His Son.  He who had no sin became sin for our sake (2 Corinthians 5:21) and giving his life as ransom for many (Matthew 20:28).  Martin Luther explains it well in talking about the second article of the Creed, “He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned person, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil; not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, that I may be His own and live under Him in His kingdom and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness…”

Our names mean something.  We are named “Christian” because Christ has claimed us as His own. We are named “Lutheran” because we are focused solely on the Good News that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone and that He delivers His salvation to us through Word and Sacrament.  We are named “Zion,” the name of God’s holy mountain and His holy people, because He has gathered us His people from as far as the east is from the west to be His own possession for His glory.  We are called by His name, we belong to Him and He to us.  It has nothing to do with us qualifying for such redemption.  God’s grace is that He love us with no self-delusions.  He knows exactly who we are in all our sinfulness, but that does not make us any less precious to Him.  For the sake of Jesus, He calls us His own. For the sake of Jesus, He forgives us our sins. For the sake of Jesus, He gives all that He has for us.  Amen.