The Rev. Canon Melanie Dickson Lemburg
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs, AR
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 16A
August 23, 2026
Just this week, my husband David and I experienced a major identity shift. We became “empty nesters.” After 23 years of marriage (today!) and 22 years and 2 and ½ months spent with children in our home, we moved our youngest to college last weekend. Now, I’ve had enough conversations in recent weeks with other empty nesters to know that there is one chilling phrase that more seasoned empty nesters offer us newbies with a smile. (I wonder if you know it?) It is, “Sometimes, they come back!”
So for now, David and I are quietly taking up residence in a new home and in this new identity.
And here’s what I’m learning about myself as I grow into this new identity: for the entirety of the years of my priestly ministry in which I have always also been a mother, I have relied on the accountability of my family to keep me from overworking. Because, let’s face it, there’s always more work to be done in the church and in the Kingdom of God! So as a part of this new identity, this new season, I’m beginning to feel in my own soul a real wrestling with questions of vocation, of calling: “What does it look like to faithfully parent young adult children? What does a healthy work/life balance look like for me in this season of life, when the structure of home looks different? Who is Jesus inviting me, calling me to be in this new season?”
In the gospel reading for today, Jesus invites a conversation with his closest friends and followers that dances with questions of his identity (and theirs as well). He asks them, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” and “who do you say that I am?” I wonder what’s behind these questions for Jesus? Is he testing them? Asking them to hold up a mirror for him? Trying to learn more about the word on the street or how much of an influencer he is currently? What’s he doing here?
Most of us learn about ourselves, our identity, through our relationships with others. We develop patterns of behavior that both serve and hamper us in the development (and redevelopment) of our identity, and in the growing into our vocation, our calling of who God is inviting us to be.
We see this dynamic at play in next week’s gospel reading. (And here’s a spoiler alert for y’all and next week’s preacher! Sorry/not sorry!). In our reading for this week, Peter is lauded by Jesus for his answer to the question: “who do you say that I am?” It is only Peter who is courageous or bold enough to answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” But then next week, in the portion of the gospel that immediately follows this reading, Peter gets rebuked by Jesus as Peter’s understanding of who Jesus is and their very relationship, itself, quickly turns to an impediment to who Jesus is being called to be by God and how he is being called to live into his mission.
Paul hints a bit at this in the Romans passage for this week as he urges his readers (and us): “do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed so that you may discern what is the will of God.” I can’t help but wonder how our identities are so often conformed to this world? What would it look like for our identities as individuals and as a Church to be transformed so that we may discern what is the will of God? We get rare glimpses of this transformation in the spiritual life, and I wonder what could make us more open to this working of the Holy Spirit in, around, and through us?
This week, I read an article that’s had me thinking all week. It’s titled “You Are Not a Robot Yet” and written by Kate Bowler who’s a writer and a professor at Duke Divinity School. This article was fascinating to me because in it, Bowler is wrestling with understanding human identity in the face of Artificial Intelligence (or AI), and in the article, Bowler writes about “the kind of work it takes to resist what AI will do to our experience of being a person.”
She writes, “The other day, I was reading advice from the heads of social media empires, and I began with a firm sense that I am a writer, a professor, and a podcast host. But according to this advice, the more significant role I should inhabit is that of an ‘influencer’- a horrifying description of any person-rendered-as-a-brand inside the modern attention economy. After that, it mostly devolved into advice about whether we all feel ready for TikTok.”
“Are we ready?” She continues. “Do you feel ready to dance your life story or primary theological arguments on TikTok?”
“No ma’am, I don’t think so. I’m a Mennonite, and the one great gift the Lord gave us is that he looked into our eyes and said: I love you. You are precious to me. Stick to that four-part harmony. Just please, don’t dance.”
Bowler continues in the article to reflect on the life of Abraham Lincoln—how Lincoln possessed “an unshakeable sadness” and an understanding of and willingness to “live with the tragic.”
She writes, “Living with the tragic means we understand the degree to which we act in concert with forces we cannot control. We start to understand that the future isn’t simply lived; it is grappled with. We ask ourselves: what do we do with what’s left of our energy? What truth needs to emerge? What evil must be confronted? And we do all this as people who know that the hardest parts are unavoidable. We never simply talk about progress because we would be acting like we forgot all that we learned when we are unmade.”[i]
It’s an interesting notion to contemplate, how the hard, difficult, unavoidable parts contribute to the making and the unmaking of our identities in ways that are so important in our becoming who God has created us to be. And can we just pause for a moment and acknowledge, just how uncomfortable and even sometimes devastating it is when something comes along with the power to unmake our identity?
There’s a line in today’s Old Testament reading from Isaiah that can also help serve as a touchstone for our identity and calling: “look to the rock from which you were hewn.” This invites us into contemplating the question of what is the foundation of our identity—as individuals, as a Church? What parts of our identity are foundational and unchanging, even in the seasons of deep change or unmaking? I love how Bowler starts with a clear understanding/foundation of her identity: “a writer, a professor, and a podcast host.” And she clarifies her call from God in light of that identity: “I’m a Mennonite, and the one great gift the Lord gave us is that he looked into our eyes and said: I love you. You are precious to me. Stick to that four-part harmony. Just please, don’t dance.”
I invite you to join me in contemplating these questions this week. As individuals, as members of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Hot Springs, as members of the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas and The Episcopal Church, how are we being invited by the Holy Spirit to understand and maybe even reimagine our identities? What parts of our identity are “the rock from which we were hewn” -- unchanging and unchangeable? How are we being called to transformation rather than conformation to this world? (Or another way of putting this is, if we aren’t being called to dance our theology on TikTok, then what is our calling?). Who is Jesus inviting you, calling you to be in this new season?”
[i] Bowler, Kate. “You Are Not a Robot Yet”. Substack post on 8/20/26. https://katebowler.substack.com/p/you-are-not-a-robot-yet?r=l4l89&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
No comments:
Post a Comment