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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Daddy, why am I so different?”
“What do you mean, son?”
“Well, so many of my classmates think that I’m quirky.”
“I don’t think you’re quirky or different, son.”
“Yes, I am, Dad. I am different. I’m not a part of the popular group. In fact, they don’t even want me around.”
“What? Why? Why do I have to be so different?”
If you’ve ever heard your own children express that to you, you know the pain that is inside them. And you’ve seen it in their face, and it’s pierced your heart when they speak those words to you. If you’ve ever spoken those words to your own parents, you have experienced the same in your own life. This realization that you’re not a part of this quote-unquote group. You’re on the outside looking in. And you’re different.
And it seems sometimes, even no matter what your parents say, maybe not. But as a parent, you know that you can never change that group. No matter how hard you would like to change that group, you can’t. And as a parent, you also realize that no matter what would happen, you would never want to change your son or daughter either. So that they would, quote, fit into that group. That would be to change who they are, wouldn’t it? No, neither way.
Well, now that you’re thinking, this conversation that you have either had with your own children or the conversation that you had with your own parents, consider the same conversation, but between you and your Heavenly Father.
“Why am I so different, Father? Why do I not fit in with the rest of this world? Why is it that I am on the outside of this world’s popular culture, and I’m on the outside looking in? Why do they consider me so different and so quirky?”
Your loving Father knows exactly what you are going through. Your loving Father desires to teach you that what you are experiencing in this world is not the norm. This world is not the norm. This world is anything but normal. You are the norm. This world is the different one. This world is the quirky one.
Now, as a son or daughter of the king, and as a son or daughter of the father, his desire is not that you change to fit into this world. His desire is not that you become something so that you fit into this world and feel like you’re a part of it, that you fit in. His desire also is to remind you that he will not change this world. It will continue to go the way it has been going since sin came into this world, and it will inherit what it plans to inherit: life apart from God and damnation.
You, on the other hand, you will inherit what God has given you to inherit: peace, joy, and life, united with the Father and no longer apart from those who are like you. Notice the beautiful things that the Father speaks to you through Isaiah’s words. Strong parental words. He speaks, “He who formed you.” He makes it very clear that you are not a result of some long-standing evolutionary process. You are humanity. You have a soul. You are not like the animal kingdom, which has no souls and which will not inherit heaven. You are only made in God’s image, and nothing else in this world, not even angels, bear God’s image.
“He who formed you,” he speaks. “I have redeemed you,” he speaks in the Old Testament reading. That means to be bought back. That means that you were unable to buy yourself back, and someone outside of your life and your world came in and bought you, but did not buy you with something that’s transitory like gold or silver, but bought you as what we have memorized, remember, with his holy precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death to make you his own.
No different than the gift of a parent adopting a child. That child belongs to those parents. They bought that child, not just with the lawyers and the financial resources, but with their very heart and soul did they, as it were, buy that child. So you have been bought. That’s what a child needs to hear, a child of God like you in the midst of this world where you don’t fit in. And where God does not want you to change from who you are as his child in order to fit into this world, he goes on.
“I’ve called you by name, you are mine.” Now whether your parents can remember the reason why they named you what they named you or not, you were named with great deliberation by your parents. And that name is identifying with who you are. So your God, when he called you by name at that font, named you his child. You bear his name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You do not bear the name of the damned. You do not bear the name of this world. You do not stand to inherit what this world and everyone who does not believe will inherit. You stand to inherit the kingdom.
Now in the Old Testament text, it says, God the Father speaks some very, very precious words, very sensual words, one might even say. “You are precious in my eyes.” What child does not want to hear those words come from his mother or his father’s lips? “You are honored in my eyes.” Again, what child would not want to hear those words? And those are the words being spoken over you by your father.
As you deal with the reality that you don’t fit in this world, and no matter how hard you try to fit in, it never works, does it? Because either you have to deny who you are or deny the world. And the more we come to that realization, the more we realize there’s only one alternative. We must not deny our Lord. We must deny the world. We don’t fit in. We are different.
And then he speaks three words that we use regularly and reserve for only those people who are close to us. “I love you.” That’s in the text. “I love you.” This is not a love that’s based upon your beauty. This is not a love based upon how you fulfill something in God. This is based upon God’s very essence. He is love. And He is love incarnate in that one crucified who was baptized not just by water, but by water and blood for you, that you could be redeemed and be his.
Three more of these ten sayings from Isaiah’s Old Testament text: “I am with you.” There are enough heartache stories of daddies walking away from children. This daddy doesn’t walk away from you. This daddy keeps his eyes upon you. This daddy will never, ever leave you. He has your back. This daddy stays with his children. Amen. Even when his children are the most onriest and ugliest, like you and I know, this daddy sticks with them.
“I created you for my glory,” he says. You bear my name. As a parent, you know the feeling of your children and how they, in a sense, bring you glory as a parent. Hence why there are so many gentle feelings when someone makes some disparaging remark about one’s child. They are your glory. But unlike earthly fathers and earthly mothers, God still calls us his glory even when we don’t deserve to be called his glory.
Unlike earthly parents who turn their back on those because they are disgusted with them, your father does not, and yet embraces you even more because only one was so ugly and disgusting that he turned his back on. Not you. Not you.
In Luke’s Gospel, the beautiful words that the Father’s voice spoke from heaven, “You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased,” are not just words that apply to Jesus. Because you’ve been baptized into Jesus, they are words that apply to you. You are his beloved son or daughter. With you he is well pleased. Even for the times when you aren’t well pleased with yourself.
And isn’t it interesting how horrible of a critic we are to our own self? Even in the midst of our own anger at ourself, is he pleased with us? Because he… Let him be the one with whom he was not pleased. And let him be the one who bore your shame. But with you, with you he is well pleased. You may never have heard those words from your own parents’ lips… “With you I am well pleased.” Maybe always striving to attain your father or your mother’s acceptance or thumbs up or what have you.
In God’s kingdom you are well pleasing, but because of Jesus. Jesus was baptized with water, yes, just like you. But the only reason the water baptism that you and I received have anything to do with salvation and any merit or worth… It’s because he was baptized on the cross with water and blood. He faced the only second baptism that ever will be faced in this world, and he faced it for you. That your one and only baptism has meaning and has substance and has hope.
Yes, he says to you, his son or daughter, yes, you are different. You are different than this world, and I paid for your difference. I don’t want you to be like this world. I want you to be what I have made you to be: my son, my daughter. You are pleasing to me.
We may argue with God and we may struggle with the huge difference that we are in this world, but let it not be thwarting to you. Your difference is needed in this world. Because you are different. Because you are set apart. That’s how God brings others to know what it is to be loved by a loving Father. Because you know and have acknowledged your adoption. And it is what matters to you. It is what matters to those who God uses His Holy Spirit through you to bring to faith.
Your difference is vital to this dead and damned world. God be praised for your difference. He doesn’t want you to fit in. No matter how much our flesh desires it and yearns for it, he doesn’t. And no matter how much we would love to have this utopian world, he will never allow this world to be changed. He will change it finally at the end. But until that time, when he destroys all and recreates new, you and I live as different people in this world.
So that others may know that same difference and be satisfied with these words that Isaiah spoke that matter to us. Keep coming back to your Father. Keep letting Him tell you, you’re not different. You are my child. You are different from the world. But you’re not different from what I wanted in your life. To be recreated in my image, by being baptized into my love incarnate Son, Jesus.
Keep asking, “Lord, why am I different?” Guaranteed, your Father will tell you, as he accompanies you in this world, to be different so that others may know this difference.
In the name of him, Jesus, in whose name you were baptized. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus. A life everlasting. Amen.
