Luke 24:36-42; Acts 3:9, 10

He just wasn’t himself

BBC Future (http://www.bbc.com/storyworks/future/innovation-at-the-edge/life-as-a-cyborg) reports that: “British-born artist Neil Harbisson is the first person to be recognized as a cyborg by a government. He was born with achromatopsia, or complete color-blindness, but now has the ability to perceive color through an antenna-like sensor implanted into his skull. The antenna allows him to distinguish visible and invisible colors such as infrareds and ultraviolets via sound waves, creating a sensory experience that no other human has perhaps ever experienced.’I don’t feel like I’m using technology, I feel like I am technology,’ says Harbisson.” The article explains that cyborgs are the union between cybernetics and organisms – and Harbisson is a prime example of how humans are shaping our own evolution. It claims that Rapid advances in technology have made it easier than ever for humans to use this type of technology as a means of expressing themselves. Friends, Harbisson is reshaping and creating his identity by using cultural and technological means. He fought for the right to be in his passport picture with the device visible.   This was an issue, because of the questions whether the device was a part if him. It comes down to a deeper question: with the device was Neil Harbisson really himself? The passport office would have claimed that he just wasn’t himself, while Harbisson claimed that he was more fully himself. This is the issue I would like to explore.

When Theodore Roosevelt was a whippersnapper of a representative in New York State Lower house he was away in Albany when his wife was giving birth to the first child, Alice. Roosevelt hurried back home. In one incomprehensible 12 hour period his daughter was born, his wife passed away and his mother passed on. Roosevelt, a young man who had been in poor health when he was a child always tried to stay healthy emotionally and physically through ceaseless activity. He did so with remarkable success. After falling into a depression after the tragedy he finally moved to the Dakotas where he became a cowboy. He never sat still after that, sometimes with good, sometimes with bad consequences for the country and the world. After the tragic losses Roosevelt just wasn’t himself, but at the same time he became the himself that the world would get to know.

In our text in Acts a disabled man is healed. People knew him as one who was seated by the city gate, downcast and dependent on the charity of others. They didn’t know him as the man who skipped and danced as one who felt fully whole. “He just wasn’t himself” people said. “I didn’t recognize him.” It begs the question: “what did it mean for him to be himself?” Something similar could be said about Jesus who after the resurrection wasn’t recognizable to people. This is an important part of the stories. Last weeks we talked about the wounds being the part that people recognize him. Here it is not so much his identity that’s his issue in Luke, but his humanity. Is this Jesus a ghost or real? Jesus answers this with a question: do they have something to eat? The crucified One whose last words included :”I am thirsty,” now proclaims that he is, well, hungry. Well that settles it for them, for ghosts don’t get hungry. Nevertheless “He just isn’t himself” the people there would have said. Or should it have been instead:” He was fully himself, in the way that God intended.”

Friends, we spend so much of our lives living by the definition people have of us. We try to live up to the himself or herself people have of us, whether it is in our education, our career, in what gender we feel we are etc. We try to fit ourselves as square pegs into round holes, forcing ourselves to be the him- or herself people expect us to be. But are we trying to become fully ourselves in a whole way?   This brings us to the question of our faith. We think of faith as requiring us to be a certain way, like a moral code and there is truth to that. However there is more to it that that. Our Christian faith exists to make us more fully ourselves. It exists so we can be freed of petty expectations. It exists so we can become the liberated person in pursuit the full potential God has in store for us. So if people say you are not fully yourself, they may just worry about your health and wellbeing and that is good thing. If they mean you are not meeting expectations they have of you that benefit them, then it becomes a bad thing. Not being that self may not be so bad as you are in the process of becoming who you’re meant to be. Thanks be to God! Amen.