Happy Pride Weekend! In a time when so many seem so proud of power, I say more power to pride! Speaking of pride, there is plenty to go around. We are so proud of our young people sent off today for a week of work to end hunger. Assemblywoman Sheila Leslie speaks here next week, the Sunday nearest the anniversary of Women’s Suffrage, the right to vote! You go, girl! I have learned so much from movements of pride and liberation. I have learned of my own pride and liberation. I

Now when it comes to "Caller IDs" and the wisdom to trust who and whose we are, I am not much of a technical genius, or any other kind for that matter. I don’t fully understand "Caller ID" nor many other options phones offer these days. Phones seem to have such lives of their own any more! Is "Caller ID" something about reducing the risk, or at least softening the surprise of whom we find on the other end if and when we pick up the phone? We seem to want verification of precisely who is calling us, especially at dinnertime! Is that right? It’s very biblical. Those who even suspect it might be God calling them often panic: Who is this? What do you want with me? How did you get my name? You sure you don’t have the wrong number? Is there any way I can get out of this?!

And we can see why. God makes some pretty strange calls. Even to be as king to God’s people. Thanks to Ruth for taking us through so much of David’s vastly-disastrous story last week. Even his dying advice to Solomon, himself an unlikely "call," directs his own son to commit several more political murders! It is little wonder so many question God’s call. It’s not necessarily fine company to be found in. I mean, look around! How impressive are we? Just kidding!

For some good and some not-so-good reasons, we live in a time obsessed with "identity.!" Never have there been, outside of dictatorships and a few total "security states," so many ways of "Identity Check!" So much fear of "Identity Theft!" "Identity" is big business! Almost as big as "Reality?" Are we really who, and whose, we say we are? Or are we just "making believe?" Such a dilemma for a people of faith! Do we even know ourselves who/whose we are? Have human beings ever been such mysteries as we are to ourselves today? So aware of all our diversities, all our complexities? Is God such a real great Creator, or what? With a great sense of humor as well! Talk about "pride."

How do we know when we really belong to our faith? To our church? When we really serve God? Follow Jesus? Let the Spirit lead us? And who’s to say? To be the judge? In the old proverbial question, if we were to be arrested and charged with being Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict us? I am glad to say, on the basis of our texts for this morning, on the wisdom to trust who/whose we are, God (You go, God!) so believes in us, whether we so believe in God or not, as to give each of us responsibility, literally, the ability to respond, to answer for, the question of our own identity!

Who we are, whose we are, is up to us! What we do with who/whose we are is up to us. Nobody else can do it for us! It is part of the promise of the new thing God is doing for persons and peoples of God. The "old thing" just is not working! We hear of it in Jeremiah 31: God no longer writes the letter of law outside of us somewhere, on stone, making us so acutely attuned and accountable to "outside sources," "external authorities," even "peer pressures," if we will. Rather, God promises now to write the spirit of law directly upon each one of our hearts! Each one of us can, and will, come to know God for ourselves!

Of course, we will need all the help we can get. We will need the help of the church with discernment, with sorting out all the issues and questions, the challenges and possibilities, of our identities and our vocations, our gifts and our callings, who we are and what we are to do with who we are. Discernment of gifts and graces in us is perhaps the most basic, most crucial of all works of the church. It is the work of baptism: Nobody can be us but us! Scary as that can be for our parents, from the moment of birth, at least, baptism says, we already "belong" to someone/something else as well, whatever we call it, from "personal savior" to "blind fate." We alone can make answer for our lives. So Solomon, son of David, born out of, and into, blood-letting, hears, with relief, in this dream.

Scandalous as it sounds, we are the experts on who we are! The authorities on our experiences, what happens to us, and what it all means. The answers lie in us. They lie in our minds and our hearts, in our bodies and in our souls. A woman is checking out at the register in a department store one day. She wants to write a check for her purchases. The clerk asks her to prove who she is. The woman thinks for a moment, then reaches into her purse, pulls out a mirror, looks into it, and proclaims proudly: Yep! It’s me, all right!!

Of course, we can help serve as mirrors to one another. We can help reflect, and reflect upon, the image of God in each one of us. That is what we hope to do with the month of September, which follows from Labor Sunday, celebration of the "work" we are all called to do. Please feel free to bring a sign of your work, which may or may not be your job, to share on Labor Sunday. We see September as "Homecoming Month," as per the note in our bulletin. A time for going back to our roots of belonging, of naming who, and whose, we are! Identities and vocations! Baptisms and communions! Discernment and distribution of all of God’s gifts and resources! It takes all of us to be the church! All of our members, all of our friends! Come, hear more about it, help us plan it, at Church Council this Wednesday! Everyone’s welcome. Right, Kay Greene?

Here we see the beginnings of "wisdom" in Solomon. He finds himself before God, with the chance to ask for anything God might give him! Just as Jesus often invites those who come in need to him to say what we want from him, to do our own naming and to take part in our own healing. In our reading of today’s text, we give God’s lines to "the people" and hear God speak in the plural. Why? Because God is always of "the people." It’s how we come to know God in the first place. God breaks into our history when we the people are slaves in Egypt! God hears our cries, God sees our suffering, God gets involved! God does not have to do it. But God is moved by compassion and by solidarity. God promises God will save us and set us free, God will heal us and make us whole. More and more leaders need God’s commitment to love and to serve the people. More and more leaders are going to lose power because they take the people too lightly!

Moreover, the "wisdom" tradition in the Bible comes of discerning there always has been another more feminine face and person of God, namely "Woman Wisdom" or "Sophia." She has been so conveniently left out and neglected. In Genesis 1:26-27, God speaks in the plural, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness!" So God creates us male and female, to be in the image of God. In our "Words for Meditation" we read of wisdom "playing" with God, this "Yahweh" we meet in history, from the very beginning! Let us remember, please, not only to pray with God but to play with God. We are to be delightful to God. Unlike our "Caller ID," God is ready for risk and surprise. God has no fear who is calling, any time, any place, any circumstance or condition.

Solomon could have asked first for "long life and riches," health and happiness, peace and prosperity. God even promises those things as well, as Jesus urges us to begin with discerning God’s will and God’s work for our lives, and all "other things" will be given to us as well. Unlike so many leaders, Solomon knows he needs all the help he can get! "I am only a little child!" Can we identify with that before God? "I do not know how to go out or come in!" Yet I am surrounded by so great a people. I ask us to think of our children and youth, of those newly come to faith, and of those who, with good reason, come to some loss of faith. It can overwhelm us to feel so out of step, or under step, with the "normal" majority.

I spoke with a very wise mother this week. One of her children announced they were going to seek answers to faith’s questions in various places. The mother’s only advice was, please do not lose your sense of the mystery! So often God cannot be known, much less explained, but only addressed, as Buber says, or, at best, trusted without knowing. Remember when we would go on youth retreats, and blindfold ourselves, and do guided "trust walks?" And "trust falls" into the arms of a neighbor? Life is like that, so filled with risks and surprises. Surely the Spirit leads us where we do not plan to go. The church is called to be a community of "open questions." As soon as we think we know the right answers, we begin to cut ourselves off from others, to divide and to conquer ourselves.

The "holy trinity" says it takes at least three persons to make up "God," maybe more! Maybe each one of us is to be making up "God" as we go along? Naming our own gifts of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, as the Methodist "quadrilateral" puts it. Maybe each one of us is to be doing our own theology? Putting our own faith in action? According to our gifts and callings, our identities and vocations. Maybe "Homecoming Month" will help us create a safe space for beginning that, all together. We are all in this together, with one another, with all of the world and all of the earth. Or we are not really "in this" with God at all.

For now I ask us to enjoy this response God makes to Solomon, and to hear as God’s response to each one of us as well. "No one like you has been before you!" shouts God. "No one like you shall arise after you!" Do we hear that? Accept that? As "wisdom" if not certain knowledge? Each one of us is unique before God. Each one of us in unrepeatable! Each one of us one of a kind! God throws away each of our molds. What does this mean for each one of our lives? What adventure! What journey! What exploration! What discovery!

We are even so gifted and so called, says Paul to the Ephesians, as to be "imitators of God!" Imitators of God. Is that not who Jesus is for us? The one who brings "God" to earth? Into our lives? Into our hearts? Into our words and actions? What an identity! What a vocation! I can see God in you. You can see God in me. We can see God in each other. We can see God in "them" – even in the "enemy" them. To imitate God is to love as God loves, to love everyone, everything, as God loves, -- to love life, to love living, to love love itself. Let us go forth in love to love as we have been loved. What a friend we have in Jesus! Amen.