One: We Are God's Beloved Children
"During our short lives the question that guides much of our behavior is: 'Who are we?' Although we may seldom pose that question in a formal way, we live it very concretely in our day-to-day decisions.
"The three answers that we generally live — not necessarily give — are: 'We are what we do, we are what others say about us, and we are what we have,' or in other words: 'We are our success, we are our popularity, we are our power.'
"It is important to realize the fragility of life that depends on success, popularity, and power. Its fragility stems from the fact that all three of these are external factors over which we have only limited control. Losing our job, our fame, or our wealth often is caused by events completely beyond our control. But when we depend on them, we have sold ourselves to the world, because then we are what the world gives us. Death takes it all away from us. The final statement then becomes: 'When we are dead, we are dead!' because when we die, we can't do anything anymore, people don't talk about us anymore, and we have nothing anymore. When we are what the world makes us, we can't be after we have left the world.
"Jesus came to announce to us that an identity based on success, popularity, and power is a false identity — an illusion! Loudly and clearly he says: 'You are not what the world makes you; but you are children of God.'
Two: Claiming Our Belovedness
"The spiritual life requires a constant claiming of our true identity. Our true identity is that we are God's children, the beloved sons and daughters of our heavenly Father. Jesus' life reveals to us this mysterious truth. After Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John, as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit, like a dove, descending on him. And a voice came from heaven: 'You are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you' (Mark 1:10-11). This is the decisive moment of Jesus' life. His true identity is declared to him. He is the Beloved of God. As 'the Beloved' he is being sent into the world so that through him all people will discover and claim their own belovedness.
"But the same Spirit who descended on Jesus and affirmed his identity as the Beloved Son of God also drove him into the desert to be tested by Satan. Satan asked him to prove his bevedness by changing stones to bread, by throwing himself from the temple tower to be carried by angels, and by accepting the kingdoms of the world. But Jesus resisted these temptations of success, popularity, and power by claiming strongly for himself his true identity. Jesus didn't have to prove to the world that he was worthy of love. He already was the 'Beloved,' and this Belovedness allowed him to live free from the manipulative games of the world, always faithful to the voice that had spoken to him at the Jordan. Jesus' whole life was a life of obedience, of attentive listening to the One who called him the Beloved. Everything that Jesus said or did came forth from that most intimate spiritual communion. Jesus' revealed to us that we sinful, broken human' beings are invited to that same communion that Jesus lived, that we are the beloved sons and daughters of God just as he is the Beloved Son, that we are sent into the world to proclaim the belovedness of all people as he was and that we will finally escape the destructive powers of death as he did."
