Typecasting - Jeremiah 10:23, Romans 12:3-8 BREAKAWAY TUESDAY MORNING

When you hear the name Chris Hemsworth, what type movie do you think of?  Action, adventure…He plays the hero in Thor, Snow White and The Huntsman, the older brother in Red Dawn, and almost every one of his acting credits has him as the big, strong, tough guy?  How hard would it be to see him replace the dad on Good Luck Charlie.  Almost impossible if you ask me.

What about Jim Carrey?  A majority of his film credits would be labeled as humor with a serious twist—Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, Ace Ventura, or Dumb and Dumber.  Would you be able to picture him taking Arnold Schwarzenegger’s place in the rumored Terminator 5 movie?

It’s called typecasting.  An actor or an actress plays a certain type of character, and, especially if it is a successful movie or television show, it becomes the only type of character that they are considered fit to play.  Some actors may relish typecasting, but many grow frustrated by it—simply ask Leonard Nimoy, otherwise known as Spock, Bob Denver us older folks remember as Gilligan, or Maureen McCormick, you know, Marcia Brady.

Typecasting can be a very negative thing for us as well.  It parallels the labels that many folks may place on us and refuse to see us as anything different.  You know those labels: “jock,” “band nerd,” “geek,” “gangstas,” “red-neck,” “liberal,” “conservative,” “punks,” or “goths.”  You can probably think of a number of other labels that are thrown on you.  In some cases it is not necessarily a label they hang on you, but it is the assumptions and stereo types that are assumed—such as “if you’re tall, you must play basketball,” “if you’re from a rural area, you like country music,” and we won’t even get into all of the racial stereotypes.  All of these labels put on us simply by how we look or activities we enjoy.  Here’s a picture my niece drug out of my parents photo album during a session of Facebook picture wars, from probably my freshman year in high school, I’ll let you consider what labels may have been placed on me.  I understand having labels thrown on you.

Back in February the youth group at St. Paul’s, where I am pastor, went to Lake Junaluska for Infusion.  The first night we did not arrive until too late to go to the opening worship session, so we went to a break-out room in the hotel and did our own group-building exercises and just spent some time talking.  The discussion drifted to the area of labels this very subject, dealing with the labels that are put on us, either by those around us in the world, or sometimes even ourselves—some of the ones that we have talked about, and others, like “loser,” “dumb,” or “ugly.”  We spent time talking about how the labels that are thrown at us, seeking to limit us or put us down.  Then we turned to understand that the only “name” that we need to take to heart is the name given to us by God, and that is that we are “beloved children of God.”

Interestingly in the way that God works, the very next Saturday my family and I went to Winter Jam in Greensboro, primarily to hear TobyMac, as we all, from my wife down to my grandson, love TobyMac’s music.  However, it was not one of his songs that spoke to me the loudest that night, it was a song that I had never heard before by Mathew West—and it went right back to the issue of dealing with the labels put on us.  In the midst of that song is the following line, and while it mainly deals with self-imposed labels, I think it applies across the board: “These are the voices, these are the lies/And I have believed them, for the very last time/Hello, my name is child of the one true King….”

My friends, my brothers and sisters, that is truly the only name that is put on us that we should ever care about…it doesn’t matter what the other kids in school think of us, it doesn’t matter what the folks in our town think of us, it doesn’t matter what our family says about us, it doesn’t matter what lies the voices in our head my say about us.  Last night we talked about the invitation and inclusion that God offers us as He asks us to join His cast and allow Him to direct our lives.  When we step into that inviting relationship with Him, He erases all the names we have ever had put on us and says, this is who you are, You are a “Child of the One True King.”

So where does today’s Scripture come in?  It comes in right here.  “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself as more highly [and I’ll add ‘or more lowly’] than you ought to think, but think with sober judgment”…remembering that you and those around you are all “Children of the One True King.”  And as we are brought together into God’s Cast we become the Body of Christ…as God, our loving Father, the King, does what all good fathers do, he gives us gifts.

They may sound like labels:  Prophet, Minister, Teacher, Exhorter (which is another way of saying “Encourager”), Giver, Leader, Compassionate.  Yet they are not labels, they are not names, they are the gifts that God gives us to be part of His body.  They are the roles that He gives us as His cast.  We are not typecast, but God gives us talents and abilities to live our lives together as His Children—He places in our lives things that we are good at, things we like, and we come together with other Children of the King and their different gifts to form the body of Christ, and continue the saving work of Jesus wherever we find ourselves—under His direction, we God’s Life-to-the-World giving Cast.

What does that look like?  It looks exactly like this.  Last night we saw the gathered Children of the One True King come together, each given different roles, adding vitamins, adding rice, running the prepared bags to the weigh stations, weighing and adjusting the bags, sealing the bags, laying the bags out, boxing the bags, carting the boxes, ringing the gong…and together as Children of God, fulfilling your different roles, in roughly an hour’s time, packaged over 10,000 meals—enough food to feed 60,000 people.

My brothers and sisters, don’t accept the labels that the world, or you yourself, try to hold you down with.  You are gift-endowed Children of the One True King…You are Members of God’s Cast, the Life-Giving Body of Christ.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.