When I was a little boy, every time I went to a birthday party, my parents would say the same two things to me:
“Remember what your name is and remember who you belong to.”
I found this very confusing. How could I forget my name? And who did I belong to?
I thought it was just a way of telling me to behave myself (and it was) but it was useful too, reminding me that I wasn’t just myself out there, but I belonged to something bigger – a family.
Over the years I’ve belonged to a lot of other things as well: school, university, scout troop, sports teams, bands, churches, the Museum.
I’ve always wanted to belong to something. Not everyone does but a lot of us do. In an age of identity politics, when we align our beliefs and principles with other people ‘like us’ it seems more important than ever to know where we fit in. And yet it sometimes looks like we are more divided by our identities than united: left or right, leave or remain, United or City, the list goes on.
The Bible is a long story of people belonging, to families and tribes, to nations and cities. And at the centre of all that great web of belonging are a people who belong to God, whom God chose.
God’s chosen people. Now that’s an amazing thing, but it looks like a pretty closed shop, something no-one else can belong to, until St Paul writes this – that among the people who follow Jesus, who belong to him, “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one.”
Now there are conventional ideas of identity turned upside down, because not one of them matters except membership in a community open to anyone, a community that is inclusive, not exclusive.
And after a weekend when we’ve thought a lot about belonging – principally, perhaps, about who can belong to the royal family these days – it’s astonishing to realise that such a thing exists: a place where anyone can belong.
I need that. And not just because I’m terrified of not belonging, but because with belonging comes acceptance, value and love. And those are things everybody needs.
The picture is from leaving day at my children’s primary school, Heathbroook, on the day my youngest, the Boy Silas, finished. It is a school that helps people belong.