I had an interesting conversation today with Urban Village-Downtown’s amazing worship leader Sarah Marie Young.
I’m not sure how one defines “fame” and I don’t know if you’d consider Sarah to be famous, but she’s gained some notoriety the last couple years by winning first place and public prize in the Shure Montreux Jazz Voice Competition and performing at the Petrillo Band Shell at the Chicago Jazz Festival last September. She gigs a lot (is a non-musician allowed to say “gig”?) around the city so spends a lot of time in front of a microphone and has a fair number of people watching her every move. She confessed that during breaks she sometimes would rather just go and talk to friends rather than work the room because you never really know how people perceive if you if they only know your stage persona. Some people are only interested in knowing the persona, the stage Sarah Marie Young and not the real Sarah Marie Young, the one who has every day ups and downs like you or me.
I’m preaching this Sunday on Luke 8:26-39 and it opens by telling the story of a man who is possessed by demons. The man confronts Jesus who asks him a simple question: “What is your name?” The man responds by simply saying, “Legion,” meaning he identifies himself not by his name but by his affliction. You might say it’s his stage persona.
One of the challenges of life, I think, is being the real you and conveying the real you and not a stylized or Facebooked you. That can be hard because others may not want the real you. They want the one they know on stage. Or the one that they perceive from your condition or status or ailment.
You can be the real you by simply thinking of that question that Jesus asked. What is your name? If we’re able to answer that truthfully, it makes it a lot easier to be you.