July 19, 2020
/Proper 11
Romans 8:12-25, Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
The Rev. Bradley Varnell
Paul reminds us, in Romans 8, that we are “Children of God,” we are people who have received a “spirit of adoption,” becoming “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” Where before we lived in sin and rebellion against God, as “enemies” in Paul’s words, turned away from God, and towards our own selfish ends both as individuals and a species, because of Jesus Christ we are invited into a new relationship.
The Spirit of God, given to us by Jesus, brings us into Jesus’ own relationship with God. You and I stand, as it were, in the same space as Jesus. We are part of the Body of Christ, this is more than just a nice church metaphor, it’s the truth that you and I are part of Jesus Christ and if we are part of Jesus Christ, we share in Jesus’ very life, a life of sonship before the father. Because we stand in the same place as Jesus, we are invited to know God as Jesus knows God. Jesus knows God not as some distant deity, not as the solution to a problem, or some “First Principle” or “First Cause,” but as his Father.
“Father” language has been rightly critiqued over the last few decades, with many pointing out how an over-reliance on masculine images for God can give the impression that men are somehow closer to God than women, it risks elevating men to the level of Godhood. Yet, those critiques notwithstanding, in Scripture, including our text today, to call God “Father,” is to use the language of Jesus’ own relationship with God, language that he shared with us. When Jesus teaches his disciples to pray, he tells them to pray to “Our Father in heaven,” because Jesus is inviting his disciples – including us today – to know God as Jesus knows God. Now, for some of us Father language may be hard, that’s ok – Mother is as biblical and appropriate a word to use for God as Father. What matters is less the name, and more the reality, the relationship we’re naming. We have been adopted by God. God is no longer some unknowable mystery, some cosmic other lurking out there, God is, instead, a parent. A parent who loves us, who desires us, who wants to know us, who has chosen us and wishes to give us every good thing God possibly can.
Paul says we are “join heirs with Christ,” what Christ has been given is ours as well. We look at the story of Christ and what we find is a man who was filled to overflowing with the love of God. A man who healed and taught, who cast out demons and gathered friends around him. A man who comforted the excluded and challenged the comfortable. A man who went to the greatest depths imaginable to show to others that God’s love has no limit, that the power of sin and death are no match for the love that moves the stars and planets. What we see is a man whose life was lived in God and through whom God brought his reign to bear on earth. That is our inheritance. That is the great gift we have been given: to know we are loved by God and to share that love with others in the most ordinary and extraordinary ways.
But we cannot act like Jesus, we cannot live like Jesus, we cannot be transformed into the image of Christ, if we don’t first learn to live as children of God, to accept God’s love for us, to know it in our depths, to let it sink into our bones. Too much harm happens when people want to be Jesus but don’t first have the transforming experience of knowing that they are loved like Jesus is loved. The Father loves the Son, and because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we are made a part of that love.
Too often though, I think we ignore this gift. We have this amazing inheritance before us, this promise, and we act like lottery winners who take the winning ticket and bury it in the backyard. We don’t allow the gift, the surprise, to transform us. We leave the inheritance that is ours as children of God untouched, unclaimed.
Paul, in his letter to the church at Corinth wrote: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Y’all this whole Christian thing we’re doing, is about love. Not mushy, sentimental love. But the kind of love that we see in Jesus Christ: love that doesn’t quit, that doesn’t run out. It’s the love that made stars and galaxies, ladybugs and butterflies, you and me. Being a Christian isn’t about memorizing the Bible backwards and forwards, it’s not about having impeccable theology, it’s not even about being a “good” person. Being a Christian is about knowing that we are children of God, loved more than we could ever know, and letting that knowledge transform us and transform the world.
Friends, we have been blessed with a spirit of adoption. We are children of God! Let’s claim the blessing, let’s open the gift. We have nothing to lose, but everything to gain. Amen.