Romans
8:14-17
Most
of the time, when I think about what it means to be a child of God, I think
about what that means for me. What does
it tell me that God has reached out to call me his own? What does that mean for you, that he has
freely called you to be part of his family?
What effect does it have on the way we view and treat one another?
All
of that matters. However, it leaves out
the central person concerned. What does
it tell us about God?
Adoption
is an act taken by a parent, not by a child.
Nobody can forcibly become a mother or father that way. It’s not like anybody runs up to them on the
street and shoves a baby in a blanket into their arms. Even in cases where a child is suddenly
discovered to need care, as when biological parents die or become desperately
ill, or are overtaken by some kind of tragedy, someone might foster a child for
a period without adopting her and making that sort of permanent commitment that
says, “Daughter!” or “Son!”
Hear
the experience of a Lutheran pastor, Walter Wangerin, who wrote to his son
Matthew the evening before Matthew’s confirmation.
“I first saw you in a crib – thick neck, enormous eyes, compact brown
energy, fine amber hair, and I thought, ‘Can I love this one?’ …
Here is the miracle: my love for you came out of you! You came with printed directions. You trained me. …
At first it was a foolish love aggressive, fierce, protective. When we carried you to the grocery stores, we
gathered the stares of the people. Our
family was a riddle they couldn’t solve.
My ears would burn at their ill restraint; I’d grab you to my heart and
stare back to shame their eyes. My face
said, ‘Mine! He’s mine, you little minds!” And so you were.
There was a neighbor, in those early days, who said that you couldn’t
play with her daughter. She’d seen the
two of you holding hands, and she said, ‘Black and white don’t marry.’ Nip it, I suppose, in the bud; you were four
years old. I sat in that woman’s kitchen
and in a low, choked voice declared you were my son and she should think of me
precisely as she thought of you. …
But the second miracle and the second source of my love for you was the
marvelous, holy, and indestructible, the greatest of them all. I came to understand, through the years, that
it is in the very image of adoption, and thus divine, that God participates --
…
And quietly I understood: in fact, God is your father, and a better one than I. But God and I both became your fathers in exactly
the same way. Matthew, God also adopted
you! You were not born his son, either. It was something that he chose to do for
you. But his adoption contains a love
unspeakably sweet and powerful, far beyond my poor, fumbling efforts. …
Oh, my adopted son! My love for
you and my fatherhood both I hide completely in the remarkable love and
fatherhood of God for you. There is where this wonder comes
from. He patterns and empowers it.
For a little while he allows me to experience the self-same joy that he
has loving you. For a little while he
lets me be your father – just like him. …
Who says that adoption makes a lesser relationship than blood or the
will of the flesh? Let him contend with
the Almighty! And let him be ashamed.”[1]
Confirmation
is a public recognition of what God has already done, taking us in even as
unformed, unaware, helpless babies – or sometimes as overly experienced,
self-conscious adults who cannot let go of the control we think we have over life – and naming us as part of his family,
someone with whom he chooses to throw in his lot, someone whose sorrows and
joys and struggles he will share, and from whom he can never fully separate
himself. God has called us by name.
And
we reply with baby talk, maybe – “Abba!”
is the ancient Aramaic word for “Daddy” – but we reply with a recognition of
the love that has gone into the relationship before our own. We reply with a recognition that God imparts
a family resemblance to us that allows us to show others what he is like by
what he does with us. That’s a tall
order for people like you and me. Thank
God that it doesn’t depend on us, but on him.
So leave the judgment and the fear and all of that behind, and live as
the amazing person God knows that you are, even when you don’t see it in
yourself.
“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to
fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry,
‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children
of God, and if children, then
heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…” [Romans 8:15-17]
Amen.
[1]
Walter Wangerin, “To Matthew, at Confirmation” in Ragman and Other Cries of Faith (New York: Harper & Row, 1984),
116-119.
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