Listen, Children

Romans 8:14-17

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 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—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Where does hope come from? Most often in church, we root our hope in seizing the promise of grace. We seize the certainty that God is for us. We seize the implication that there is nothing we need to do to earn God’s love, compassion, and mercy, but, rather, can trust that those gifts are always present and always freely offered.

But then come qualifications and expectations that seem to differ. Step into a church, and there come the admonitions. A follower of Jesus will meet certain behavioral standards. A follower of Jesus will practice a certain code of ethics. A follower of Jesus will pursue good works. 

We begin to wonder—is God’s love a free gift or not? We look for help from the Bible. Then….this…this passage ends on a troublesome note, for Paul seems to imply that in order to receive the rewards of faith, we have to earn them by meeting Christ’s standard of self-emptying love, something humanly impossible, we fear—note Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, et. al. are special because they are rare. 

That runs counter to our hope.

Was that Paul’s intent? I do not think so. You have to see what he writes with slightly different eyes.

Leaving the glorious promise of the opening lines of this passage for a moment, focus on that closing thought—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him—what does Paul mean?

To receive the benefit and beatitude of faith; one needs to live the faith.

That is what Paul says, more or less. But we may still not quite grasp what Paul means. 

Let me put it in more familiar terms. This congregation hosts a wonderful series of jazz vespers gatherings. We come together and hear some great music. Some of us may even daydream about being onstage, able to play that wonderful music. We watch the sax player, or the pianist, or drummer, and wonder within, how hard can it be? The truth is that even as we fantasize about hopping up, grabbing the sax, and wailing, should we actually do so, there would only be a mighty racket of squonks, squeaks, and honks that would empty the room! You can’t be a jazz musician without the “suffering” of years of practice, eternal scale repetitions, and endless fiddling with playing the instrument. The same is true for faith in Jesus. You will not realize the promise and purpose of life with Jesus until you train yourself to live like Jesus. It is one thing to admire compassion as an attribute, another altogether in being a compassionate person. You don’t earn the ability, you live into it.

Now back a little further into Paul’s lesson for us—we are children of God. On one level, this statement is true for every human being who ever breathed. Every human being is a unique act of God’s creative will. Therefore, every person is beloved by God—beloved in the same manner that any baby is beloved by any healthy parent. But there is another meaning that focuses more on us than on God—to be a child can also be to emulate another, mirroring them in your own existence. In the classic Disney animated movie, Jungle Book, one of the songs is “Wanna Be Like You.” The orangutang sings to Mowgli that he wants to be like a human, able to walk, talk, and dance like a person. The point is that when we want to be like a mentor, teacher, or wise person, we copy them. You see this with kids all the time—they dress like their favorite music star, or wear the same sneakers as their favorite basketball player, and so on. What Paul describes is emulating God—if we want to show our love for God, we live following God’s way with the world as revealed in scripture. What we find is that God is love—an embodied compassion that seeks the welfare of all people and works for peace, understanding, and reconciliation. Therefore, as children of God, we will live by that same compassion, working for the same things within the world. 

Faith, then, is not so much a system of beliefs as it is a way of life. 

Keep that in mind because it is so counterintuitive in our time and place. We tend to reduce faith down to a set of tenets or a code of behavior. We make it a matter of decision and intellectual assent. And that is where we leave it. The truth is that as we examine teachings like these of Paul, that decision and assent is the barest of beginnings. It is declaring that we want to go on a cross country trip, but stop by looking at the map, then somehow say we made the trip. No, an experience is gained only through the experience itself. Faith is not part of life—it is life!

Now, being honest, this is where a lot of folk find the whole thing beyond them. We look at Jesus and his way of life, immediately assuming it is beyond us. He died for the world. He gave all he was, sparing nothing. Can we do that? Most honestly answer, no. So, everything comes to a screeching halt right there.

Paul then offers a piece of great comfort—God knows this about us, so God compensates, meeting us in God’s great compassion. God will not only be present, but through that presence give us the ability to stand firm in our effort to live faithfully. As Paul understands it, no one can even call on God without God being present to do it for them. But through that miraculous intercession, not only can we call on God, we can even be intimate with God—as intimate as a beloved child with a beloved parent. We can call God, Papa.

Do not miss the audacity of Paul’s thinking— the Great I AM is papa. 

Suddenly, the Almighty, the Omnipotent, the Unsearchable, the Immutable, the Great High God is brought immediately into our existence on our level. It by no means indicates we have power over God, or any ability to manipulate God to our own ends, but just like an infant on her mother’s lap, we can settle into God, feel the surrounding protection of God, and then work out our faith in God as we enter the world.

What glorious hope as we deal with a world as uncertain and unstable as ours—we can risk emptying ourselves and opening ourselves fully to the people around us. God is with us. God will strengthen us. God will support us. God will claim us. More than that, even resurrection us ours! 

But in order for that promise to be fully actualized, we need to live into it. We need to live by the ways and means of God. We need to live by what we hope for. We are not alone in our hunger for mercy. We are not isolated in our longing for compassion. We are not unique in our need for peace. Living by these things, God lives within us, making them real and actual…even in a world such as ours.

May we trust enough to believe it so.