In my previous church I visited a member who had returned from living in an Arab country. While she was there, she was fortunate to have a driver who was a Muslim. At first, he had hostility towards her because of her Christian faith. Yet she engaged him as an equal and bore witness to the love of God as she had come to know it in Jesus Christ. She asked him about his prayer time which he religiously observed five times a day, as Muslims do. She wondered if it was purely rote, or whether it was a true conversation with God? This gave him cause for pause as he reflected on his prayers. Yet one day he asked her how in the world Christians could believe that Jesus is the Son of God? He thought that to be very arrogant- from his perspective God had no children. Yet she responded with such a wonderful witness to whom Jesus is and the blessed relationship we share with him. She said, “Well, we are all children of God. You are God’s son and I am God’s daughter.” She said this, not to take away from Jesus’ divinity, but rather to help this man to understand the rich relationship we have with God; the power of adoption promised to us through Jesus Christ.
Paul writes so eloquently about our adoption. How those living in the Spirit of God are God’s children. By living in the Spirit, we are adopted by God, we become God’s precious children. Yet Paul contrasts this with the spirit of slavery which at first seems odd. In Galatians Paul wrote, “God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…so that we might receive adoption as children…. God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying Abba Father! So, you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child than also an heir, through God.” (Gal. 4:5). Slavery to the Jewish law is the old way, and adoption as God’s children is filled with new promise. Now you are God’s child, you have all the rights and privileges of that relationship. In Roman law adoption is no small thing. You are a new person with all the rights of inheritance and opportunity. Through adoption your old life is gone, and all your debt is wiped away. Roman history gives a great example of how completely one is transformed through adoption. When Paul wrote this letter, Emperor Claudius adopted Nero. Nero, his adopted son, succeeded Claudius to the Roman throne, even though Claudius had biological sons. Even kingdoms are inherited through adoption.
Adoption was witnessed by seven people so that one’s rights would be guaranteed, so if there is a conflict with your inheritance, a witness will step forward and vouch for you. But Paul makes this even better. Now the Holy Spirit guarantees our adoption and is the witness to our adoption into the family of God. With that we have an intimacy with God, a closeness, allowing us to call him Abba, Father; in other words, “Daddy.” The majesty, power and holiness of God are still there, but the nurturing and parental love is the theme of adoption. It is like a high-powered CEO who is a mover and shaker all day long, but when he walks through that door, he is simply “Daddy.” Our adoption means we are embraced within God’s family, claimed as one of God’s own, and loved as a priceless child.
Yet our story about Jacob is a dramatic contrast to a close family. So far Jacob and Esau are filled with sibling rivalry, so much so Jacob steals his older brother’s birth right. Note we are back to inheritance. Yet fearing for this life, Jacob leaves his father and mother, his brother and community. He is all alone in the world. But in his isolation, in his hour of need, Jacob encounters God in a dream. Here God places the communications with Jacob squarely within family context. Family relationship is how God is introduced. I am the Lord, the God of your ancestors and the God of your descendants. The God of Abraham and Isaac not only gave Jacob land and blessing but also a promise to always be with Jacob. God’s presence was his inheritance. A presence he will share with his sons- the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel. So, no matter where Jacob goes or what he does, God is with him.
Doesn’t that sound an awful lot like living in God’s Spirit and becoming a child of God? Living in God’s presence is a wonderful gift, one we only get glimpses of. Yet it continues to draw us closer to God. Yet like any family relationship we get to go through the ups and downs together. We are promised to be joint heirs with Christ- receiving the abundance of God’s grace. But this also means we get the suffering as well as the glory. Yet with Christ as our brother and God as our father we have been adopted into the ultimate family of faith.
Are you a child of God? Is that a defining aspect of who you are? There is an amazingly comforting feeling knowing that God has claimed you as a child, loves you as God’s own. If you long for a parent in the still of night or just strive to be the parent you never had, embrace the grace of adoption God offers to you.
Families can be messy. Our feelings about our family can be complicated and layered. Yesterday we said goodbye to Warren Teeters. This week while writing his eulogy, I also grieved the loss of a father figure. Warren was a contemporary my father, yet it was his strong character, his joyful faith, his gentle teaching, his honest communication and his devotion to Ilene that truly touched a part of me that needed a father. I lost my father at a young age, so my need for a father figure is great. God filled that role first by adopting me through my faith. Then 15 years ago when I got to know Warren, God gave me a father figure with skin on. Spiritual adoption and earthly father figures are both gifts from God.
I hope you feel adopted, claimed, loved and nurtured by God, because you are one of God’s children. You are so close to God, you call him Abba, Father, or Daddy. You share your life with God in gratitude and each of you has Christ as your brother. So how would it be if God has created the most wonderful thing ever- but it is being destroyed. To try and grasp what I am talking about, let’s step back and think of our own fathers dedicating themselves to a passion, or a business they built from scratch, but then what if that life-long creation is being threatened. Would you want to protect it, would you want to save what your father had worked so hard to build? Of course you would.
Our heavenly Father created this world, and it is threatened. Now I realize Paul is visualizing the coming of God’s glory when he speaks of the creation groaning. He is contrasting this present age of decay, where things live then die to that of the marvelous beauty of God’s eternal glory. But when I read that passage today, I see it as a call to save our heavenly Father’s creation- the world we live in. The creation itself is waiting to be set free from the bondage to decay; the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains. But it is not giving birth, rather languishing in the pollutants to which we are subjecting the world.
Christian Century had an article about cutting carbon and global warming. Climatologist James Hansen from NASA said, “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth adapted” we need to stabilize the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere to below 350 parts per million. Yet we are already at 428 and rising. “We know the whole creation has been groaning.” What started as a metaphor has now become a reality: the world groans. Those 100 year storms are now coming every 15 years. The Canadian smoke sweeping the east coast right now, took me back to our bad air quality from the CZU fire. 2026 is shaping up to be Super El Nino. El Niño – a periodic warming of the waters of the eastern Pacific – is the world’s single biggest shaper of global temperature and regional climate. Forecasts look bad, with increased rainfall. How will you respond? First, we need to acknowledge the problem and do our part to conserve and save. We can pray for leaders of governments and business to work together to turn the tide.
Sometimes this problem feels bigger than we are; too insurmountable. How can I stop driving, or how will my changing a light bulb make a different? The little things add up, but more importantly I hope this will no longer be only a political or scientific issue, but become a matter of faith, stewardship and family compassion. Because what does scripture tell us? We are children of God and there is hope. But it is hope in the things we cannot see; in the efforts of individuals who seek out renewable energy, hope in the adaptive nature of humanity, hope in the children of God to honor their Father’s creation. Our identity as children of God demands as much. Claim your identity, live in God’s love, be God’s child as you find ways to help to lessen the stress that our world is under, even if that means doing your small share in a much larger picture. For God sees our simple efforts and calls us to the noble challenge to save the creation. Let’s not disappoint God. Amen
