The baptismal font is one of the places where we catch a glimpse of who we really are. According to the liturgy of our tradition, “In baptism God claims us, and seals us to show that we belong to God. God frees us from sin and death, uniting us with Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. By water and the Holy Spirit, we are made members of the church, the body of Christ, and joined to Christ’s ministry of love, peace, and justice.” And when we gather at the font we are encouraged to remember our own baptisms, to remember who we really are…those who have been claimed by God, united with Christ, and by water and the Spirit made members of the body of Christ and the family of God. We are children of God, first, before we are anything else in this world. Let us read now from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome to be reminded of God’s great love for us and to remember who we are in light of that love:
{Read Romans 8:12-17}
When we baptize, we acknowledge that God has created us in God’s own image, that God loves us already, and has claimed us long before we can know what that means. That’s why, in our tradition, we baptize infants. George doesn’t know yet that God loves him, but he will. George doesn’t know yet that he’s a child of God, that he has a divine parent whom he is free to call Abba, but he will. George doesn’t know yet that Christ died for him and for the whole world but he will. He’ll know because we’ll tell him. That’s the promise we made today. And for those of us who have heard these things before, we do our very best to remember them. We do our very best to remember that we, too, are children of God, that we, too, are precious in God’s sight. That we have a divine parent whom we are free to call Abba, that we are children of God and that Christ died for us and the whole world. The Spirit of God whispers into our hearts, touching our own spirits to confirm who we really are: You are a child of God. And we need to be reminded of who we really are because this tired, broken world will do everything it can to make us forget.
I’m sure, if you think for a few minutes, you can make a mental list of the things that make you forget who you are, as a child of God. Shame or guilt. Things left undone. The words you used as a weapon this week or the words used against you as a weapon this week. Unkind thoughts or attitudes. Walking by someone in need. Having your needs ignored. The harsh words of a parent or partner or friend or supervisor. The feeling that you don’t measure up. The feelings that come with a missed opportunity or being passed over for something you wanted so badly. I could go on and on. Maybe I would name something on your list or maybe I would just share my own. It doesn’t take us long to forget that we are children of God, precious in the eyes of our loving Creator. It’s sin that does that, by the way. It’s the things that are not of God. We get bogged down in them. We feel shame and guilt. We feel superior or inferior. We begin to believe that we don’t measure up and we pull out our tape measures to decide whether or not others don’t, too.
We’re good at assigning worth, you see. We’re good at declaring ourselves and others as worthy or unworthy. And in our current culture of contempt and division, it’s easy to decide who matters to us and who does not; who is worthy of our time and who is not. We’re given all sorts of tools to make those decisions and distinctions. Questions we can ask. Does this person look like me? Yes or no? Does this person think like me? Yes or no? Does this person vote like me? Yes or no? Does this person believe like me or live like me or raise their kids like me? Yes or no? Does this person have a to-do list as long as mine or the same priorities as I do? Yes or no? It doesn’t take long to decide where we and others belong, to create neat categories for strangers and neighbors alike. It doesn’t take us long to fuel the division and contempt or to condemn ourselves. It doesn’t take us long to forget what it means to be a child of God. When we forget that we are children of God, it’s easier to forget that others are, too. And when we stop seeing others as children of God, it’s easy to write them off. It’s easy to convince ourselves that they’re not worth our time and that they don’t matter, that their problems are not our problems and the injustices they face are of no consequence. It’s easy, too, to cease feeling compassion. If we can’t see another human being as a child of God, we’ve got a big problem. If we can’t see God’s good creation in everyone we meet, we’ve got some work to do. But here’s the thing, beloved of God: that’s not who we are. We are not dividers and categorizers and label makers. Hear me now: that’s not who we are.
Last week we celebrated Pentecost. With balloons, red shoes and clothes, and communion we celebrated the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this 8th chapter of Romans is all about life in the Spirit. According to Paul, it is through the Spirit of God that we have put to death the old ways of living. These old ways include the division and categorizing and failure to see ourselves and others as children of God. It is through the Spirit of God that we are assured of our identities as God’s own. Paul says that we are no longer beholden to the old ways of living and that we are no longer slaves to fear. That’s where much of the trouble begins isn’t it? In fear? We allow fear of others and what we can’t see or understand or reconcile to run our lives, to call the shots. “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you 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.” There is no room for fear in that.
Abba is an Aramaic word best translated as ‘Daddy’ or ‘Papa.’ There’s an intimacy here. That’s the relationship we have with God our Father. It’s an unconditional, ‘no matter what’ kind of relationship. Now, parental imagery for God isn’t helpful for everyone and it’s important for us to know that. Some have or had terrible relationships with their own parents or never knew their own parents. What we are assured of in this is that we have a Creator, a divine parent, who loves us unconditionally, no matter what. The importance here is the intimacy, the familiarity of the relationship. In and through Jesus Christ we are adopted into God’s family and God is our loving parent: one who accepts us for who we are because we are created in the very image of God. This God knows us inside and out. This God loves us on our worst day and our best day and all the days in between. This God has redeemed us in and through Jesus Christ. This God knows our first name: child of God. Child of mine. Precious in God’s sight. Another passage in Romans reminds us that nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God in and through Jesus Christ. Nothing: not the shame or guilt we carry, not our worst deeds, not our treatment of others, not our sin, not what others think of us. Nothing in this world can separate us from the love of God in and through Jesus Christ. The kicker is that this truth is not for us alone. It’s true for everyone. It’s available for everyone. And this truth calls us into a new way of being.
Just as George will know of God’s love and the grace of Jesus Christ because we tell him, so will the world. It’s our job to share this good news, to let others know of God’s love and the grace of Jesus Christ. It’s our call to fearlessly love others as God has loved us. We are stewards of this truth and it’s our call to be generous with it. This intimate, Abba/Father relationship is for everyone.
I’ve been reading a book by Father Gregory Boyle called Tattoos on the Heart. It has opened my eyes and my heart to the ‘no matter whatness’ of God’s love for God’s children. Father Greg, a Jesuit priest, is the founder of Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles. For over 20 years, G, as the homies call him has based his ministry in and amongst predominantly hispanic gang members in LA. These are folks that I’m guessing most of us would write off or run from in a heartbeat unable to see them as God’s own. I’ll confess that I know I would. In his book Father Greg tells many stories about the gang members, women and men, that he lives and works with through Dolores Mission and Homeboy Industries. Many of them are sworn enemies. In the last chapter he talks about kinship, the belief that we all belong to one another. He says that “Mother Theresa diagnosed the world’s ills in this way: we’ve just “forgotten that we belong to each other.” I agree with her and I’ll add that I think we’ve forgotten who we really are, that we all belong to God first, that we are all children of God. Father Greg says “Kinship is what happens to us when we refuse to let that happen. With kinship as the goal, other essential things fall into place; without it, no justice, no peace.” He imagines “No daylight to separate us. Only kinship. Inching ourselves closer to creating a community of kinship such that God might recognize it. Soon we imagine, with God, this circle of compassion. Then we imagine no one standing outside of that circle, moving ourselves closer to the margins so that the margins themselves will be erased. We stand there with those whose dignity has been denied. We locate ourselves with the poor and the powerless and the voiceless. At the edges, we join the easily despised and the readily left out. We stand with the demonized so that the demonizing will stop. We situate ourselves right next to the disposable so that the day will come when we stop throwing people away. The prophet Habakkuk writes, “The vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and it will not disappoint…and if it delays, wait for it.” Kinship is what God presses us onto, always hopeful that its time has come.”
Hear this today: You are a child of God. That is who you really are. Claiming that identity for yourself will give you the eyes to see that identity in everyone you meet. If I am God’s own and you are God’s own and every person out there is God’s own then we are all one family, we are kin. There is no division, no separation, no us and no them. We are in need of one another just as we are in need of God. The Spirit of God whispers and shouts and tells us who we really are so that we can’t forget. Abba! Father! May it be so.
Rev. Alex Rodgers
Decatur Presbyterian Church
Decatur, GA
May 27, 2018
