Spirit of Adoption



Trinity B 2015 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.

Most of us learn early on where babies come from. Our parents may have tried to keep us in the dark for a time in our early childhood, with stories of deliveries by stork or finding children under the leaves of the cabbage patch, but soon enough we are ushered into the company of the birds and the bees, if not something more explicit. The long and the short of it, as we ultimately learn, is that babies come from their parents — from their father and mother. This is the most elementary of the “facts of life.”

As far as we know, there are two only exceptions to this rule, and both of them are in the Bible. The first appears in the second chapter of Genesis. It tells us that Eve — whom Adam calls the “Mother of all living” had no mother herself; she came from Adam’s side. You all remember the story: God saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone, and cast him into a deep sleep; then God took that rib from his side and made it into the one designed as Adam’s companion — bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.

The second exception to the general rule about fathers and mothers concerns the second Adam — Jesus Christ. Just as Eve came out of Adam without a mother being involved, so too Jesus was born of the flesh of the Virgin Mary without no earthly father being involved — he was conceived by God, of the flesh of the Virgin Mary, working through the power of the Holy Spirit.

These are, as I said, exceptional instances. Everyone else who has ever lived is born of a father and a mother, and in many cases — perhaps most, but certainly not all — children are also raised by their father and their mother. There are many circumstances in which children are not raised by one or both of their biological parents. Tragedies can happen, leaving the child as an orphan. Other unfortunate events can also take place, and many families experience divorce or separation which often leaves the children in a painful and delicate situation. And in both of these and in many other cases, the concept of adoption comes in. Someone who is not the child’s biological father or mother takes the child as their own — in some cases joining with a remaining biological parent, or in some cases with a new couple replacing both of the child’s original parents — and in each case putting the child under their protection and in their care. This is legally recognized, an action that has existed in many human cultures for thousands of years — for the reality that children are sometimes left without one or both parents has been true for as long as there have been human families.

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But just as there are few exceptions to the rule of parenthood and the facts of life, there is one exceptional human family into which no one is ever born, and in which every single member is adopted — and that is the church, the family of God. Although people will sometimes say, “I was born an Anglican,” that is not literally true. No one is born a Christian of any sort — you become one through baptism. As Jesus says in John’s Gospel, you join that household of God by water and the Holy Spirit; that is the way into this “kingdom of God.” All of us are adopted into God’s family, the church. None of us is here by nature of our birth. (Although it does help if our biological or adoptive parents — your family, your grandparents — are already members of the church, and they, together with the godparents, see to it that you are baptized — brought into the church at an early age; so the earthly family is important in extending the heavenly family.)

Becoming a member of the kingdom of God is not like being born the citizen of a nation — that is more or less automatic. If you are born in the United States of America — with a very few special exceptions, like a diplomat from another country whose wife may have a child here in the US — with those few exceptions you are automatically a United States citizen. But becoming a member of the household of God, the family of God, the kingdom of God, is a process more like that required to become an American citizen if you were born in another country. All us born in this earthly realm have to apply for citizenship in the heavenly one. We need the water and the Holy Spirit to become citizens of the kingdom of God.

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I mentioned that our biological or adopted family, and the already existing family of the church, play a role in this process; the most important role — for it is through this family that the family grows. But supporting this work, the work of God which we could not do on our own — is the work of God working through us, through the power of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit: which is one of the reasons that that’s how we baptize — those are the words we use. We baptize in the name of the Holy Trinity, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For the Holy Trinity is the major worker in this — we’re just the assistants.

That short reading from the Letter of Paul to the Romans sums this up in a few choice words. Notice how all three persons of the Holy Trinity are involved. The Holy Spirit is the primary agent in this work — and I use the word agent as I would to describe someone who assists me in obtaining citizenship or arranging for an adoption. Any of you who have done either of those things knows the amount of paperwork you need to go through, and how helpful and even necessary it is to have an agent working with you, to help you in that process. The Holy Spirit is our great helper: we sing about “God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come...” Well, the Holy Spirit is the primary helper, the Comforter, the one who works through us and with us to help us do all God aks of us. And that begins, right at the start, at Baptism. The Holy Spirit helps guide through the process, to set up all that is needed. The text of Romans uses the term “adoption” specifically — and it is the Holy Spirit that Paul calls “the spirit of adoption,” the one who cries out through us, naming the one whom we desire to be our parent — one who is not our parent by nature but only by choice and adoption — as the Holy Spirit, working in us, gives us the power to call out, “Abba! Father!” to God above — something we would have no right to do on our own, if the Holy Spirit were not working within us. This is a cry that is part of the testimony, the documentation, in order to be adopted by our new Father in heaven, becoming God’s children.

And, so the text tells us, if children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Just as an adopted child becomes an inheritor in the estate of her adoptive parents, so too do Christians become inheritors along with their new brother, the only-begotten Son of God, Jesus Christ, who becomes our brother when we are joined into his family through baptism.

So it is that all three — God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit — are involved in this work of adoption, and it is through their action — working through the church, the family of God — that we are added to this great assembled body that is the Body of Christ; the kingdom of God, the family of God.

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And this action of the church, the family of God, through which God acts by means of the Spirit, brings me to my last point. Once you have become a member of this new family, you are expected to take on new responsibilities— there are chores to do in any household, and the household of God is no different.

And it isn’t as if some of us were the natural children and all the others were like the step-children, like Cinderella who got all the dirty jobs and no chance to go to the ball — until she was aided by her fairy godmother (and isn’t it interesting that even in a fairy tale the language of baptism makes its way into this story of a girl who starts out cleaning up the fireplace, but rises to become a princess! The godmother is the crucial figure in that story.) No, in God’s family all of us are stepchildren, but all have also been blessed by the Holy Spirit, the BGE: the Best Godmother Ever, and raised from the cinders to the throne, brought into the family of God, heirs with Christ, joint-heirs, princes and princesses each and every one of us in the kingdom of God.

But we still have work to do — chores in this household, even for the royals, such as us. You’ve seen them on TV: Harry and William have their jobs to do; they’re out there dedicating supermarkets, opening bridges, christening boats — everybody’s got a job no matter how royal they are. And that counts for all of us too, in this royal kingdom of God, in which we are part of the royal family.

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Fortunately the Spirit continues to help us in this work. The Spirit may be like a wind that blows where it chooses, so that we hear the sound but cannot tell its source or destination, but when we are moved by that Spirit we share in its motion, we can sense its direction. You can’t tell where the wind is blowing all by itself; but if you see a leaf flying through the air, you can tell that’s the way the wind is blowing. And so it is with those who are moved by the Spirit — when we are moved by the Spirit we can tell where we are moving, and we can tell where we are going. That’s what God does for us: invisible and yet made seen by the movement of the church itself.

The primary chore of this church, this royal family, is to serve as God’s hands and feet, as each of us, filled with and empowered by the Holy Spirit, spread God’s word and bring others into this household, this royal family, helping the kingdom to grow by acting as agents ourselves, agents of God filling up the number of those to be adopted. Our task is to assist others to be made citizens in God’s kingdom, new princes and princesses in God’s royal family — the one into which no one is born, but where all are welcome.

This is our task, my friends — you and I and all of God’s children by adoption, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ — to spread the word as free and as far as the invisible wind. This is our mission — our assignment and our task, our chore in the household of God. May the Lord find us hard at work when he comes in the glory of his kingdom.+

Better Than A Babel-Fish

We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven.

Pentecost C • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.

Some years ago the late Douglas Adams wrote a satirical novel called, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It went through many different incarnations as a radio show, as a British TV series, and even as a live-action Walt Disney movie starring Martin Freeman as the main character, Arthur Dent. He would later go on to another kind of adventure, as Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit. The Hitchhikers Guide is in the guise of science fiction, but it is actually a satire, in which the author gets to poke fun at all sorts of institutions, sacred and secular.

Right from the start, the author satirizes political bureaucracy: the planet Earth is about to be destroyed by a galactic construction authority in order to create a hyperspace bypass, at the same time that Arthur Dent’s house is about to be bulldozed by a highway construction authority to put in a traffic bypass — and in both cases the officious officials announce, when protest is made, that planning permission, with public notice, has been on file in the galactic headquarters and town planning office respectively, so no one has any reason to complain.

Well the novel would be very short indeed if Arthur Dent did not escape the destruction of his house and the planet Earth. He manages this with the help of an alien who has been living on Earth for some time, and who has chosen, while on Earth, to go by the name Ford Prefect. (The joke is likely lost on Americans for whom it might have been better to name him Ford Fairlane!) Ford, in any case, helps Arthur to hitch a ride on the spaceship belonging to the planet-destroying construction company. And the first thing he tells Arthur he must do, if they are continue their travels, is insert a small fish in his ear. When Arthur protests, Ford explains that it is a strange species called the Babel-Fish, an alien species that lives on your brain waves and which, when inserted into your ear, takes up residence in your head and allows you to understand any language you hear, and the everyone in the universe wears them — because that’s how they can communicate with each other. And so Arthur is off on a series of highly improbable adventures, but able to communicate freely with any and all of the strange creatures he meets.

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In this morning’s reading from Genesis we heard the tale of the original Babel, which is not about gaining the ability to understand languages, but losing the ability. Like a number of the other accounts in the book of Genesis, this passage serves to answer a question about why things are the way they are, much like Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. I don’t know if any of you remember them, but when I was growing up that was a favorite children’s book; the one story that sticks in my mind is, “How the Leopard Got Its Spots.” Genesis offers us, in a more serious mode, ancient answers to timeless questions such as, “Why do people get sick and die?” “Why do people get married?” “Who invented music?” and “Why don’t snakes have legs?” In this case, the question is, “How did all of the many languages on the earth come to be?”

And the answer to this last question is that this is God’s response to the presumption of mortals who set out to make a name for themselves and build a tower with its top in the heavens. To show just how presumptuous they are, they name their city Babel — which in Hebrew means “the gate of God,” but which after the confusion of their languages comes down to us with its other meaning ever since recognizable as “babble.”

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Why, you might well ask yourself, should we be concerned either with Babel or Babel-Fish, on this day of Pentecost, the last day of the Easter season, the day that celebrates the birthday of the church, and on which we celebrate the descent of the Holy Spirit in flames as of fire lighting upon the heads of the apostles? And of course it is because of what the Holy Spirit enables those apostles to do: suddenly to begin to proclaim the saving word of God in many languages — so that people who have come to Jerusalem from all over the known world can hear them proclaiming salvation through Christ in their own languages.

Pentecost undoes Babel — you might well say that it rewinds the tape (but who rewinds tape any more! So let’s say, it clicks the “back” button or the “undo” button). God looked at what the people were up to in those ancient days — in their pride and their desire, not to honor God’s name, but to make a name for themselves. God rightly and simply frustrated their plans by disrupting their ability to communicate with each other. Fast-forward some several thousand years to Jerusalem, where the apostles are gathered not as a prideful or self-asserting bunch, but in humble obedience to that final command that their Lord and Master Jesus has given them: to go to Jerusalem and wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. There they gather, and there the Spirit comes, giving them the ability not only to speak with eloquence, but in languages that none of them has ever learned, so that all of those outside in the city, from where-ever they come in the know world, can hear that powerful message of salvation — in their own languages, spoken right to their hearts.

And as I said a few weeks ago, God doesn’t just undo — God does something new. God doesn’t just press the undo button, he doesn’t just press the back button, he opens a new document, and starts a whole new story of salvation: ours.

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Thus the scattering of humanity because of pride is reversed and undone by this obedience — and the possibility to unite humanity in humility is made manifest, and the new story begins. The people of Babel had gotten too big for their britches, thinking that it was up to them to make a name for themselves, and even giving the work of their own hands the blasphemous name, “the gate of God,” because they wrongly thought their tower reached to the heavens (though in reality it was probably not much taller than the municipal parking garage across the street! When you live in a world where most buildings are one or two storeys tall, something six storeys tall may seem miraculous to you — but it wasn’t; wasn’t a gate of God — just human pride.) Such is not the Spirit of God, but the spirit of human ambition, human pride.

But the Spirit of God works differently, and comes to those who know that they are children of God. In fact, by coming to them, it makes them children of God, children by adoption. Because God has adopted us, because Jesus our brother has interceded for us, the Spirit empowers us to call God our Abba, our Father, as he taught us to pray. This is how the new story begins — our story — with that one word, Abba, Father.

Only that one word, Abba, Father, is necessary. We need not build a tower to the skies. We need not speak in many languages, either by miracle or by careful study; we need not speak in tongues as some wrongly think is needful for any who are touched by the Spirit of God. We need not make a name for ourselves, because God has given us a name as his children. We need not understand all other languages, or have the ability to interpret them. One word only is necessary, Abba, Father.

With this word we proclaim both our humility and our relationship to God and with God. We are not building a proud tower to assault heaven or to make a name for ourselves. Rather we rely on the presence of our advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom God has poured into our hearts in a spirit of adoption so that we may call out as children call out to their father or their mother, to call out in the name of the Lord our God, who is our Father in heaven. It is God’s name, not ours, that is important.

This is the start of the new story, the church’s story, that tells us how we became children of God. This one word, Abba, Father, overthrows the towers of pride, and establishes our trust in our relationship with God our Father in heaven. May we who have received this spirit of adoption, persevere in it all our days, to the glory of God our Father, and Christ our Brother, through the Holy Spirit, our advocate and guide.

Weeding Lesson

SJF • Proper 11a 2011 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
The slaves of the householder came and said to him, ‘Master, where did these weeds come from?’ He answered, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The slaves said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he replied, ‘No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”

A couple of weeks ago I was watching a documentary on the National Geographic Channel about what has become the largest cash crop in the state of California. You might be surprised to hear that in a state famous for its citrus fruit, its grapes and its lettuce, that the biggest cash crop is now something that was once considered a weed. That’s right, it’s ganja, also known as marijuana, or perhaps less well known simply by the name it was called for ages. Long before people decided to start smoking it they called it hemp.

Northern California had always been a major source for this weed, even when it was illegal. But with the moderate legalization for medical use, growing marijuana is now a major source of legal income in many small towns dotting the rural countryside of Northwestern California.

The TV documentary charted the history of America’s ignorance of, neglect of, use of, hostility towards, and now moderate adoption of this curious plant. For a long time it was simply regarded literally as a weed. It could be found growing throughout the country in sunny spots on vacant lots and by the roadsides. It had fallen out of its long established use for making rope and canvas — and I learned that the word canvas derives from the Latin name for the plant: cannabis! Many a seagoing vessel down through the years has set sail under the banner of Mad Mary Jane without knowing it!

Some time after people started using it as a drug in the US, however, the government decided to approach the issue much like the servants in the parable today — they decided it was time to uproot the plants and wipe out its use as a recreational drug. And huge amounts of money and resources have gone into the effort to eradicate this dreaded weed.

Then, of course, came the discovery that thus weed actually has— in addition to its practical use as a source of hemp-fiber for rope, paper, and cloth — a legitimate medicinal use in helping people undergoing chemotherapy to find some relief from the severe nausea associated with it, and to help restore their appetite for food. Medical marijuana is now legal (with some restrictions) in sixteen states (though not our own!) and in the District of Columbia.

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Now, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, this sermon isn’t really about marijuana! What it is about is the limitation on human knowledge, and the extent of human impatience. Marijuana, for all its usefulness as a source of fiber and in medicine, is still a dangerous drug — and like all drugs it can impair ones judgment and motor skills, and increase the appetite for food in people who need absolutely no encouragement! While it is clearly not the work of the devil, this weed isn’t wheat!

But the efforts of some completely to eradicate it are surely as misguided as the efforts of the servants in our parable — not that the modern zealots would have damaged any wheat in uprooting the weed, but they would have deprived those who actually benefit from the medicinal properties of the plant — that small comfort at a relatively low cost. I know that some of you here have suffered the rigors of chemotherapy, and I know that anything that can make that less burdensome is surely welcome.

But the message of the gospel today is, as so often with Jesus, Don’t be hasty to judge and take into your hands decisions best left to God. Don’t think you know everything. Recall that the stone the builders rejected is the one that became the cornerstone of the building. Even if what you do know is true — for surely the weeds were weeds, and the servants of the master knew that — still don’t be so hasty about putting your knowledge into action; there may be unintended consequences and collateral damage even to the most well-informed courses of action.

You see, the master, in addition to knowing weeds also knows his servants — the master knows that if they get themselves worked up in their excitement at getting rid of all those nasty weeds, they will inevitably damage the healthy wheat as well. The master has other workers better trained at this task — the reapers who will come at harvest time to do the work not only of harvest but of separation — to gather up all of the weeds first and bind them and cast them into the oven; but then to gather up the good grain and bring it safely into the barn.

And of course, just as this sermon is not about marijuana, so too Jesus assured his disciples that the parable was not about weeds and wheat: it is about the end times and the final judgment upon this world, when God will send his angels out to separate the children of the kingdom from the children of the evil one. This is no ordinary agriculture, but the ultimate fate of evildoing and righteousness, of evildoers and the righteous.

And lest we become too self-satisfied and too easily imagine ourselves, naturally, as among the righteous — as I reminded us last week, righteousness is not our natural capacity, but is itself a gift from God who adopts us as his own. If we are among the righteous, as I hope and pray — and trust — we are, it is not our own doing. We have no health in ourselves to help ourselves, no native righteousness, but only that which comes from God who is the source of all goodness and all righteousness. We are not God’s natural children — but children by adoption. And it is only by virtue of that adoption that we are able to cry out “Abba! Father!"

It is not that some of us are weeds and some of us are wheat, but that whatever it is that we are is determined by the one who makes use of us to his ends, and for his purposes. Just as even the weed of the vacant lot can be used for rope or cloth or even medicine— no human being is incapable of being adopted by God to serve God’s purposes and to be filled with God’s righteousness.

So let us not be eager to harvest or to judge, my brothers and sisters: let us leave that to God, and in the meantime spread the word that the adoption agency is open and that all are welcome to apply!+

Saint in the Background

Christmas 2a 2011 • SJF • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG God destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.+

Around this time every year our attention is drawn naturally to the Holy Family, because of the large role they play in the story of Christ’s birth. This is especially true of one member of the Holy Family, who apart from the events immediately preceding and following Christmas, receives virtually no attention in the rest of Scripture. Even during the Christmas season, the dominant image on religious Christmas cards, even on such secular things as postage stamps, is the Madonna and Child. But here is another figure, hidden in the background, tucked a bit out of the way, usually hanging his head a little, although often with his hand outstretched in protection towards Mary and Jesus. He is somewhat in awe at the mystery unfolding around him, this other figure, this other member of the Holy Family. Today’s Gospel asks him to step forward into the light, perhaps to take a little bow — for without him the wonderful work of Christmas and what followed would not have happened. I am talking, of course, about Joseph, the husband-to-be of Mary, the foster father of Jesus.

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Matthew tells us more about Joseph than any of the other evangelists: that Joseph was a good man, an honest man, a sensitive and caring man. He also tells us he was a dreamer. When he found his bride-to-be was pregnant, he could have had her hauled into court he possibly could have had her stoned to death; instead, Joseph decided to settle the whole matter quietly. But then came a dream: an angel warned him in a dream not to take offense. The angel instructed him to take Mary as his wife, and to accept the child that would be born as his own. This was a risk, but Joseph took it; he risked the wagging tongues, that could count to nine and new his marriage had not lasted a full nine months before the child was born. He treated Mary as his wife, and the child as his son.

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In today’s Gospel, Joseph again serves as God’s agent for deliverance. And like his namesake from the Old Testament, Joseph the son of Jacob, this Joseph is one who is a dreamer, who hears the voice of God in his dreams. Joseph’s first dream told him not to fear to take Mary as his wife, and in today’s Gospel there are three more dreams that bring Joseph God’s instructions. And like his namesake from the age of the patriarchs — Joseph the son of Jacob, who called his family into Egypt to escape the famine that came upon all the world when he was Pharaoh’s viceroy — like him, this Joseph son of David brought his family into Egypt to preserve their lives, escaping the horrible plot of King Herod. And that’s the first dream out of the set of three in our Gospel today.

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But let me say a word about Herod. Herod is one of the great villains of history, a mass-murderer of children. When the wise men told Herod of the birth of the new king, he set out to ensure that no new king would ever come from Bethlehem to take his place. I’m sure you recall the story, though our reading today leaves out those verses, just reporting that Herod died. It leaves out the part about how Herod ordered all of the boy-children up to two years of age to be slaughtered: that horrible night of holocaust when the soldiers ran through the streets killing any child they saw.

But what you may not know is that this Herod was so selfishly protective of his throne that not only did he kill off all of these children in Bethlehem, but he had is own sons killed as well, when they began to act as if they were ready to take over the reins of the kingdom. Herod is a man with the blood of innocents on his hands, and the blood of his own family, a man who placed himself before all others, including his own children.

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What a contrast: Herod and Joseph. Both of them fathers — but what a difference between them! One father risked everything — his reputation, his livelihood, his home — for the sake of a child who was not even his by blood, his foster son. The other father sacrificed the lives of innocent children, and took the lives even of his own flesh and blood in order to preserve his last shreds of power — power which must eventually pass away when he died, as all men die.

And who survived, after all? After Herod died, who came back? Who but the sweet dreamer Joseph, the loving foster-father Joseph, the man who gave up everything: who gave up security and a settled life at the prompting of God’s angel in a dream. After Herod died in misery, Joseph came out of Egypt (in response to dream #2) and settled in the north country, by the Sea of Galilee (in response to dream #3). Herod, the man who sought to save his life, to protect himself from all who might seize his throne, lost his life; while Joseph, the man who risked everything, preserved himself and his family.

And what a family it was: a wife who was not his wife after the manner of the flesh; a son who was not his son except by adoption. This is the Holy Family — not your typical nuclear family by any means — not the family of the “family values” spouting from the lips of politicians, hypocrites and demagogues. Joseph, and Mary, and Jesus represent the true family values, the truly human values that reflect what God values: sacrifice, forgiveness, trust, choosing life for another at risk to yourself, in doing what Jesus would later assure us is the greatest act of love: to risk your life for someone else.

For flesh and blood are not the stuff virtue is made from. Herod despised his own flesh and blood, and the flesh and blood of countless innocents; while Joseph loved Mary and Jesus as if they were his own dear wife and own dear son far better than many husbands and fathers love or have loved their wives or children. Flesh and blood is no guarantee of love, earthly or heavenly. Saint Paul told the church at Corinth that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God”(1 Cor 15.50). And when it comes to blood as the binder of love, who can forget those words from the very beginning of human history, from Genesis, when the brothers — brothers in blood and flesh — one killed the other. And what happened? What did God say? “Cain, your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” No blood is no guarantee of love, my friends; I wish it were. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom. Flesh and blood are no guarantee of living heavenly values even here on earth! Only the imperishable and heavenly can support the weight of the greatest virtues, the strongest goods, the most precious grace. Love, the greatest love, is present only and whenever self-sacrifice is present, in flesh and blood families as well as in spiritual families — of which the church is the prime example.

The saying goes that blood is thicker than water, but I assure you that there is a water that is thicker than the cold blood of a Herod. There is a water that is as thick as the warmest blood of the most loving family. And that is the water of Baptism. For through the water of Baptism we all have become part of a new spiritual family, blessed, as Saint Paul says, with every blessing in the heavenly places. Through the waters of Baptism we have all, all been adopted, each and all of us have been adopted as God’s children through Jesus Christ, adopted into a family defined by faith in him, and in love toward the saints — the other members of God’s great extended, adopted family. This is the family whose kinship is neither bounded nor defined by flesh and blood, by race or nation or clan. This is the great extended family begotten, as John’s Gospel says, not by blood or by the will of the flesh or by the will of man, but by God. It is God who has called us together, as surely as God called together the lost children of Israel, called them home from wherever they had been scattered to the farthest parts of the earth. And he who calls us children will not forsake us.

This is our hope, a hope to which we have been called, an inheritance which we possess as heirs through adoption, through the immeasurable greatness of God’s abundant power. It is an inheritance that it would be a shame to waste.

As we go through this new year, times will get rough — last year was rough enough! — and demands may come to seem unreasonable; should we feel as if our family is asking too much of us, a husband not being considerate enough, a wife demanding too much of our time; our children not paying attention to us, our parents seeming unreasonable; or if our church family should seem to be making too many demands, our time being eaten up by church work and responsibilities — if those feelings should come our way, let us pause for a moment and think about the sweet dreamer Joseph. Let us recall the patient foster-father, the loving, giving spouse; the patron of the church. Let us pause and recall how blessed we are in the opportunity to set self aside for the sake of others; how blessed we are to dream what Archbishop Desmod Tutu calls “God’s dream” — that all, all, all, are children of God, and that through Christ we can be all that it means to be a child of God.+

Word Made Flesh

SJF • Christmas 1 2009 • Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
And the Word became flesh and lived among us.+

Merry Christmas! I say that because Christmas is not a single day — Christmas is that twelve-day-long season of the church year in which we are particularly reminded of a great invasion that took place long ago — when in fulfillment of the prophecies of old, God came to be with us as one of us, our Lord Emmanuel.

During the few years of his ministry recorded in the Gospels, Jesus taught and preached about why he came to us. He also told parables about himself as God’s emissary, God’s anointed one, the Messiah, God’s Son, sent from his Father’s throne on a mission to the world God loved so much. He told the parable about the king who sent his son to deal with those disreputable vineyard tenants, for example — a very pointed parable aimed in the direction of religious leaders who had turned the temple into a den of thieves. He told of the master of the household who came to check up on what the various servants were doing, especially in regard to how they treated each other — and that’s a very pointed parable that is a lesson to all of us! So it is that Jesus himself began a tradition of telling about his own mission among us through parables.

Last week, Brother James and I saw the new James Cameron film, Avatar. As you know from the news reports we were not the only people who went to the movies last weekend! The film has very nearly made up its very high price tag within the first weeks of its release. I promise that this sermon will contain no spoilers, for those who yet to see the film — I’ll stick to what has already been shown in the trailers and previews, which have been hard to avoid if you’ve wandered within five feet of a television during the last month or so.

The reason I think of this film at Christmas time is not only due to its having been released to coincide with Christmas — strange timing for what is really a summer blockbuster after all! It is because this film also deals with the theme of incarnation — and of what incarnation is for: sacrifice and justice and deliverance and healing. While it is far from matching up with Christian theology point by point, that film does capture the essence of a very vital and central element of the Christian faith — that God became one of us, and saved us.

As the evangelist John put it, “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” And as he would continue in a later chapter, the Son of God came into the world, “not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

So it is that the hero of the film, Jake Sully, is given a fleshy body like those of the people whose world he is going to inhabit. A body ten feet tall, with yellow eyes, and a long tail like a cat! It is also a body “not born of blood or of the will of the flesh,” though clearly at the devising and the will of man — the scientists grow the body for Jake in a giant test tube. More importantly for the theme of the film, Jake rejects and is rejected by “his own people” — us human beings — or at least the commercial exploiters of the peaceful planet and the military force set on displacing or eliminating the indigenous population.

I’ll let the comparison rest at that — both so as not to give away any more of the film, but also not to press my luck by drawing the analogy any closer than it already is. As with the parables themselves, it is a mistake to try to interpret most of them allegorically — that is, point by point — rather than drawing one major lesson from each of them.

And the major lesson I want to draw both from our Scripture and from that adventuresome movie is the same — that we have been rescued. And more than rescued: saved. We and our world have been saved by someone who is both one of us and yet who comes from beyond. God has come to us; the word which was at the beginning with God and was God, through whom all things came into being, and without whom not one thing that is came to be — this same Word and Son of God came to us as one of us, became human flesh and lived among us and allowed us for that brief time to see his glory.

And to do more than just to see. As Saint Paul wrote to the troublesome congregation in Galatia, through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, we have also received adoption as children of God, brothers and sisters of God’s own son, who was born under the law, born of a woman as all of us were, in order to redeem us and set us free from the bondage of sin.

Jesus came to us as one of us to save us from the mess we’d gotten into by seeking ourselves instead of honoring God and our neighbors. Unlike the tall blue people of Pandora, who seem to be able to get along not only with each other but with their whole planet, we human beings have been at odds both with each other and our planet almost from the very beginning. (Another point made in Avatar is that the humans are invading the peaceful planet of Pandora because they’ve practically destroyed their home-world — our home-world, the Earth. And any decisions about global warming taken last week in Copenhagen notwithstanding, that part of the story may well turn out to be true, 150 years from now!)

Clearly, we human beings have a way of making a mess of things, both on a personal and a planetary scale. But the good news of Christmas, is that it doesn’t have to be that way, or stay that way. God himself came to us to offer us a way out of this mess. And it wasn’t with arrows and flying dragons, it wasn’t with machine guns and armaments. It wasn’t alien creatures 10 feet tall, or mechanical suits twice as tall as that armed to the teeth.

It was as a child, born in a suburb of Jerusalem, during a time of confusion and injustice no less troubled than our own. And all who will receive him, who believe in his name, have power to become children of God, as he was and is. We can embrace that new identity received in him, clothe ourselves in his goodness, and set down both the swords we use against each other and the seemingly innocuous ploughshares with which we wound our weary planet. We can turn from using each other and our world only for what we can get out of it and each other, and instead seek to serve each other, to love each other and cherish each other as brothers and sisters should do, and to treat this earth, our island home, with greater reverence and care: it’s the only one we’ve got!

We have been given power to do this by God himself — God, who made us and this world of ours — for the Word became flesh and lived among us. We have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Through that grace and in that truth we can proclaim our salvation — that we have been rescued and saved, redeemed and restored, and empowered so that we might be all that God intends us to be: his children — so that it is true when we cry out, “Abba! Father!” And so to Christ our Savior, and to his Father and our Father, let us give thanks for this great gift, the greatest gift, the Word made flesh, our Lord, Emmanuel.+

Five Kings

SJF • Christmas 2 2008 • Tobias Haller BSG
Herod secretly called for the wise men…and sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage…”

In the dark early days of World War II, in the midst of the blitz and the Battle of Britain, leading politicians in England wanted to send the royal family away somewhere safe, away from London, which was well within the range of German bombers and the even more frightening terror-weapons. Some suggested they go to the country, to Windsor, or even further North to Scotland, others argued they would really be safest in Canada. The Royals refused, however, and the Queen — whom most of us would later know as the “Queen Mum” — won the hearts of the Eastenders when, after Buckingham Palace was bombed, she said that she finally could say in all truth that she was a Londoner, and look the East End in the face.

And look she and her husband the king did. Not only did King George VI and his Queen stay in London, but they went to the East End and the docklands to inspect the damage done by the bombs and rockets that had ravaged the heart of London’s port and center of trade. One day when King George was inspecting a bombed-out building, sympathizing with the survivors and mourning their losses with them, a frail old man came up to him, and after looking carefully into his face for a long while, pronounced his judgment: “You are a good King.”

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Today’s gospel tells us of several kings of different sorts, but only one of them is truly a Good King. We have “five kings” in our gospel today. King Herod the Great, the tyrant sitting uneasily on his throne in the very last years of his long and terrible reign; the so-called “Three Kings,” the wise men — who really are not kings at all, and the Scripture doesn’t even actually say there were three of them — and finally the newborn King, Jesus the Christ Child. And although only he deserves the title of Good King — since he is truly a king and truly good — we can learn something from all of the characters in our gospel story today.

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First the King who isn’t good: Herod the Great, he was called, and I guess he’s a fine example of how one can become great without being good. He ruled his land with an iron fist; he reconstructed Palestine along the model of a Graeco-Roman imperial state. He rebuilt the Temple in all its glory. He built mighty fortresses and palaces up and down the length of the country — including the great palace fortress at Masada that many years later would become the last holdout of Jewish rebellion against Rome.

But alongside all of these great works, you have to set the character of the man who worked them: and this is where all question of goodness evaporates. Herod the Great was a heartless murderer: so paranoid about his throne that he killed his own son when he thought he posed a threat. The Roman emperor Augustus, contrasting Herod’s murderous capacity with his surmised observance of Jewish food laws, said, “I’d rather be Herod’s pig than his son!” And we know from our own Scripture the terrible story of what Herod did when the Wise Men didn’t come back to give him the precise identity of the Christ Child: he murdered all the little boys of Bethlehem, horribly slaughtering the innocents to protect the throne he was so fearful of leaving, the throne where he died. He was a king, all right, but very far from being a good one.

The lesson for us in this, is always to keep clear in our minds the terrible difference between being great and being good — that fame and power gained at the expense of others will bring only grief and pain in the end.

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Then come these wise men — these magi who are clearly good, but who definitely aren’t kings. First of all, note that unlike Herod, who is so jealous of his throne that he won’t leave it, and sends out agents to do his dirty work — the wise men travel: they move. They’ve got the virtue of get up and go! When they see the sign of the star, they follow it; and they only rejoice when they reach their goal, when the star finally stops over the house where the child is found.

So the first part of their goodness is reflected in their willingness to change, their willingness to move, and their unwillingness to stop until they reach the goal, until they come to the feet of the one before whom they kneel in adoration and homage. The second part of their goodness is shown in what they give up: unlike Herod who didn’t want to give up anything, they freely offer their precious gifts to the Christ Child, they open their treasures and offer them, freely and without compulsion. Finally, the third part of their goodness is shown in how they keep the secret. Contrary to Herod’s explicit instructions, they do not return to him, but go back to their homes by another way, rejoicing they have been blessed, and unwilling to collaborate with evil against good.

The lesson for us in this is plain: God wants three kinds of freedom for us: freedom from being so attached to things that we cannot move where he calls us, freedom to give up our treasures for his use, and freedom to disobey the evil powers of this world when they seek to co-opt us to their ends.

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Finally the Christ Child, the center around whom this whole story revolves: he is the one who is both a King and Good. And I want to relate his goodness back to the king with which I started this sermon: King George VI, who remained in London through the blitz, and visited the East End to be with his people. Jesus the King of Heaven came to us his people in the midst of the war of sin, he came to be with us at our lowest and our worst, came to us bombed out and injured, wounded and incapacitated by sin, came to be with us and to lift us up out of the disaster into which we’d gotten ourselves.

He did not remain isolated from us, in glory at the right hand of the Father, dwelling in light inaccessible; but he came to us, the wisdom and revelation of God, to enlighten the eyes of our hearts. He did not leave us as orphans, but came to us to be our brother, so that we too could be adopted children of his Father in heaven, the one he taught us to call “Our Father” too. And as heirs with him of eternal life, he endowed us with the riches of his glorious inheritance.

The Good King came to us in our need, when we were beset by sin and troubled by the tyranny of evil; the Good King came to us as a child, as a brother, came to our rescue and our aid. Let us give thanks to him this Christmastide, and through the whole year long, praising his holy Name, now and forever, even Jesus Christ, our Lord.+