MADE HEIRS WITH THE SON

A sermon by George R. Pasley

Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:22-40

I’ve known quite a few people who adopted children, some of them in my own family.

Some of my friends have adopted children from Korea and China, and I know that part of the reason they did was because young American children are very hard to find.

But even so, I don’t know much about the process. So I looked it up. This is what I found out about adoption in Alaska, through the foster care system.

Families who want to adopt in Alaska must be finger printed, complete an application, attend training and have a home study done. A family can be matched with a child, once all the paperwork and training is completed. If the family accepts the referral for a child, then an appointment will be made for the family to meet the child. If the meeting or meetings go well and all parties are in agreement that the child would benefit from being placed in the family's household, then the child will be placed with the family. The social worker will provide ongoing support for six consecutive months. The child can be adopted after the six month period and positive reports.

I’m sure it’s the same, or very similar, in every state. One adoption website called the process “long, tedious, and involved.”

I also know that persons who adopt through a licensed placement agency usually have a few more steps to take, and persons who adopt from another country are entering an even higher level of difficulty.

So let’s put it this way: adoption is a big deal. It’s not for the faint of heart, no matter how great the potential emotional rewards.

The Apostle Paul, writing to the church in Galatia, described our redemption as an adoption, and went so far as to describe the legal process that God went through in order to adopt us:

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

Paul’s description sounds complicated- our adoption involved Jesus being born to a woman and living his human life under the law. But that description doesn’t name the price of our adoption. But on the day of his consecration, when his parents were in the midst of fulfilling that very law, the prophet in the Temple made allusion to the cost- "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too."

We know what he meant. The child would die at the hands of sinners.

By living as one of us and dying our death, Jesus paid the price for our adoption as children of God. That’s a whole lot more than any of my friends paid to adopt their children.

I don’t want to make any attempt to characterize what it’s like to be an orphan. But I must make an attempt to talk about what it’s like to be outside of the grace of God.

It’s like being in the open sea in a very small ship as a very large storm approaches.

It’s like sliding on a patch of ice on the road, and going for a long, long slide and not knowing how- or where- it will end.

It’s like being diagnosed with an incurable disease and being afraid to tell anybody, anybody at all.

It is an experience of extreme isolation and danger.

When I was a shepherd I invariably had orphan lambs of various sorts. Few were genuine orphans. Most were the third lamb of a set of triplets, and it was not a recipe for success for a mother sheep to try and raise three lambs. A lamb without its mother cannot live long, and lambs raised without mothers are outcastes in many ways.

But shepherds have a trick they often use. They graft the lamb onto a sheep that has lost her lamb.

If they have a mother sheep whose lamb has died, they skin that lamb and tie the skin onto the orphan they are trying to get her to adopt.

Mother sheep identify their lambs by smell. When the mother of the dead lamb smells her baby’s skin on the new lamb, she gets a bit confused but after awhile she can be convinced to raise it as her own.

Now that’s not exactly what God has done with us.

Yes, Christ died for us.

Yes, Jesus died into our death so that we are raised with him.

But all this happened because God ALREADY loved us and was willing to take us as God’s very own.

Because you see, in an adoption, two things happen.

The child becomes a son or a daughter, and the focus is usually on that event. But something just as important also happens.

The adults who have gone through the long and tedious process become parents- they become the ones the child calls “Mom” and “Dad”.

So when God adopts us through Jesus, God becomes our parent, the one who delights when we call out in joy or in sorrow and seek comfort and hope.

No longer orphans, but sons and daughters.

Not servants in the house, but heirs to its treasures.

Not beggars for love and purpose, but princes and princesses given kingdom work to do.

I have to admit, I frequently feel like I don’t live up to the title “Child of God,” and I suspect you often have the same feeling.

I won’t tell you to put those feelings away, because are the “light for revelation” at work in us. But I will tell you there are two ways to stand in relation to the light.

You can look away from the light, and see your shadow. Or you can look at the light, and see the glory of God.

When we look at the glory of God, we see that God adopted us; Jesus became one of us and died for us, not because we were the best and smartest kids in the orphanage, not because of anything we ever did, not because of our potential, but because of the overflowing volume of God’s love.

Standing in relationship to the light in that way, we see that the intention of the light is not to put us down, but to lift us up.

Once upon a time a young woman gave birth to a baby boy. There was a lot of talk about that young woman and her baby boy, lots of gossip and mean talk. So the baby boy grew up learning not to look people in the eyes, learning to not listen to close to the whispers he might hear as he walked down the street, learning not to get to anxious about entering into any lively conversations.

But when he was a teenager a man stopped him on the street. The man asked, “Who are you, son? Whose boy are you?"

The boy panicked. He felt physically ill, but then the man went on. He smiled. "Wait a minute. I know who you are. The family resemblance is unmistakable. You are a child of God!" With that he patted the boy on the back and added, "That's quite an inheritance, son. Go and claim it!" 

Whatever works against you in life, God is working for you.

Whatever you have done wrong, God has forgiven.

Whatever people might say about you, whatever you might say about yourself, God will always say, “You’re mine.”

In no uncertain terms we must say, we can only say, God is that mother and father who have looked long and very, very hard for a child to call their very own.

But even more, even more, we must say, we must shout: WE ARE THAT CHILD!

Look at yourself in that light, all the time, no matter how dark life might seem.

Then go out and shine.

In the name of the Father, Son & Holy Ghost. Amen.