Day of Pentecost, 05/23/2010

Sermon on Romans 8:14-17, by Samuel D. Zumwalt

14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, "Abba! Father!" 16The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

HEIRS WITH CHRIST

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The second lesson today falls within a larger chapter of St. Paul's letter to the Romans that deals with sanctification, life lived in and under the Holy Spirit. Having been made Christians by our Baptism into the Lord Jesus' death and resurrection and having been brought to faith in Christ by the Holy Spirit, Paul begins to lay out what it means to live the new life in Christ as we move toward glorious life with the Father.

You will notice in the second lesson that our translation makes a distinction between sons of God and children of God. This reflects Paul's word choices in Greek; he uses both the Greek words for "sons" and "children." At first glance it might well seem that here St. Paul is, like any good writer, mixing up his word choices to make the writing more interesting to the reader or hearer. Of course, we would miss that distinction in some translations, because some translators need to correct Paul's use of language so as not to offend the hearer, or at least the translator, with gender specific language like "sons."

But Paul is writing in a specific time and place, within a specific cultural context and indeed within a specific biblical history, and if we try to impose our own cultural prejudices upon Paul, we can miss the message while we're busy shooting the messenger.

The use of the word "sons" in verse 14 is intentional, because of the history that the word "son" encompasses. It is not simply a historical artifact of some unenlightened patriarchal culture. "Son" is what God calls the people of Israel who are descended from Isaac, the child of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 12:1-3. Through the saving work of God's only-begotten Son Jesus, born of the Virgin Mary and conceived by the Holy Spirit, each baptized Christian is adopted as a "son of God." Even the Greek word for adoption, which Paul also uses in v. 15, literally means "placement as sons."

This does not mean that the women and girls are left out. This means that all those that have been chosen by God in the washing of Baptism have been joined to Jesus, God's Son, and through Jesus, to the promises made to Abraham and Sarah. As Paul will later say in Galatians 3, there is neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave nor free in Christ Jesus. All the baptized people of God are sons of God through Jesus. We get our inheritance through Him. We have been adopted by a loving heavenly Father, the One whom Jesus calls "Abba," which literally means "Daddy."

Now in Romans 6 and 7, the two previous chapters, Paul has dealt with what the Christian life is and is not. Again at the beginning of chapter 8, Paul makes clear the Christian life is not freedom to do whatever I feel like. We are not to be led around by our feelings or our bodily desires, for such is the way of death. The Christian life is Spirit-filled, immersed in God's love, the kind of love that the Triune God shares, the kind of love that is embodied in the life, death, and resurrection of God's Son Jesus.

We that have been baptized into the Lord Jesus' death and resurrection are now "sons of God." We have a new status. We are no longer slaves to sin, death, and evil. We are "sons of God" who may call upon our heavenly Father, as our brother Jesus does. When we pray, we may call our heavenly Father, "Daddy," and cry out to Him in trust - here it comes - when suffering comes upon us as it came upon our brother Jesus.

It is the Holy Spirit that calls us to the waters of Holy Baptism. It is the Holy Spirit that creates faith in God's saving work in Jesus Christ. It is the Holy Spirit that brings us to the awareness that we are indeed adopted "sons" and now fully "children of God." It is the Holy Spirit that teaches us children to pray trustingly to our heavenly Father as our "Abba" (our Daddy). It is the Holy Spirit who prays with us and for us. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us grace to understand that we are joint heirs with our brother Jesus. One day we will share in the promised glory that the resurrected and ascended Jesus enjoys, but today in this life we share in His sufferings even as He shares in ours.

Several years ago a man who styles himself a cutting-edge theologian visited a congregation I was serving. Having never been in that congregation and without knowing anything about its life, he sniffed that no one would ever have to suffer very much in such a congregation. He, of course, was revealing his Marxist prejudices that no one from a middle class, much less a more affluent background, could possibly know anything about suffering. By inference, the only congregations that could possibly know about suffering had to be located in poorer neighborhoods and be filled with people living below the poverty level and/or that see themselves as oppressed by the dominant culture.

Having lived for a few years in ghettoes and having lived for quite a few years below the poverty level as an almost professional student, I caught a glimpse of myself as a much younger man imbued with the same kind of arrogant self-righteousness that one has to exercise often to maintain. Indeed one almost always has to be a professional journalist or academic to be able to maintain that kind of anger, which is often fueled by the sense that one is much smarter and paid far less than most other professionals.

If that man had lived for a while in that congregation, he would have met people that had cared for dying children; people that had been abandoned by spouses and that were struggling both financially and emotionally as single parents; people that were graciously caring for spouses with Alzheimer's; people that had been cheated out of pensions by corporate raiders; people that were living with cancer and yet reaching out to those that were grieving; people that were giving up vacation time and even income to go on mission trips to serve the very poor; people who were giving away time and talent and money to bless the least of these Christ's brothers and sisters. He didn't see any of them.

No, this man was so full of himself he alone knew what suffering looked like. And, by God, no one could be suffering in a church with recently remodeled and expanded facilities.

That kind of arrogance is not at all what Paul is talking about as he describes for us what it means to be led by the Spirit and to share in Christ's suffering!

This weekend ten confirmands are affirming their Baptisms. Eight girls and two boys are making public confession of their faith before our congregation. They will be reminded that they are adopted "sons" through Jesus. They are children of God in whom the Holy Spirit has been working since their Baptism.

As each young person is confirmed with the laying on of hands, these are the words that will be spoken: "Father in heaven, for Jesus' sake, stir up in (this child) the gift of your Holy Spirit; confirm his/her faith, guide his/her life, empower him/her in his/her serving, give him/her patience in suffering, and bring him/her to everlasting life."

At our recent Confirmation banquet where confirmands read papers on Holy Communion and Holy Baptism, I said that confirmation serves in our churches as a kind of Lutheran bar or bat mitzvah, a coming of age ritual, in which the student begins the transition to adult faith life and Christian responsibility. The old joke about how to get rid of pigeons at the church sadly too often holds true. All you need to do is to confirm them, and then they'll go away. Such cultural religion mocks an Affirmation of Baptism.

That's not the life that St. Paul is describing in Romans 8. That's not life lived under the Holy Spirit. Worship is not optional for the children of God. Growth in biblical and theological knowledge is not a matter of choice or subject even to the prevailing winds of this age. Bible study is not a matter of sitting around in a circle and saying, "I think...." Indeed Baptism and Confirmation are not like some heavenly fire insurance policy that one stores away in a safe deposit box until one's funeral.

Life lived in and under the power of the Holy Spirit looks like the Son of God, Jesus Christ, in whom we have sonship. Just as Jesus spoke intimately and constantly with His heavenly Daddy, so ought we children of God to pray in the same way. Just as Jesus listened to and obeyed the voice of God, so ought we children of God to listen to God's voice speaking through the Holy Scriptures. Just as Jesus reached out to the lost sheep of Israel, so ought we children of God to reach out to those that have fallen away. Just as Jesus gave His whole life away in humble service, so ought we children of God to follow Him through suffering and death. Just as the Lord Jesus described His sheep as those that feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger, and visit the sick and imprisoned, so ought we children of God to go and do likewise.

What a very different life that life in the Spirit is than the kind of cultural Christianity that too often is observed even here at St. Matthew's, where we relish the fact that we are casual people living by or near the beach.

The Holy Spirit is here this weekend not only calling those that are being confirmed, but He is also here calling their parents, their siblings, their aunts and uncles, their grandparents, their godparents, and indeed all their fellow parishioners. The Holy Spirit is calling us to recognize what it is to be an adopted "son" of God, a brother or sister of the Lord Jesus, a son or daughter of Jesus' Daddy. The Holy Spirit is calling us again out of ourselves, out of our preoccupation with our own feelings and bodily desires. The Holy Spirit is calling us to the waters of Holy Baptism to be buried with Christ Jesus and raised to the joyous life of being a "son" of God.

The new life in Christ, the new life lived in and under the Spirit of God, is about growing and deepening in one's prayer life, in one's devotion to Word and Sacraments, in one's self-sacrifice out of love for others, and in one's abandoning oneself to our heavenly Abba regardless of the present circumstances of one's life. The Spirit of God is working on us and in us, so that we may know for certain that we are bound for glory even when we are up to our ears in earthly muck and mire. The Holy Spirit is praying for us and with us so that we can say with Lady Julian of Norwich: "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things shall be well." We know how the story turns out!

Let us, then, rejoice today in our adoption as "sons" of God through our Baptism into the Lord Jesus' death and resurrection. Let us celebrate today the outpouring of the Holy Spirit who has not left us as orphans but has come to make of us children of God. We are heirs with Christ forever!

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

STS Samuel D. Zumwalt
St. Matthew’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Wilmington, North Carolina
E-Mail: szumwalt@bellsouth.net

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