Children of God

A Sermon preached on December 28^th (Christmas I) at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7, John 1:1-18

Christmas is a time when we think a lot about children. For one thing, as the feast of the Nativity, of Christ’s birth, Christmas is all about God’s gift of a very special child. The one so many carols and other Christmas songs tell us about: “Unto us a child is born,” “what child is this,” “the little Lord Jesus,” or in the German carol “Ihr Kinderlein kommet, “den lieblichen Knaben, das himmlische Kind.” 

Then many of us either experience, or remember experiencing, the smiling, and joyful faces of children at Christmas – as they open their presents, or look at the Christmas crib or crèche, or take part in a nativity play! 

On a sadder note, if today had not been the first Sunday after Christmas Day, which takes precedence over other holy days, we would be remembering those children we call the Holy Innocents: murdered by King Herod in his vain attempt to kill the Messiah. The prayer for this feast day is particularly poignant when we think of the wholly innocent children who were murdered by the Taliban only just over a week ago in the school in Peshawar in Pakistan: “We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace”

But my focus, based on this morning's readings, is on God’s promise that we are all God’s children. According to Paul: “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,” (Galatians 3:4-5) while John (1:12-13) writes that “to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.” One thing we hear in these readings is that becoming or being God’s children is not a right, but a gift. God offers us adoption and God gives the power. And like all good gifts, this new life is not forced upon us, but must be actively and freely received. We can decide to refuse the gift, and many, too many do, probably because they don’t fully understand just what it means. 

To be children of God is a metaphor of course. There is only one real “child of God,” God’s Son Jesus Christ whose incarnation, Menschwerdung – literally becoming human is the German word, we celebrate at Christmas. But it is a useful metaphor, as it tells us something about how and why God loves us. That is after all the reason for our creation. God is love, and God desires to have an object for God’s love. 

Like human parents, only even more so, God loves us not because of what we do (or do not do). In fact what we do might sometimes seem to be a reason to love us a little less. But thankfully God loves us because of who we are. In Luke’s parable of the prodigal son, (Luke 15:11-32) when the son says “I am no longer worthy to be called your son,” the father’s only response is to celebrate his child’s return. And speaking as a parent: children never stop being children, regardless of their age, and God will never stop offering us the power to become God’s children, however often we refuse. 

One thing Paul is trying to say in his slightly complicated metaphor about children and slaves – and when are Paul’s comparisons not complicated – is that following Christ is not about a set of rules and regulations. Before Christ came the Law functioned as what the NRSV translates as a disciplinarian – in Latin paidagogos. A paidagogos was a slave whose job it to accompany younger Roman children to and from school and also to make sure they did their homework! He supervised, controlled and disciplined the children, but he was not a teacher. It was not his role to instruct and educate them. This is the change Christ brings. He came as a teacher and we live a Christian life not by following a set of rules but by trying to live as Jesus did and as Jesus taught, trusting, as John puts it, that he is full of grace and truth (John 1:14) and that in him we see God. (1:18) We learn to live like Christ by studying his life and teaching in Scripture, we learn to live like Christ through participating in the Sacraments, being made part of the Body of Christ in Baptism and being renewed in that membership whenever we eat and drink the bread and wine made holy in the Eucharist, and we learn to live like Christ by practicing the love he showed in our concrete acts of love and care for others. The more we do it, the easier it becomes!   

Living as Christ is did and taught, as God’s Son, is what it means to live as God’s sons and daughters. That is not just a matter of how we behave towards all the other children of God – loving them as ourselves – but also of our relationship with God – loving God our Father with all our strength, and mind, and heart. We are called to share in the unique relationship of the Son with the Father. This is a relationship characterized by intimacy, as shown by Jesus’ use of the word Abba – Dad – for God – as well as by complete trust. Only complete and utter trust can explain how Jesus was able to say “yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42) in the Garden of Gethsemane just before he is taken prisoner and executed on the cross. And of course that is what Christ teaches us in the Lord’s Prayer: thy will be done.

God does not expect us to be able to follow and imitate God’s Son just by our own strength, or will, or understanding. He not only grants us that status, but also gives us the power to become children of God, (John 1:12) which is the power we call the Holy Spirit. In Paul’s words to the Galatians (4:6) “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!” God’s action in sending the Spirit of his Son into our hearts enables us to call God Father, and the Spirit, if we listen to and let ourselves be guided by it, allows us to enjoy and to live out our new relationship with God our Father.

And that leads me to one more aspect of the children metaphor. As children, Paul says, we are also heirs. That’s a huge promise: we have the same inheritance, the same position and the same rights as the one who is Son of God by virtue of his divine nature. Being an heir means being called to share in God’s love for the world and in God’s work in the world. As I said a moment ago, we are created to be loved, but we are also created to share in God’s divine life and to experience the joy of looking after God’s creation. 

“No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.” (John 1:18) This the final and greatest promise of God giving us, who receive God’s Son and who believe in his name, the power to become children of God. We will see God, we will know God as Jesus knows God. That’s God’s Christmas present to us – this year and every year.

Amen.