Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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The novelist Walker Percy reminds us that words and concepts are often “overused, worn out,” to the point of exhaustion,” he says, “so that, instead of transmitting information, they block it. Instead of being attended by the excitement of discovery,…they are attended by boredom.” The concept “children of God” is one of these. It’s exhausted. It’s no longer attended by excitement. We’ve used it so often, and in so many trivial ways, it has even become a little boring. To recapture the thrill early Christians felt when they first spoke of themselves as God’s children, we have to go back to that time, to the time of the Bible. The author of I John is astounded by the phrase. He stands in awe: “Behold what manner of love the father hath given unto us, that we should be called ‘children of God!’”
One of our praise songs has picked up these words. We sing it frequently at the first service. Sing it with me….

I t’s more than just that God and we are one big happy family. (That kind of schmaltz we don’t need!) Christians have a story to tell about how we became children of God, and it goes like this: once we were slaves, enslaved to sin and death, without the tiniest hope of freedom. Then God sent his Son down to the slave market, and he bought us (paying a terrible price), and brought us to God’s house; and we were expecting to be slaves there, but instead God set us free. And more than that – far more – he adopted us as his children and made us heirs of all his promises. So that now we live in the father’s house, not in fear, as slaves live, but with confidence and freedom, as children at home, at ease and at rest. Now that’s our story. The only way one can join God’s family is by adoption, and (Praise God!) that’s what happened to us. John had all that in mind when he said, “Behold what manner of love the Father hath given unto us, that we should be called ‘children of God!’”

More than we realize, I think, life is based on anticipation and hope, and (as believing Christians), because we know our Father loves us, we know our hope is in not in vain. God’s love is the well of our confidence and our strength. “What can separate us from the love of God?…Nothing in all creation….” Assurance of love, the certainty that God loves us and cares for us, is very important. We live by it. An adult woman, the daughter of an alcoholic father, said to me, “One day I would come home from school and say, ‘Hi, Daddy,’ and he would hug me and kiss me. The next day I could come home from school and say, ‘Hi, Daddy,’ and he would slap me.” She went on to tell how her whole life had been haunted by uncertainty and fear. She never knew what to expect, so she was always on guard, always preparing herself for the worse. It had ruined many a relationship. But God’s love is constant. He is faithful to his promises. And we can count on it. That gives us confidence to live, and move.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “Let me tell you about the very rich: they are different from you and me.” I was talking to a wealthy friend one day, and he told me that each time a grandchild was born he would donate $25,000 to his very exclusive country club. And that would guarantee the child a membership when he or she grew up. I said, “You mean it would pay his initiation fee?” “Oh, no,” he said. “They still have pay their own initiation fee (which was monstrous, by the way), it just gives them the opportunity to do so.” I was staggered by that. It was a world I did not live in. And yet I realized in that moment how, on a much smaller scale, my parents had set things up to make life easier for me. Good parents (and grandparents) do that. They remove some of the anxiety from living, so that their children can take risks. God does that. If we will listen to him, he makes life easier and less fearful. “Don’t be afraid,” Jesus said. “You’re better than the birds and the flowers.” God will take care of your needs. Your future is guaranteed. Stop struggling. Have faith. “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Children of God don’t fear the future – the future in this life, or the next. One minister tells of Christmas mornings in his home when he was growing up. “There was magic in the expectancy,” he says. “For days we would prepare the decorations and dream about what gift of love would be under that tree for us. We went to bed that night full of excitement. We never asked, ‘What if there’s nothing there?’ or ‘What if something bad is there?’ We had faith in our parents’ love. That’s what it means to be a child of God: not to fear the future, but to know that he will give us every good gift.

In a way, all of our worship is merely saying, “Thank you.” Surely this communion service is just that. What can we add? What can we do? I suppose whenever we come before God’s altar we offer ourselves up for adoption. But the act of overwhelming love, the freeing and the adoption itself, is his not ours. We are simply the beneficiaries. “Behold what manner of love the Father hath given unto us, that we should be called ‘Children of God!’."