A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — June 20, 2010
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Romans 8:12-17;  1 John 3:1-3  —  Baptism

God’s Spirit touches our spirits and confirms who we

Father and children.  —Romans 8:16 (The Message)

What marvelous love the Father has extended to us!

That’s who we really are. — 1 John 3:1 (The Message)

Children of God…  Both Paul and the writer of 1 John (and others) use this phrase to declare who we really are.  God is Abba… Father, Mother… Daddy, Mommy… our Parent.  The very Spirit of God touches our spirits to confirm in us that we are children of God.  God loves us so deeply and faithfully that right here and now (!) we live as God’s very children.  What an amazing concept!

I suppose this is glorious good news.  But I do recall just enough about being a child to wonder about that.  Our world puts such an incredible value on independence—especially independence in the sense of being “free to do anything you darn well please” without no one telling you what you have to do.  I think that’s what’s at work in the current Tea Party movement.  But childhood is another matter.  All kinds of people get go around telling children what they have to do.  So one of the main goals of childhood seems to be to grow up and become independent.  From early on there’s that cry, “No, I do it myself!”  I’d forgotten just how early on it happens until I had my own kids.  There’s just something within us all that seems to drive us to declare our independence.

 

In a couple of weeks, fireworks will fill the sky in celebration of a declaration of independence written more than 200 years ago.  The words of that declaration are very nearly holy scripture in our nation—although I doubt that very many of us can cite from memory more than just portion of the second sentence of our nation’s Declaration of Independence.  The first sentence sets the stage…

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

The second sentence opens with the most familiar words…

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;”

But it doesn’t end there.  Two more things are held to be self-evident…

“[1] …that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;
[2] that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Note that this independence is not absolute, nor is it an individual matter.  A people as a whole come together and declare not their independence, but their interdependence as well as their dependence upon a government instituted by the people to secure their rights, their safety, and their happiness.  No one stands alone and independent all by himself or herself.  And all of this is dependent upon a Higher Power—identified in the Declaration first as nature’s God and then as our creator.  It’s not and never has been about “doing anything you darn well please.”

In light of this, how appropriate it is today for us to gather here to celebrate a “Declaration of Dependence.”  For that is what baptism is.  When someone is baptized (and when we remember our own baptisms), the central question is one of dependence.  Who do we depend upon?  We’re asked:  Do we turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as our Lord and Savior?  We answer Yes (or someone answers for us, and hopefully we affirm this later).  And so we declare our dependence upon the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.  At the baptismal font, we invoke specific names for our Higher Power, names more personal than “Nature’s God”—the names Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  Paul says that when we address God as “Abba” or “Papa,” it is the Holy Spirit letting our spirits know that we are children of God.  The writer of 1 John says this demonstrates just how much God loves us.

It has been said that there are three primary questions that are put to all little children the world over—three questions that initiate our journey of identity and follow us throughout life.  We are asked them again and again.  [1] What’s your name?  [2] Where do you live?  [3] What will you be when you grow up?

That first question—What’s your name?—is answered in the sacrament of baptism.  Perhaps you’ve noted how last names aren’t used in the formula spoken in the moment of baptism.  This morning Carrie’s aunt said, “Carrie Mae Boozer, child of the covenant… I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”  She didn’t use Carrie’s last name, “Legg.”  There is a theological reason for this—namely, the understanding that in baptism we acknowledge our place in the much larger family of God.  We are God’s children.  One of the Apostle Paul’s terms for this is the “spirit of adoption.”  In a sense, we acquire a new last name in baptism, a new family name—the name “Christian.”  What’s your name?  The answer for all of us who are baptized is… Christian.

The second question… where do we live?  The presence of the Lord’s Table here in the church points to the answer.  This is not an altar where we come to give things to God.  Rather it is a dinner table where we come to be fed.  In receiving the common elements of food and drink, we enact our ongoing dependence upon God as we live here in God’s creation.  We sometimes use spiritual and otherworldly language—speaking of the bread of life and the cup of salvation, or of the body and blood of Christ.  But this is a recurring meal of real food.  The oven-baked loaf of bread and the pitcher of juice squeezed from sun-ripened grapes remind us that God came into this very world, incarnate in the person of Jesus.  And each meal reminds us that God continually, day by day in each and every new day, meets our needs here in this world where we live.

And the final question… what will we be when we grow up?  It’s a mystery.  We use words like “resurrection” and “paradise,” but we don’t know what those are like.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul speaks of being raised as a “spiritual body,” in Romans of an “unbelivable inheritance.”  but he never describes these.  At one point he says, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”  Scripture’s answers are frustrating—but then I didn’t know as a kid what I’d be when I grew up.  At five I wanted to be a fireman.  Then for a long time I was sure I’d be a scientist.  I never in a million years dreamed I’d be a pastor.

Whatever we will be when we “grow up,” for now we know we are God’s children—named and known and cherished.  And wherever you are now in your life, Paul says to you (reading from The Message), “The Spirit beckons.  There are things to do and places to go.  This resurrection life you received from God is not a timid, grave-tending life.  It’s adventurously expectant, greeting God with a childlike 'What’s next, Papa?'"

 

I’ll close with one of my favorite poems about this adventurously, expectant life we share as children of God — “Bike Ride with God” (author unknown)

When I first met Christ
It seemed as though life was rather like a bike ride, 
But it was a tandem bike,
And I noticed that Christ
Was in the back helping me pedal. 

I don’t know just when it was that
He suggested we change places,  
But life has not been the same since.

When I had control, I knew the way,
It was rather boring, but predictable...
It was the shortest distance between two points.

But when He took the lead, 
He knew delightful long cuts, 
Up mountains, and through rocky places, 
At breakneck speeds,
It was all I could do to hang on!
Even though it looked like madness,
He said, “Pedal.”

I worried and was anxious and asked,
“Where are you taking me?”
He laughed and didn’t answer,
And I started to learn to trust.

I forgot my boring life
And entered into the adventure.
And when I’d say, “I’m scared,”
He’d lean back and touch my hand.

He took me to people with gifts that I needed—
Gifts of healing, acceptance, and joy.
He said, “Give the gifts away;
They’re extra baggage, too much weight.”

So I did, I gave them to the people we met,
And I found that in giving I received,
And still our burden was light.

I did not trust Him, at first, in control of my life.
I thought He’d wreck it;
but He knows bike secrets,
knows how to make it bend to take sharp corners,
knows how to jump to clear high rocks,
knows how to fly to shorten scary passages.

And I am learning to shut up
and pedal in the strangest places,
and I’m beginning to enjoy the view
and the cool breeze on my face
with my delightful, constant companion, Jesus Christ.

And when I’m sure I just can’t do anymore,
He just smiles and says...
“Pedal!”

Amen and amen.