On Being Children of God

An excerpt from “Anna’s Song” from An Outback Christmas (Words by Norman Habel):

Lift this child to the sun, raise this child to the sky;
God has come from above, come to earth from on high.

Lay this child on the ground, one with us, one with earth;
let God know in his Son, human clay, human birth.

Place this child in the shade, hang this child ‘neath the tree;
with his hand on the wood, may this child set us free.

Give this child to the world, let him be common folk;
God has come to be born as an ordin’ry bloke.

Lift this child to the night, to the silence of God;
let this child cry for us, and the silence be heard.

Well, it’s time to present Jesus to the world in the Gospel of Luke. The baby is taken to the temple, circumcised, named and heralded by two old prophets who are also there that day. As Kim Jong-un was paraded before the North Korean public and declared "supreme leader of party and army and people", heir to his father’s, Kim Jong-il’s authority; so Jesus is, in a sense, paraded before the people and especially the religious establishment as the heir—the heir of God’s promises of redemption to the people; the inheritor of God’s pledge to the people of Israel for them to be a light to the nations; the beneficiary of the hope in which Israel has lived for so long. Luke metaphorically lifts the baby Jesus up and presents him to his hearers: “Here he is. This is the One! The heir, the promised one of Israel! Jeshuah-Joshua-Jesus—Yahweh is our salvation! The one God is our redeemer! And this is God’s Son!”

But this son is a poor one—not rich and powerful or carefully groomed over a lifetime. This heir has doubts about his legitimacy hanging over his head; and his parents can only afford the offering for his presentation allowed of the poor. They offer birds rather than a sheep. “Here he is. This is the One! The heir, the promised one of Israel?!”

The moment is bitter sweet, as are the songs of Anna and Simeon—a child destined for great things; a child given for salvation—but a salvation which will expose all that needs saving to the open. Give this child… to the world!

Most inheritances of any value don’t come cheap. I wonder what the 28-year old Kim Jong-un thinks about his inheritance. Would he prefer to be focussing on finding his own niche in his society; or having the freedom to travel the world; or simply being another anonymous citizen? What regrets might a Lachlan Murdoch have about the legacy which is his?

I’ve managed to watch several episodes of Country House Rescued on the ABC recently. The children who stand to inherit those large English country estates have huge expectations, debts, problems and dilemmas facing them. Most inheritances of any value don’t come cheap.

And the inheritance for which Jesus is proclaimed as heir is an even more ambiguous one. The promises of this legacy are the fulfilment of hopes unrequited; the culmination of the final salvation of the people; the intangible, immaterial things for which we humans yearn so strongly and fail to know how to achieve so dramatically. And as we all know, where there are grand hopes, there are grand and competing expectations; and where there are grand and competing expectations, there is so much room for misunderstanding, miscalculation, misinterpretation and outright disappointment. Most inheritances of any value don’t come cheap.

“Here he is. This is the One! The heir, the promised one of Israel! Jeshuah-Joshua-Jesus—Yahweh is our salvation! The one God is our redeemer! And this is God’s Son!”

Here is God’s sacrificial lamb paraded before the people. The family cannot afford a sheep for his presentation; but there is no need for one—the sacrifice is the child himself! Give this child to the world!

The moment is bitter-sweet; and yet in this moment, we are meant to find our salvation, our redemption, our liberation. In this moment, we are urged to submit our hopes, our yearnings, our desires to the possibility that we might be set free. Here in this moment, way before we get to the cross—way before we know just what it means for God to submit himself to his Creation, we are asked to understand what the value of this inheritance really means. Give this child to the world!

And that brings us to our text from Galatians, where Paul is trying to unpack what Christ’s inheritance means for us. Paul writes:

My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; 2but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. 3So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world. 4But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. 6And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ 7So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God. (NRSV)

Paul is begging us to let the baby Jesus grow up—to let God’s heir be God’s heir; and as a consequence to grow up as the heirs of God ourselves—co-heirs with God’s son, Jesus. This is our freedom. This is our salvation. This is our liberation. And this is our sacrifice. That we will allow ourselves to be utterly enfolded in God’s will.

According to Paul, God submits himself to his Creation. God’s Son submits himself to the religious Law in order that we, the people, might be freed from the Law—not because the Law has not been important or because we are not called to live ethical lives; but because really inheriting what God promises us means that the Law will be unnecessary because we will know and love and do the will of God without it.

New Testament scholar, Bill Loader puts it this way:

Paul [is] … convinced that the implications of God's action in Christ is that [the] … requirements [of the Law] are set aside and that now what matters is faith in Christ and living out that faith and only that… the Spirit [working within us] will … more than fulfil any legitimate demands contained in the law...

Paul assumes that when people enter into a relationship such as he describes, that of a grown up son to a father, then there is a oneness which generates continuity between what the father wants and what the son wants. It is a first century ideal of family life. [The heir inherits everything that is the ancestor’s in all its fullness.] Applied as an image to Christian living, Paul [argues] … that the Spirit generates God's life in and through the believer and it will show. By contrast, to perpetuate submission to the Law, even though it was given by God and is in the Bible, is to perpetuate a form of slavery which—and here he is quite daring—is not much better than serving other gods! [http://wwwstaff.murdoch.edu.au/~loader/BEpChristmas1.htm]

For Paul, the life, death and resurrection of Christ offers a relationship with God that was hitherto impossible—the relationship of fully adult heirs, co-heirs with Christ.

For Robert Hamerton-Kelly (Sacred Violence pp. 77-81 as interpreted in http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/xmas1b.htm), the passage from Galatians is saying that:

Christ came to redeem us, to win us back from Satan's power that we might come to live under God's grace as children. Christ redeems us to become children of God. To do so Christ submits to the curse of living under the law, thus becoming a willing victim to its sacrificial mechanisms. Rather than the idea of taking the punishment of God's wrath for us, Christ reveals to us our own wrath and its violence, that we might live by God's true power, which is love, not wrath.

Here, there are echoes of Simeon’s words: “the inner thoughts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:35). God’s submission to the world God created exposes our lack of submission to God.

This truly is a great Christmas season text… it … express[es] all the basics of the incarnation, of why it is that "God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law." … because Jesus could fulfill his mission as Son of God, that same Spirit of Sonship is given to our hearts that we might also truly become children of God, freed from the slavery of sin. http://girardianlectionary.net/year_b/xmas1b.htm

“Here we are. We are the Ones! The heirs, the promised ones of God! Fully redeemed, fully alive, fully liberated—Yahweh is our salvation! The one God is our redeemer! And we are God’s children!”

Go then to take up your inheritance!