A Spirit of Adoption

Summary

People put all sorts of things on Facebook, as those of you who are on it, know. People post everything from where they are eating lunch, to their opinion on the latest White House tweet, to photos of their feet on a beach with water stretching out to the horizon, to smiling faces at Disney World.
Some of it is interesting, a lot of it is not, but occasionally there will be a post that is downright impacting. I saw one of those this last week. It was a video of a man sitting on a couch with a boy of about eleven or twelve standing in front of him reading something to him. While the boy is reading, there is also script being flashed on the screen giving background to the situation.
What the viewer learns is that the man sitting on the couch is the boy, Tyler’s step-father. He came into Tyler’s life when he was one-and-a-half. We can hear Tyler saying to his step-dad, “When I was one-and-a-half years old, something happened to me. God sent a real dad to me. From the very first I knew who you were, you just didn’t know. You kept me when I was sick. You took me to my first day of school. You bought me my first bike and taught me how to ride it. You correct me when I am wrong, and pick me up when I am down. You give me more than what I need. I knew we were supposed to be father and son. People even say that I look like you. Dad I have been your child in love since before I can remember, but I want to be your son legally. Will you please adopt me?”
And the man, who has been sitting there listening, weeping, and pushing the tears from his eyes, immediately says, in a loud whisper, “Yes,” and opens his arms to receive his son, Tyler in a big bear hug.
How moving, and, how beautiful.
Adoption is a beautiful thing, and it always has been to me. My closest cousin is adopted, and has always been simply my cousin, he was always fully accepted. Good friends of ours adopted their daughter Emma when she was one, and the relationships of love that exist in their family are full and dear. To me, there is something extra special about a relationship that is chosen, and so, is full of the commitment that is needed to make love truly possible. In essence there is an extra spirit in adoption to make the chosen love possible and full.
In this morning’s reading from Romans, Paul writes, “…you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit
that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ…”
Did you catch that? Let me repeat the middle part again, “When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God…”
Paul is writing that when we finally cry, ‘Abba! Father!’, for ‘father’ is what ‘Abba’ means, it is then that our spirit finally recognizes within the Holy Spirit the reality of God’s fatherhood in our lives. It is not that it has just started, but rather, that we are finally recognizing something that has been there our whole lives long.
My cousin for instance, did not understand immediately that he had been chosen through adoption to be my aunt and uncle’s son, it was slowly revealed over the years. Or, dear Emma, who is from China and her parents are of European ethnicity, at some point awakened to the varying shades of skin in the family and asked, ‘Why?’
Or, Tyler, in the video who at some point learned that his, “Dad” was not his birth dad, but, as he put it, “I have been your child in love since before I can remember…” he wants to make his relationship with his dad official.
God has been walking with us from the very first. From the moment of our creation God has loved us. God has loved you…and me. When we had done nothing to deserve God’s love, or to earn God’s love, God loved us anyway. Think about it, when Jesus came to earth to show us for all time what love looks like, all of us in this room where centuries and centuries away from being. And yet, God knew that we also would need to know that we are loved still today in this crazy twenty-first century world. And so, Jesus came down, love came down to grace us, forgive us, save us, and love us no matter what.
As a way of understanding God’s love, and his adoption of us as his children let’s think back to the video.
Let me paraphrase what Tyler puts so well to his Dad, but when we listen this time, let us close our eyes and think of these words being ours to God. Again, I am switching it up a little, so listen again, with new ears.
We might say, “From the very first you knew who I was God, I just didn’t know you. You kept me when I was sick. You walked with me from my first day. You correct me when I am wrong, and pick me up when I am down. You give me more than what I need. You knew we were supposed to be father and child. People even say that I look like you. Abba, I have been your child in love since before I can remember, but I want to be your child forever. Will you please adopt me?”
And what does God say? God says, “I already have. You are mine, and I am yours. You are my heir, you are a child of God.”
We are God’s children, and we know this because God the Holy Spirit awakens in us the spirit of our adoption, that we may live fully aware of this reality. We want to live fully aware of our inheritance because it means everything.
When we know whose we are, meaning, we are God’s, then we can know who we are, and try to discover the wonderful person God has created us, created you…and me, to be.
You see, God has created us, and called us through the Holy Spirit into life in Jesus, so that we will can also be in relationship with each other and the world.
Part of being an heir of God is wanting exactly the opposite to happen in regards to who inherits the riches.
Sadly, here on earth when an inheritance is paid out, you selfishly want fewer heirs sharing the riches, don’t you? Let’s be honest here, on earth, the fewer the heirs, the greater the riches per heir, right? Right.
Yet, with God, as so often happens when relating to God, those calculations are turned on their head. In our relationship with God our Father, we want more heirs with whom to share the Kingdom. Why?
God is all about love, and God’s love, which is ultimately the richness of the Kingdom has no limits to it. So, no matter how many heirs are sharing the inheritance there will always be more to be had…to be received…to be lived in…to be shared, again and again.
A great image to explain this is from Romans five, in the second half of verse five. It reads, “God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”…“God has poured out his love into our hearts…”
Poured. What a wonderful word when it describes love, especially God’s love. The Apostle Paul does not describe this sharing with words like, measured,” “decanted,” or, rationed, but rather, poured. Paul might have been thinking of the image from Psalm twenty-three, “my cup runneth over.”
God does not do anything in half-measures, especially in regards to his love. Jesus came as a result of God’s love, so that there would be no mistaking to what extent God will go to give us his love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, so that whoever believes in him, shall not die, but have eternal life.”
To quote Tyler again, but this time in reference to God’s love, “You give me more than what I need.” God gives us his whole heart.
Amen.

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