Longing For Freedom

Romans 8:15-17

Diane and I have some friends who have been trying for years to get pregnant. Both of them have some medical factors that make conception very hard for them. They have taken different medicines to increase their chances. They have undergone medical procedures. They have prayed. They have hoped. And they have even cursed. They have known the joy of getting pregnant but then have had their hopes dashed when the pregnancy miscarried. These friends haven’t given up. But they know what it’s like to live with this constant longing for a biological child. Still, they continue to wait, hope, and pray. They long to have a child of their own.

We have some other friends who know a different type of longing. They can’t seem to get enough children! They’ve got a handful of biological children and recently they adopted a girl from South America to add to their mix. When they adopted this child, they had to go and spend several weeks in South America waiting for the process to run its course. Weeks of vacation were saved up so they could try and complete the adoption. It’s not uncommon for some under-the-table transactions to happen in these South American adoption proceedings and officials often wait for adopting couples to make, or up, their offers. These friends spent weeks in South America on edge because things could move ahead at any moment and they always had to be ready to spring into action to complete the adoption process. The whole time they were in South America, they were waiting, hoping, and praying. And once the adoption process was completed, they heard stories from their newly-adopted daughter of her own deeply-felt longing to be part of a family.

Both of these stories illustrate common desires: to have children and to be wanted by an adult in a parental role.

Paul writes to the church in Rome: ¹⁵ For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" ¹⁶ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ… (Romans 8:15-17 NRSV).

Paul is writing to a congregation living in a culture where unwanted children were routinely abandoned or sold into slavery. In some cases, poor parents might arrange for their children to be adopted in order to give them a better chance of receiving an inheritance. Under Roman law, adopted children had the same legal status and rights as biological children.[1] As difficult as it might seem to us, parents would sometimes relinquish rights to their children in order that the children, and in some cases so the rest of the family, might survive.

Is our world any different? Unfortunately, the world has not changed as much as we’d like to think it has in this regard. UNICEF estimates that in West and Central Africa, approximately 200,000 children are sold into slavery each year. This is not legalized adoption but the trafficking of human beings. Indian children are often kidnapped as young as five years old and are forced to weave on looms for food. In Pakistan, children serve as a type of human bond for landowners. In the Dominican Republic, children are driven into the sugarcane fields to work.[2] And even closer to home, the CIA estimates that 50,000 people each year are trafficked into or through the United States.[3]

Can you imagine what goes through a child’s mind as they are bought, sold, abused, and treated like a piece of property? For those who escape, do you think they’ll ever escape their own suspicions of those who want to genuinely love them?

And try and put yourself into the mind of God for a moment. What do you think God experiences and feels each time a child is bartered and traded for? Do you think there’s a sense of Divine longing to free that child, let him or her know unconditional love?

One of the most powerful images in Scripture is simply that we are God’s children. As God’s children, we are to know the freedom that is available to us through Jesus Christ. Yet, too often, we have mistakenly characterized our status as a child of God in negative ways. Who among us has not heard this response when asked, “Why are you a Christian?” People frequently respond, “I’m a Christian so that I won’t go to hell.” Is Christianity simply an avoidance of spiritual death? That sounds too much like someone saying, “Pick your poison!” as if faith in Jesus is the lesser of evils. Is that how you view your faith…the lesser of evils?

This is Memorial Day weekend. This weekend we are remembering and honoring those who fought, died, and served for our freedoms. Has American blood been shed on the beaches of France, the mountains of Korea, the jungles of Vietnam, the desolate regions of Afghanistan, and the streets of Iraq simply so that tyranny stays in someone else’s homeland? Do we fight simply to avoid having a mess in our own backyard? No! We join other nations in sacrifice so that all of humanity can hope for a life of true freedom! America sends its sons and daughters to other worlds so that more can escape bondage! You can call me an idealist, but I’m grateful to our veterans and remember their sacrifice because I believe it’s for the good of all humanity, not just those who live within our national borders.

Perhaps our mindset about being a Christian leans much too heavily in the direction of simply avoiding hell. Perhaps too many of us have suspicions like those who escape modern-day slavery – we’re suspicious of a God who has a genuine longing for us. Too many of us live as spiritual orphans – God surely can’t want me. Yet, Paul writes to the Romans, “…you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but 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.” This is not the language of avoidance but of freedom!

In Scripture, you won’t find any more intimate expression than the Aramaic, “Abba!” When Paul uses the “Abba” language in verse 15, he is using a family term. It’s the language of intimacy and trust.[4] Our English equivalent would be when a child says in the most intimate way possible, “Daddy!” It’s the language of longing when your child cries out at night after they’ve had a bad dream. It’s the shriek of joy in nonsense syllables when they see you coming home after work and they can’t wait to wrestle with you on the floor. Eugene Peterson says that our expressions of intimacy toward God, our Abba’s, contain the most basic expressions of our human condition.[5] It’s how we talk when we know we’re God’s children, when we know we’re wanted by God. It’s how we talk when we’re not suspicious of God and know we’re free in Christ.

Each week we say the Lord’s Prayer together as a part of our worship. You know how it begins don’t you. We start out saying, “Our Father…” When we do this, we should really be saying something like, “Daddy” because the beginning of this prayer is a call to intimacy with God. We are proclaiming that we are sons and daughters of God. We’re not simply addressing the Divine but we’re making a statement about our family. We’re in God’s family.

There are an estimated 120,000 children adopted in the US each year.[6] These children are grafted into new families. Perhaps there are people here today who would like to be adopted by God into the family of faith. God longs for you to be part of the family of God, to live as one free in Christ.

Amen.

[1] Elisabeth Ann Johnson, “Texts in Context: Waiting for Adoption: Reflections on Romans 8:12-25,” Word & World, Volume 22, Number 3, Summer 2002, p. 309.

[4] Luke Timothy Johnson, Reading Romans: A Literary and Theological Commentary (Macon, GA: Smyth & Helwys, 2001), p. 134.

[5] Eugene Peterson, “Theological Table-talk: First Language,” Theology Today, Volume 42, July 1985, p. 213.