Children
I John 3:1-7
Click here for the video: Children
A few years ago, researchers at the University of Notre Dame released the results of a survey they had done of the Milky Way- the galaxy, not the candy bar. Now the Milky Way, as you might expect of a galaxy, is pretty enormous so it wasn’t a comprehensive survey. But they were looking at a particular spot and they detected what appeared to be planets. That’s not so surprising. When you look up into the night sky you expect to see a variety of stars and planets. What caught the researchers by surprise, though, was that the planets they found did not appear to be orbiting any star, which is generally what we expect of planets. That’s our experience at least. In fact without an orbit around our resident star, a.k.a the “Sun,” there would be no life as we have come to know it. Instead, they spotted planets that were simply adrift in space. And we’re not talking small, dwarf wannabe planets like Pluto, but large Jupiter-sized planets. Based on the sample size of their survey, the researchers went so far as to suggest that there may be as many as one or two of these exoplanets for every star in the galaxy. They’re sometimes called orphan planets, on their own, adrift in space, disconnected from any kind of solar system.
It’s astronomy, but it doesn’t sound all that different from 21st century American life. For thousands of years human beings have survived, thrived and grown into great civilizations through our ability to come together, make common cause and work for the benefit of one another as well as ourselves. It’s a habit that Biologist E.O. Wilson suggests is hard-wired into our brains. And the way it typically manifests itself is through the seeking out of like-minded friends.
We gravitate toward and want to find our tribe. There’s that word, gravitate. Our natural inclination is to find others who are most like we are- or most like how we want to see ourselves- and to stick with them. We find a shared trait, an ultimate value, an identifying mark around which we find our orbit and then arrange ourselves into a solar system of sorts. For centuries it was the family name, or our particular ethnic group. Nowadays it’s just as likely to be the sports teams that we root for, or the political party that we support, the school we went to, or a particular cause that’s important to us.
And that’s all well and good, I suppose. It is what it is, as they say. But there can be a dark side to that too. Because when we arrange ourselves into these clans and tribes, the tendency is to quickly decide that our particular group is the superior one, we’re number one! We develop a prejudice against whoever is in the ‘out’ group and see them as our opponents and rivals who are less likable, less fair, less trustworthy or less competent than the people in our group. History is littered with the dead bodies of those who have fallen victim to the call to arms against whatever group we think- either rightly, or wrongly- threatens our existence.
And that pattern continues in the words we choose, the attitudes we adopt, the stereotypes we perpetuate. The best way to rally public support is still done by appealing to our willingness to engage in deadly combat- a war on this, a battle against that.
But for all the tribes that are out there, for all the groups that would have us pledge our loyalty to their cause, there are people who find themselves adrift. There are those souls who have either been rejected by their tribe, or who find themselves without a center of gravity.
Then we hear this invitation from 1 John, “See what love God has given us, that we should be called children of God.” Because that is what we are, before we are anything else. Before we are white, black, or any other color of the rainbow; before we are Americans or some other nationality, documented or undocumented, Republican, Democrat, liberal or conservative; before we are Lobos or Aggies, the 1% or the 99, members of the country club or a motorcycle gang, Presbyterian, Catholic or Orthodox. Before and above anything else that might draw us into its orbit- we are claimed first and foremost as God’s own children. And that’s a very specific image. We are not claimed as mere friends, or associates, or members of the club. We aren’t subscribers, or customers, or clients. We are children, meaning that our relationship to God is more than voluntary, it’s a family relationship. God’s love for us doesn’t claim us as long as we toe the line, or keep up our dues, or for that matter as long as we feel like it. This isn’t a decision that we make any more than we decide to be born. It isn’t something that we can take or leave as long as it’s convenient and fits into our schedule.
In the birth of Jesus Christ, in his life, his teaching and the signs of his power; in his compassion, and passion, his death and burial; and in his resurrection, his triumph over the very tribal impulses in us that put to death anyone we view as a threat, God has very deliberately laid claim to the human project and declared that each and every one of us belong, first and foremost, to God. Each and every one of us are members of God’s family. No one is left out. Everyone is invited in. Everyone has a seat at the family table. And Jesus is the one who shows us that, the one who shows us what that means.
It means that we are no longer bound by the story of domination that would have us judge people outside our tribe as inferior, or a threat. It means that we are set free from such thinking because in Christ, God has given us to one another, as family to each other- brothers and sisters in the household of God. This is what we are now, already. We are God’s children.
I was sitting around with some folks one night when a mom in the group told us how her five-year-old son had to write simple sentences each week in Kindergarten for homework. Well it turns out that the one night, completely unprompted, he wrote, “I am a child of God.” Five years old. “I am a child of God.” Some people don’t know that at 25, or 55, or 95. Smart people, successful people, people in positions of authority. They don’t know what this five year old knew, instinctively.
When I heard that I thought, this must be what Jesus was talking about when he said that to enter in the kingdom, to enter into what God is doing all around us every day, to enter into the powerful presence of God in the here and now requires the heart of a child- regardless of our age.
In Zen Buddhism, it’s what’s known as the beginner’s mind. The beginner is open to possibilities in a way that we lose as we become adult experts of all the things we think we know with such certainty. When that happens, perhaps the first possibility that closes off is the suggestion that we might be loved for no better reason than we are. Completely and steadfastly. Because we are children of God.
And Jesus says that we are most truly ourselves, most truly children of God, when bridge the chasms of enmity that so often exist between all these different tribes and loyalties that would be our sole center of gravity. We are blessed, we discover happiness, in making peace between all the factions that would have us square off against each other. Blessed are the peacemakers, he says, for they shall be called children of God.
“Beloved,” says the writer of this letter, “we are God’s children now.” Not later, not when we’ve hit the mark, earned our reward, worked our way to the top and become experts in the field. “We are God’s children now,” today, in this very instant. But that is not all.
The letter goes on, “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” and with those words we understand that coming to the conclusion that we are children of God is not the end of faith.
Understanding who we are as God’s own children is only the beginning of who God is calling us to be. The truth is that God loves us where God finds us, and claims us as God’s own children, period. No exceptions, no substitutions. But if this season of Easter teaches us anything, if the resurrection of Jesus from the dead means anything, it means that God loves us far too much to leave us where God finds us. God loves us far too much to leave humanity in a grave of our own making. We are always and forever children of God, but what we will be is even more.
As we look to Jesus, as we follow him and learn from him and trust in him, what we will be is like him. That’s our hope anyway. Our hope is that someday we will be people who learn not only to say, “I am a child of God,” but also, “and so are you.”