Sunday Homily - July 26, 2020 - Parental Love

Christ and the Little Children Icon

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 3:5-12

Psalm 119:129-136

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

I.

Being a parent is an everyday adventure,

 isn't it?

For you who are parents

 or who have been the parental figures for someone,

  your children are an exercise in the absolute spontaneity and irrationality

   that is our shared human existence.

In their baby and toddler stages,

 they can do almost nothing without our help,

  and yet they also seem to be magnetically drawn to do dangerous things!

Trust me, I didn't have to teach my daughter to decide 

 that she could safely climb up on the kitchen counter

  and get herself her own cereal bowl in the morning. 

   She very resourcefully got her own step stool from her bathroom,

    drug it into the kitchen,

     and was up in the cabinet before I knew what was going on!

Likewise,

 I didn't have to teach my son to climb on the couch,

  only to decide that he could probably hop right back off onto the floor

   with no issues.

    Ah, but with the mystical future sight that comes with caring for children,

     we foresaw this very thing,

      and spread all of the couch pillows in front of the "landing zone"

       into which my son happily sailed right off the couch

        and plopped with a far softer landing than could have been the case.

For those of you caring for your children through adolescence,

 they are learning emotional well-being in a far more concentrated time

  than they ever have before!

One day they love you,

 the next they hate you.

  And undoubtedly, you have learned to ride the ebbs and flows of the difficulty

   that all of us go through at that awkward stage of our life that we call our teenage years.

Post-high school is also a fascinating time,

 as your "little ones" aren't very little anymore, are they?

They, more than ever, are learning to be independent,

 supporting themselves,

  working jobs, paying bills.

   They fall down and get back up,

    just in more adult ways. 

     

Instead of a scraped knee falling off a bike,

 it might be a sudden layoff from work,

  a difficult relationship with roommates or coworkers,

   or coming to a realization that they aren't finding fulfillment in what they do. 

But, the point friends, is that most of us know almost intuitively

 that whoever our kids turn out to be,

  they are still our kids.

   They never stop being your kids,

     and you never stop loving them,

      even in spite of the hardest and rockiest relationships.

And if it is this way with us,

 who are human and fail constantly at loving each other,

  don't you think it is even more so with God?

II.

There is a hugely popular conception of God

 especially in the U.S.,

  that all God is is an angry father that is looking for an excuse to punish his sinful children.

Now, to be fair, this is most definitely a misconception,

 where even the most strict Christians in the world

  still have to confess that the grace and love of God is greater than all brokenness that we see.

But, even the way that we represent what the Holy Scriptures say about God

 and what we choose to emphasize and what to ignore

  leads to certain images of God by outside observers 

   that we do not mean to convey.

This might be controversial for me to say in some circles,

 but one of the ways that we as Christians may have misrepresented God

  is in the popular theory of atonement called penal substitutionary atonement.

The popular association with this theory is the following:

 God creates humanity.

   Humanity rebels against God by sinning.

    God, who is angry with humanity and should rightly condemn humanity to death

     instead punishes his Son and puts him to death on a cross in our stead,

      so that atonement can be made between God and humanity. 

While understood properly, this theory of atonement certainly has things to teach us,

 we also need to be very careful about the dangers of this imagery.

  What kinds of images does this unintentionally bring up?

A Father who kills his Son because he is angry. 

 A God who is angry with humanity because they are sinful. 

  A bloody sacrifice that had to be made to make God not angry anymore. 

All three of those things are most definitely NOT what the entirety of Holy Scripture

 attests to in the Christian tradition of theology. 

And, in fact, we get a really good and hopefully clarifying passage about this confusion

 in the book of Romans this morning in chapter 8.

Notice the immensely strong love that God has for us this morning.

"The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;

we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

III.

God, Our Father in Heaven,

 is the best parent that we could ask for. 

Because we are loved by ALL of the Triune God

 that has been revealed to us through Christ Jesus

  and indwells us by the Holy Spirit. 

How does God love us?

Well, God knows that we would be lost without him,

 just like we would be lost without those people in our lives

  who have cared for us every step of the way,

   from when we were children all the way until now. 

That's why God the Holy Spirit helps us pray.

 God deeply desires relationship with you,

  and God won't let our imperfections and brokenness

   be a barrier that gets in the way of his divine love for us. 

God also knows us. 

 He made us,

  he cares for us,

   he gives us our daily bread.

But the most clear way that God demonstrates his love for us

 is that God came to us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

  Jesus Christ, the creator of the universe,

   became human, just like us,

    and gave himself up for us on a cross

     to demonstrate that absolutely nothing,

      not even attempting to reject and kill God himself

       is enough to overcome God's relentless love for us.

In fact, because of this very fact, 

 St. Paul says quite eloquently:

  "If God is for us, who can be against us?

   ...Who will condemn us?

    ...Who will separate us from the love of Christ?"

    [Nothing!]  

For I am convinced that neither death, 

 nor life, 

 nor angels, 

  nor rulers, 

   nor things present, 

    nor things to come, 

     nor powers, 

      nor height, 

       nor depth, 

        nor anything else in all creation, 

        will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Just like parents never stop loving their children,

 in spite of every factor imaginable,

  it is even more true of God's love for us, his children. 

God's costly love is given freely to us in Christ Jesus.

So that, in the style of St. Paul,

 we can be fully convinced that there is nothing that can separate us from the Love of Christ.

We are convinced that neither hurt feelings,

 nor sins committed in the past,

  nor theological differenced,

   nor political party,

    nor the Coronavirus,

     nor the evils of the world,

      nor anything we can ever imagine,

       will keep us from the love of the God who made us and loves us as his children,

        our blessed God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.