Sunday, May 19th, 2013
Trinity Anglican Church, Bradford, ON
The Rev. Daniel F. Graves
Text: Romans 8:14-17
“For all who are led
by the Spirit are children of God.”
Romans 8:14
If we are to truly comprehend the great mystery that is
Pentecost, we must not simply rest in hearing once again the story of the Holy
Spirit falling on the disciples of Jesus that first Christian Pentecost. As important as it is to meditate on the
event that was Pentecost for the Apostles, it is even more important for us to
meditate on our own Pentecost, on our own experience of the Holy Spirit, and what
we are given in the Pentecost of our faith.
If the story of tongues of fire
and the sudden understanding of foreign languages seems foreign to our
experience, then ought we not to probe more fully into the activity of the Spirit
of God in our own lives to truly comprehend what the gift of the Holy Spirit
might mean? In fact, this is precisely
what St. Paul does in these four short verses in the eighth chapter of his
epistle to the Romans.
St. Paul begins with these words, “for all who are led by
the Spirit of God are children of God.”
This is a powerful assertion of who we are in Christ. In Christ, through the action of the Holy
Spirit, we become God’s children. I am a
child of God. You are a child of God.
What makes this so? It is the
Holy Spirit of God. The English
translation, though, makes the Spirit sound somewhat passive. When Paul speaks of the Spirit of God leading
us, it sounds as though the Spirit is passing by and we choose to join in, to
follow along. Yet, when Paul speaks of
being led by the Spirit, this might be more properly understood as being driven
by the Spirit, moved by the Spirit. This
sounds much more akin to that first Pentecost when the Spirit falls upon the
early Christians and they begin to uncontrollably utter strange tongues. The Spirit is not a gentle breeze that blows
by, but a wind that rages through, or flame that burns passionately. The Spirit is anything but passive, it does
not simply burn, but blazes; it does not simply blow, but rather rushes like a
gale-force wind. All of this is to say
that Spirit comes to us with great power, a power to awaken us, to enliven us,
to move us in a different direction, to change us.
And this is precisely, according to Paul, what the Spirit does. When we are led, nay driven! by the Holy
Spirit, our very identity changes. The
Spirit that falls upon us, burns within us, rushes through us, is not a spirit
that subjects us once again to slavery, or even to a new slavery, but delivers
us once and for all from all slavery, bringing us into a new-found freedom as
children of God. Slavery is what we knew
before Christ; being a child of God is what we know in Christ.
Pentecost is the answer to one of the great questions that
is begged by the Christ event, namely “how does the Incarnation of God in Jesus
Christ, his passion, his resurrection, and his ascension do anything for me?” How does what happens to Jesus affect me? It
is an interesting question. When we say “Jesus
died for my sins,” or “Jesus rose from the dead and gave me new life,” what are
we saying, and how do those actions of Jesus transfer to me? What difference
does God becoming human make for me? How
does the death of Jesus on the cross take away my sins? How is it that I am to receive the benefits
of his passion? How does his resurrection give me new life? What is it that connects Jesus with me and me
with Jesus?
It is the Holy Spirit.
Consider for a moment the story of St. Mary the virgin. How
does God enter into humanity? How does
God, who is above and beyond all creation, become a part of creation? How does God take human flesh? It is through
the agency of the Holy Spirit who falls upon her that humanity is joined to
divinity in unconfused perfection. In
her womb, the Holy Spirit knits together humanity and divinity. Through the
Spirit of God, God comes to us, as one of us, that our humanity might be joined
to his divinity. Without the Holy
Spirit, Jesus is merely a man. With the
Holy Spirit, he is the Word of God, the Logos, bringing God’s redemption not
only to the race of humanity, but to the entire cosmos. It is through the work of the Spirit that God
is with us.
But more than God being with us, we are brought into the
life of God in a new and startling way.
Where once we were slaves to sin, where once we relied solely on the
flawed works of our own flesh, where once death meant despair, in the new
reality of Pentecost, we become part of God’s family, freed from the slavery of
sin, relieved of working out our salvation on our own merit, delivered from the
fear of death, all because we are children of the living God.
The Holy Spirit joins us to Christ in a new and profound
way. His sonship becomes ours
sonship. Where he is a child of God by
the power of the Spirit, so too, do we become children of God. We are no longer captives to the Spirit of
slavery, no longer simple retainers in the household or even hired hands, but
members of the family.
And this is why Jesus taught us to pray, “Our Father, who
art in heaven.” This is the one prayer
that Jesus taught us and it begins with our bold proclamation of the new
reality we find when we are joined with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. It boldly proclaims that God is our
father. We do not pray to him as “our
master,” but as “our father.” This is
how Jesus taught us to pray, and he taught us to pray thus because when we are
in Christ Jesus. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are God’s sons and
daughters. This is why St. Paul says, “when we cry ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that
very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” You see, the Holy Spirit leads, or perhaps
more poignantly, drives our spirit in that bold proclamation that God is our
father, that we are his children. When
under our own power we would dare not make that claim, and in our own weakness
perhaps we cannot claim it, the Holy Spirit gives us the grace and strength to
own it with all our being.
And that is why, St. Paul continues, “if children, then
heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” Being an heir is a vastly different thing
than being a slave. We do not assume our
role as heir on our own though. When we
are once in slavery, it is near impossible to find ourselves free again. It is near impossible for a slave to earn
their way out of slavery, nor is it ever likely that a slave will have the
means to buy themselves out of slavery.
If we are slaves we must rely on the grace of another. That other is none other than Jesus, the true
Son of God, who through the working of the Holy Spirit joins us for a moment in
our slavery that we might for all time find freedom as sons and daughters of
God. Through the Holy Spirit he joins us
in the slavery of our humanity, that we me might join him in the freedom of his
sonship. This is what St. Paul means
when he talks about us suffering with Christ that we might also be glorified
with him. He is with us in the depths, that
we might be raised with him in the family of God, not only as sons and
daughters, but as joint heirs. We are
not even second- or third-born children who might be passed by, but like Jesus,
we are first born and privy to all the glory that that privilege brings. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ
brings us into the family of God not in
some partial or imperfect way, but in glorious excellence and marvellous
egalitarian love. Christ share his
firstborn life with us, every one of us, when we are led and moved by the
Spirit.
This is the deeper meaning of Pentecost in our lives, that
the work of Christ is not some objective work of God that we gaze upon from a
distance, but a work that transforms our very identity from being slaves to
sin, and striving, and death, to deliverance, to freedom and life. And that work of God in Christ is made the
work that transforms us, by the power of the Holy Spirit placing Christ in us
that we might dwell evermore in him.
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