The Spirit of Adoption (Romans 8:12-17)

At first glace we might wonder why these two different spirits are being compared, since they seem so obviously different. We "juxtapose" things because they have enough similarities that we need them side-by-side to see the differences. But a spirit of slavery or a spirit of fear does not seem at all close to a spirit of adoption.

Fear is an emotion and a response to a perceived threat. It may be that the threat proves to be something harmless, like the shadowy shape in the dark room that's actually a chair with a coat thrown on top of it. Or it may be a genuine threat and the fear is a good response for survival -- in spite of what Yoda says, sometimes fear is beneficial for us.

Adoption, on the other hand, is the way something or someone is brought into an already-existing group. The most common picture of it for us is the legal process that a family uses to bring in a child who was born to other parents, but we also use it to talk about how we might begin a new practice or accept a new idea.

I think Paul may be comparing them here in the context of obedience. Obedience out of fear of the consequences of disobedience is the most basic level, the one we learn as kids when we don't really understand the concepts. I'm told not to touch the stove because it's hot, I touch it, I get burned and now I obey when I'm told not to touch something hot.

But obedience from fear is not ideal. For one, there can come a point when the consequences of disobedience seem less of a burden than continuing to obey. This is the thought behind revolutions and rebellions: If we defy authority, bad things may happen. But we can no longer continue to live under this authority, whatever it is. And so the threat the authority makes no longer has power, and a man will stand in front of a column of tanks and make them stop.

And from the point of view of those kept in check by fear, there is no peace in that way of living. We may have a list of rules we have to follow in order to make sure we stay in line, but what happens when we run into something the rules don't cover? If we act, we may act the wrong way and suffer the consequences. A faith life based in fear offers no peace and no rest either. We worry that God is just waiting for us to take one step wrong so he can get his Zeus on and thunderbolt us to oblivion.

This way of thinking makes obedience the prerequisite for a relationship with God, and yet when we read the gospel and what Paul says about it we see pretty clearly spelled out that we can never "obey our way" into the kingdom of God.

A spirit of adoption, though, brings a whole new dimension to our understanding of obedience and even a whole new level of power to help us live as God asks us to live. With this spirit, the Godly life comes as a show of praise and thanksgiving to the one who saved and healed us of the consequences of our sin. Obedience itself is a consequence of God's actions in our lives and a desire to live according to our new family and community. In the same way that a child adopted when he or she is older has to unlearn old family systems and learn new ones, we now want to unlearn our old ways of life in exchange for God's ways.

We have become a part of a new family and we want to make sure that there is a strong family resemblance.

Amid the Thorns (Matthew 13:18-23)

One of the conventional lessons from this parable involves identifying what kind of people we are in response to the good news of the gospel. Are we the hard-packed path that ignores it, the stony soil with no depth to let it take root, the patch of thorny plants that never lets it fully grow or the good soil that receives and nurtures it?

Once we consider it a little more deeply, of course, we can realize that we match all those kinds of soil at different times in our lives. Even once a relationship with Jesus begins, we might still resist the full life-changing implications of the gospel in favor of familiar ways of seeing things and carrying on with our lives. And we realize that different areas of our lives might be different kinds of soil at the same time. Perhaps my heart has become fertile ground for the message of seeing everyone as a child of God, as my brother or sister. But I've yet to deepen it and clear it of hidden obstacles when it comes to how I view finances and money. I am not fully willing to trust my future to God and I insist on keeping the reins of this part of my life. In that area, any progress I make in following Jesus doesn't last long because am too ready to revert to old ways of doing and seeing things.

I don't know if you've thought of the parable in this way, but each of these kinds of soil can represent a stage of spiritual maturity or growth in our relationship with Jesus. The more we mature, the more the seed of the gospel can take root and grow in us. We exchange being the hard-packed path of ground shaped by the world's impact on us for the fertile soil that produces many times over. Our trust grows as our experience teaches us that following Jesus leads to the best life we can live in every area, and we are more and more open to receive the seed of the good news.

One of the reasons I think of the different soils as representing maturity is that each of them allows a greater growth of the seed once planted -- it gets closer to maturity. It doesn't even start to grow on the path and it doesn't do much beyond getting started in the stony soil. It does grow among the thorns, but it never produces fruit. Finally, the seed in the fertile soil completes its life cycle and brings forth grain. We sometimes overlook that part of that life cycle, since our goal for a plant is that it make grain or something else we can eat. We focus on the production, but the plant is actually designed for reproduction. The "yielding in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." is the goal, but not, from the plant's point of view, so we can have more grain to make our bread. In fact, a farmer might sell the lower-yield grain or grind it for food but keep the high-yield to plant next year and increase his crop.

The goal of the good news is similar: to be reproduced in the lives of others when we share it with them as it was shared with us. We join the great Sower in his work. Not in the sense that we measure how many people come to Jesus because we share the gospel with them, counting a hundred, sixty or thirty or some other number. Rather, the flourishing and flowering of the good news in our hearts and lives can become the seed scattered to another, and we hope and pray that when it comes to them it meets the good fertile soil so it can take root and begin to transform them as well.

(We also might give some thought as to how the Holy Spirit might use us to till and soften the soil in the lives of those around us, but that's probably best left to another sermon).

Because our goal is maturing in the faith and allowing it to reproduce in and beyond our own lives, I personally think that the ground with the thorny plants presents the greatest problem for us. I noticed something the last time I read this passage. As Jesus explains what happens to the good news among the thorny plants he never says that the plants which grow up die. He just says they yield nothing. They never mature and complete their full cycle, but they aren't snatched away like the seed on the path and they don't wither like the seed in stony soil. They grow just enough to be there, and then they stop.

A similar circumstance in our faith is, I think, a recipe for a very hard life journey. We might say it's like facing in the right direction but never taking a step. Yes, we needed to turn from our previous path because it was leading us away from God and away from the lives to which God called us. Stopping was not enough -- we were headed the wrong way and facing the wrong way even though we stand still isn't going to get us on the right path.

But facing the right way and standing still is little better. The good news of the gospel never produces fruit in our lives. We say the words of Scripture but they are not planted in us. We bow our heads and close our eyes but we open neither our ears or our hearts. We praise and we give but we do not reach up to our Savior or down to those in need. We've let the gospel take root but we let the cares and concerns of the world have just as much of our soul's soil as they ever did and so that which grows up in us doesn't seem to matter to us any more than do they.

We may not be the thorny plants. But we look just like them, so who would ever notice?

Deeds of Power (Mark 6:1-13)

One of the most interesting sentences in this story happens just before halfway, after Mark describes the Nazarenes' dismissal of their former neighbor as being anything special. Apparently, had Nathanel asked them the question he asks Philip in John 1:46 -- "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" -- their answer would have been, "Nope, not really."

Because of this response, Mark tells us, Jesus "could do no deed of power there, other than he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them." I've sometimes heard this explained as Jesus refusing to do any deeds of power or miracles in Nazareth, punishing the Nazarenes for their dismissal. Of course that's possible, but the text says "could do no deed," meaning to me that Jesus was not able to do such a deed of power or miracle.

That idea surprises us, given that we know Jesus is like his Father and all-powerful. What in the world could actually prevent him from doing deeds of power?

According to one viewpoint, the Nazarenes' unbelief itself limited Jesus' ability to work miracles. Their unbelief was somehow stronger than his power. I can understand why folks might approach it that way but it seems a little more like a comic book situation than a description of the power of God. Like Superman robbed of his powers by the rays of a red sun, we see Jesus -- who almost certainly had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men -- robbed of his ability to work miracles.

And this way of thinking doesn't seem to hold anyplace else that Jesus encounters unbelief and does some deed of power anyway. Nobody at Lazarus' tomb thought he could do anything to help his late friend. Even the dead man's sister Martha, one of Jesus' friends, demurred at the idea of opening the tomb, suggesting it would be unpleasant -- as the King James version puts it, "Lord, by this time he stinketh." And yet Jesus called Lazarus forth from his tomb alive. Jesus' own resurrection happened in the face of unbelief. Not just from those who mocked him while he was on the cross, but from his own followers. For all of the times that he had told them he would die and be raised, for all of the metaphors he had used about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, for all of the times he had explained to them what being the Messiah meant, Easter morning still saw them hiding in the upper room instead of out among the people telling them, "Oh, get ready, he's coming! Today's the day! You all are gonna see something amazing!"

The only limits on Jesus' power come from Jesus' own choice. He could with the symbolic snap of his fingers convert each and every human being into a committed follower who would never sin again. But that would mean he had no followers who loved him, just puppets and robots who obeyed their programming, so he has limited his power. I just don't see how the unbelief of a group of Nazarenes could accomplish what no other force in the universe could manage.

As I reflect on the many places where we see Jesus heal people, which is something that he apparently was able to do in Nazareth, we see multiple methods, lessons, occasions and so on. But there is a common factor in almost all of them -- the people being healed either come to Jesus or are brought to him, or they ask for that healing. The woman with the issue of blood comes to him knowing that just touching his robe will be enough. The paralytic's friends chop a hole in a roof to lower him into Jesus' presence. The centurion sends messengers to ask for the healing of his servant. The blind beggar at Jericho calls out for the son of David to have mercy on him. The man at the pool of Bethesda finally agreed that yes, he would like to be made well. Whether on their own or with the help of friends, these people all come to Jesus.

What if Jesus only healed a few people at Nazareth because they were the only people who came to him seeking it? What if they were the only people faithful enough or desperate enough or otherwise moved to give him a shot? Why would they have been so? Why would they be the only ones who thought he might heal them?

Because everyone else already made up their minds that Jesus was nothing special and there was no point to seeking him out. They had already decided they knew everything that they needed to know about Jesus, like his family and his history among them and so forth, and there wasn't anything else to know worth knowing. Certainly nothing supernatural.

Now, you and I and other Christians of the 21st century don't know Jesus the way the first century Nazarenes did, but we can still be guilty of deciding we already know who Jesus is and thus limiting what he will do. Perhaps we key on the overwhelming love of others, the kindness and mercy Jesus shows throughout the gospels, especially for those the rest of the world seems prone to forget. But we ignore the clear promise of judgment and the call to repentance it demands. Or we hold those things up as the "real Jesus" and ignore the love, mercy and kindness. Either way we insist that Jesus is this way but not that way, so he won't do that. Turns out that often, he won't, but the limits aren't on his end, they're on ours.

And because the limits are on our end, Jesus will complete his whole work and accomplish his entire glorious purpose. He won't skip anything he intends to do or leave one bit of it out. It'll happen without us. And that doesn't sound like very good news at all.