{"id":1183,"date":"2020-11-01T07:22:48","date_gmt":"2020-11-01T12:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1183"},"modified":"2020-11-01T07:22:53","modified_gmt":"2020-11-01T12:22:53","slug":"all-my-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2020\/11\/01\/all-my-children\/","title":{"rendered":"All My Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Sermon for the First Congregational Church of Albany, NY<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Rev. James Eaton, Pastor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

All Saints Sunday \u2022 November 1, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

1 John 3:1-3<\/a> \u2022 Matthew <\/a>2<\/a>3:1-12<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

All My Children<\/em> was a long running soap opera; before you ask me about Susan Lucci or her character, let me say that I really know nothing about the TV show. Last week, we thought about how to relate to God and remembered what Jesus said: \u201cLove God with all your heart and mind and soul.\u201d I was still hearing that in my head and thought, \u201cBut how does God see us?\u201d That phrase\u2014all my children\u2014immediately leaped to mind. So I looked it up and found this summary of the show by Agnes Nixon, its originator<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rich and the Poor, The Weak and the Strong,
In Sickness and in Health, In Joy and Sorrow,
In Tragedy and Triumph.<\/p>https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/All_My_Children<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I thought that summed up how God sees us: we see all our various conditions, our poverty, our riches, our styles, our failures, successes, problems, hopes, fears; God sees all God\u2019s children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is how scripture says it in the first letter of John:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.<\/p>1 John 3:1<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Roman society, the culture in which this letter was written had the relationship of children and father at its center. Roman fathers were not just emotionally powerful in families as they are today, they were empowered by the law to govern the family.. Adoption legally as well as emotionally brought someone into the family and was common. So John is invoking the most powerful structure he knows to describe how God sees us: as a father sees children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not a bounded, limited circle; others can be adopted in and the Apostle Paul makes that point. After a long discussion of the place of Abraham and Sarah\u2019s descendants as children of promise, he says, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 1<\/sup>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, \u201cAbba! Father!\u201d i<\/sup>t is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.<\/p>Romans 8:14-16 – http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=471232722<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

See how once again he describes us as children of God. \u2018Abba\u2019 is not simply a word for \u2018father\u201d it\u2019s an intimate term. It\u2019s the word Jesus uses in what we call the Lord\u2019s Prayer and it\u2019s the words he uses on the cross. It is less \u2018father\u2019 and more \u201cdaddy\u2019, less general and more loving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now there are some things that flow from this. The first one is that no one ever goes away. Parents know how this works. When kids grow up, we see that but we also see the child, we remember the child. I drive May to work mornings when she goes to her office. I\u2019ve been doing it off and on since she was in high school. She picks the music and when Fall Out Boy<\/em> comes on or Panic at the Disco<\/em> or God help me Wake me up when September ends<\/em> plays, I remember those days. I have\u2014or had!\u2014brown hair and brown eyes. So did my mother, father, and my brother Allan. Six years later, my brother David came along. He didn\u2019t look like us; he had blue eyes and light colored hair. Everyone commented on how different he looked until my dad\u2019s mother saw him. She took one look and said, \u201cOh my, little Elmer!\u201d Elmer was my Dad\u2019s older brother. She remembered her child and saw him continued in my brother. Scripture tells us God is ageless and changeless, so like a parent, no one goes away to God, not ever. There\u2019s all there, just like Uncle Elmer was there for my grandmother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a second group God sees that we often forget: those who aren\u2019t here yet. This is the thing all growing churches know. Growing churches constantly plan for people who aren\u2019t here yet, people God will bring here. So they work on welcoming, they treat each visitor as someone special, sent for a purpose they can\u2019t wait to understand. They don\u2019t get bound up in brass chains. Do you know about these? Brass chains are when we let honoring the past hobble the future. It\u2019s the point in the joke about how many Congregationalists it takes to change a light bulb. Change a light bulb? No way: my grandfather gave that light bulb. We  make room for those not here yet s parents and grandparents. When we bought a house in Michigan, my daughter Amy and my son in law Nick had two children with a third on the way; Bridget was born a month or so after we got there.But even before Bridget appeared, Jacquelyn picked out a house with room for all and a crib for her. She saw the ones who weren\u2019t there yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So God\u2019s children includes those who aren\u2019t present here any more; they\u2019re still present to God. God\u2019s children includes those who aren\u2019t present here yet; they\u2019re still present to God. I know you\u2019ve noticed I left someone out.: those of us here now\u2014 that\u2019s us! What about us? We\u2019re children of God too, and God has in mind a way for us to be present to each other just as we\u2019re present to God. Now if you have siblings like I do, I know a secret: that sometimes you\u2019ve wondered or hoped your mom or dad liked you best. But if you ask a parent, they will always tell you the same thing: \u201cI love all my children equally.\u201d It\u2019s the same with God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why Jesus gives the instructions we read in Matthew to his followers, to us. He lives in a rigidly hierarchical society. That means everyone is part of a pyramid. The emperor and kings are at the top, then there are officials, rulers, rich people and so on down the line to the peasants, which is what he is, and finally, the servants and slaves. In Jerusalem, there are religious authorities, called scribes and priests, who are high, there are Pharisees who are high and when you are high up on the pyramid you show it by, as he says, sitting in the high seats, making rules for others, having the place of honor at banquets. But to us, to all his followers, he says instead,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all students. And call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father–the one in heaven. Nor are you to be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Messiah. The greatest among you will be your servant. All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted. The greatest among you will be your servant.\u00a0 <\/p>Matthew 23:8-11 http:\/\/bible.oremus.org\/?ql=471233063<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

What he clearly has in mind is a radical equality among his followers. You demonstrate devotion to Jesus by serving others, not by having servants. It\u2019s the image of a family gathered in love, equally sharing burdens and joys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s be honest: we haven\u2019t always done this. Congregationalists started out with radical equality as a principle. They got rid of bishops, they functioned in Plymouth without a minister for decades. But we\u2019ve back slid. In the United Church of Christ, we have Conference Ministers. We hear leaders in church talk about being in control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But my mother in law, Marilyn Welling, had the right idea. She had five children. There were divorces and separations and remarriages and births and the family grew and grew. Some of them have never met; some aren\u2019t that fun to be around. But to Marilyn, they were all family. She had a whole wall of pictures to remind her. Anne Lamott talks about this kind of wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition. But I like that, when who we are shows. Everything is usually so masked or perfumed or disguised in the world, and it\u2019s so touching when you get to see something real and human. I think that\u2019s why most of us stay close to our families, son matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or ill\u2014because when people have been you at your worst, you don\u2019t have to put on the mask so much. And that gives us license to try on that radical hat of liberation. <\/p>Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, p. 215<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The radical hat of liberation is just what Jesus came to give, it\u2019s why he wore the crown of thorns, it\u2019s the purpose of the cross: to set us free from the high places and low places to be children together, children of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now along with children of God, there\u2019s another word for all of us. In the original language of the Bible, it\u2019s often translated \u2018elect\u2019 and it means chosen. But it also is translated \u2018Saints\u2019. So this is who we are, God\u2019s children, all the saints. You, me: those who came before, those who are coming later, all of us here now, all the saints. This is how God sees us: all my children, equally loved, equally called, whether past, future or present. \u201cSee what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

God’s view of us: all my children<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[101,109,3,2,69],"tags":[275,172],"class_list":["post-1183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-after-pentecost","category-matthew","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-a","tag-all-saints","tag-love"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}