Day: July 21, 2024

“We are children of God”

Our readings set before us, it seems, a series of binary opposites: in the Epistle, flesh versus Spirit, servitude versus sonship, suffering versus glorification, and in the Gospel, prophets outwardly “in sheep’s clothing” but “inwardly ravening wolves,” good fruit versus evil fruit, a good tree versus a corrupt tree, saying versus doing. But are we simply left with a series of binaries, caught in the back and forth, the to and fro of division and opposition? What would be the good in all of that?

We are being tasked with thinking through these binaries to grasp an underlying sense of spiritual integrity and wholeness, to who we are in God, and, as the Collect suggests, under the Providence of God. This transcends the binaries and oppositions though without negating them. The Epistle is emphatic that we have “received a spirit of sonship” that frees us from slavery and fear. “We cry aloud, Abba, Father; the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit, that we are children of God,” and “fellow-heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified with him.” Such is the greater vision and vocation of our humanity in the midst of the turmoils of our souls and our world.

Some of you will recognise this reading from Romans as one of the lessons provided for the Burial of the Dead in our corporate parish life. It speaks directly to us as mourners in the face of death highlighting the awareness of our own mortality yet reminding us of our life in God through the sufferings of Christ. In other words, it recalls us to our sonship as the children of God not in a flight from the world and the flesh but through our redemption and freedom in Christ.

This belongs to the radical meaning of the doctrine of the Incarnation, to the reality of the Word made flesh who is Christ Crucified, and to its meaning for us in the pilgrimage of our lives as eloquently expressed in the Eucharistic Prayer. Almighty God, our heavenly Father, gave his “only Son Jesus Christ to take our nature upon him, and to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption.”

(more…)

Print this entry