Text: Romans 8:14-17
Theme: "The Adoption Agency"
The
Day of Pentecost
May
19, 2013
FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Denton,
Texas
Rev.
Paul R. Dunklau
+In
the Name of Jesus+
14 For
those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God.
15 The Spirit you received does not make you
slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought
about your adoption to sonship.[f]
And by him we cry, “Abba,[g]
Father.” 16 The
Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17 Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God
and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we
may also share in his glory.
Grace
and peace to you this day in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen. My dear fellow believers in Christ, to you
the friends and members of First Presbyterian Church, to our baptismal
candidate Alex Rodriguez, and to all within range of my voice: long ago, when our Lord and Master Jesus
Christ walked this earth, He made a promise.
He would send His Holy Spirit.
Today, so many years later, we celebrate that He kept His promise and
observe the birthday of that which we confess in our creed: "the holy catholic church". On the first Day of Pentecost -- ten days
after Christ ascended into heaven and fifty days after He rose bodily from the
grave (Pentecost literally means "fifty days"), the Holy Spirit was
poured out with a mighty rush of wind and with tongues of fire. The timing was perfect, for it was God's time. It was no coincidence that it happened in Jerusalem,
where, on that day, people from all over the known world were in town.
This
was not a localized, "community calendar" event that gets only a
short paragraph buried on page twelve in
the front section of the newspaper. The
Day of Pentecost had massive ramifications, quite literally, for the future of
the world. It is news that keeps on
making news -- good news! Pentecost does not mean that a new religion
was formed with the usual set of rules and regulations and prescriptions that
people would spend their lives trying to conform to. Quite to the contrary, it was a new way of
life characterized by faith toward God and love toward the neighbor.
Faith
in God is not a good idea. It is not a
timid suggestion offered in an attempt to be helpful. It is not another principle -- religious,
spiritual, or otherwise -- in a world already filled with enough principles
that we're choking on them. Faith, when
you get right down to it, is a gift!
"By grace are you saved through faith," says our Lord's
apostle, "and this is not of yourselves.
It is the gift of God; it is not of works lest anyone should
boast."
I'm
not a child of God today because I gave my heart to Jesus. I'm a child of God because Jesus gave His
heart for me. I'm not a child of God
today because I made a decision; I'm a child of God because God, in Jesus
Christ, made a decision for me. I'm not
a child of God because I live a good, upright, and moral life. God knows that the record is spotty at best and
a disaster at worst. I'm a child of God
because Jesus Christ, my brother and friend, lived the perfect life for
me. I'm not a child of God because I
read the Bible; I'm a child of God because Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of
God, embodied the Bible for me. He died the death that paid the price for my
sin. He rose from the grave, bodily, to
assure me that when my heart stops beating, my lungs stop breathing, and my
brain waves stop registering, I'm starting to head home to the place God has
prepared for me. What a blessing! What a way to live! What a message!
I've
witnessed people -- myself included -- fussing and fuming about why the church
won't grow, why more and more people (statistically, at least) are turned off
by Christianity. In fact, I know people
who are leaning much harder toward atheism and agnosticism -- and some of them
tell me why. They say that all the
church is interested in is my money, or my sexual orientation, or my views on
abortion or gay marriage, or how I vote.
They see the church as an institution that asks and sometimes demands
that people to live up to some code that they can never possibly keep. They see the church as an assembly of
closed-minded bigots and racists and homophobes. They think that it's the church's mission to
pick the moral "speck" out of their neighbor's eye while ignoring the
log in their own. And you know
what? In some respects, they're right. In some respects, the church is its own worst
enemy.
But
not when it proclaims the message of the Gospel. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul stated
that Gospel like this: "All have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his
grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." Jesus Himself said: "For God so loved the world that He gave
His only-begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have
everlasting life." "I'm not
ashamed of the Gospel," said St. Paul.
"It is the power (literally, the "dynamite") of God unto
salvation."
That
message of good news, that Gospel, is proclaimed and you hear it. "Faith
comes from what is heard, and what is heard is the preaching of
Christ." It is sacramentally
enacted, in Baptism and in the Lord's Supper, and you receive it. It is the message that brings light into this
dark world. It is the message that lifts
up the downtrodden to heights heretofore unknown. It is the message that touches people,
changes people, empowers people, makes people come alive.
And
it is all through the power of the Holy Spirit.
One
chapter of the Bible that is worth memorizing from the first verse to the last
is Romans chapter eight. There is so
much gospel packed into that chapter, so much good news, that it's almost
impossible to take it all in. It
begins: "There is therefore now no
condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Have you come to faith in Jesus Christ? Have you been baptized? There is no condemnation for you. Once that sinks in, you're not going
"Oh, goody-goody, lucky me!"
No, my friend, you're asking "How can I share this message with
someone else? How can I best live for
this Lord Jesus who loved me and gave Himself for me?"
Then
you get to our text that I read before the sermon began. Focus on just this one segment: "The Spirit you received brought about
your adoption to sonship." What
does that mean? Let me put it to you
this way: You are an adopted child, an
adopted son or daughter of a loving heavenly Father. The adoption agency, if you will, that God
used was His own Holy Spirit. "The
Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."
In
1892, in eastern Nebraska, a group of Christians purchased a large home in the
community of Fremont. It became the
Lutheran orphanage and children's home.
It was there to take care of children who lost their parents or children
whose parents couldn't take care of them.
Now Eastern Nebraska has as lot of farmland. Many of the small congregations are literally
out in the country on gravel roads, on county roads. Once or twice a year, those congregations --
made up mostly of farm families -- would load up the wagons with grain and with
provisions and head to the Lutheran orphanage.
There would be a festival for the orphans. The children that lived at the home would
join with the farmers and their families.
The cupboards and the pantries of the home would be stocked with the
provisions the farm families brought.
There would be much feasting and celebrating that day along with an
outdoor worship service.
After
about seventy years, that orphanage became a social service agency. In 1992, on the hundred year anniversary of
that orphanage (the centennial), they re-enacted the old Orphan Festival. People, including farmers, brought food and
gifts. They had a big picnic and outdoor
worship service. As it turns out, it was the largest crowd of people -- over
two thousand people -- that I ever gave a sermon before. Why did I preach that day? I was asked because I was child of that
orphanage and agency. In 1960, the year
of my birth, my parents adopted me from that agency.
If
I were to cook dinner on the Feast of Pentecost (and I just might do this someday),
I'd prepare some Lentil soup. There's a
recipe for Lentil soup, you see, that
came from that orphanage, and they served it to the children every Sunday
evening. Throughout all the years in
good times and in bad; through a world war, a great depression, and a second
world war, those children could count on something no matter what: they'd get their soup -- lovingly prepared by
children of God who cared for them.
We
have so much to celebrate today. Thank
God for the Holy Spirit in Alex Rodriguez's life. What a privilege it is to witness the baptism
of this gifted young woman and, yes, incredible tennis player. Thank God for the work of His Spirit in the
Presbyterian Women's organization that installs officers today. Thank God for the Holy Spirit who blessed the
lives of our high school and college graduates. Thank God for the Holy Spirit,
God's own adoption agency, that has made us all children of our heavenly Father!
Let
us pray:
Holy
Spirit hear us on this sacred day;
Come
to us with blessing, come with us to stay.
Spirit
of adoption, make us overflow
with
Your manifold blessing and in grace to grow.
Amen.
