A Child of God (June 8, Pentecost)

Readings, Acts 2:1-21 and Romans 8:14-17, 26-27
Image, Roman Barabakh (Ukrainian, 1990–), Descent of the Holy Spirit, 2017. 
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Much is to be made of the external propulsion of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The scene is dramatically public. The domesticity in which the story begins is blown open by a force of eternity pouring out on flesh. The day begins with the disciples in a house, perhaps in prayer or enjoying a meal, and then suddenly – what a word – suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind.
 
Naturally, a crowd gathers. Perhaps one of the few universals is that if there’s a spectacle we’re going to idle on by (we slow to this day to glimpse a car crash or house being demolished). Here a crowd gathers, but not only because of a general curiosity in spectacle, but because they hear a bunch of Galileans speaking in myriad tongues. A crowd from across the region remark: how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 
 
As I said, dramatically public. The external reality and impact of the coming of the Holy Spirit then as now is central to the Day of Pentecost. It is with the Spirit that the disciples can now follow Jesus’ command to be his witnesses in all the earth. It is with the Spirit that the gospel is now able to be proclaimed in all tongues, to find soil in all cultures. It is with the Spirit that the church can be filled with divine power to continue Christ’s work in the world. It is with the Spirit that we can become the body of Christ through the giving and receiving of the Spirit’s gifts. It is with the Spirit that we can bear the good fruit of the kingdom. All of these dimensions of the Spirit’s life in the church point to the truth that the Church is a body that is sent. That the church’s concern is not simply its own life, but the world which Christ loved and for which he lay down his life. The Spirit makes us a public-facing people, called do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.
 
All this is rightly marked and celebrated at Pentecost. But Paul reminds us today, that there is an inner dimension of the Spirit’s animating life, a pastoral dynamic of the Spirit’s mission.
The Spirit we have received, Paul remarks, is not one which provokes us to fear, but is a spirit of adoption. When we pray, our Father, as we do each week, it is the Spirit making this possible. In these words (offered not only in our weekly corporate prayer but any time you call on the name of God in hope) the Spirit bears witness with our spirit about the most important thing about us. The Spirit bears witness with our own to that most beautiful, most soul affirming truth: we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The Spirit weaves us into the family of God. Waltzing with our own spirit, joining voice in song, we and the Spirit cry, Abba! Father! and it is so. We become who we have been made to be: children of God, co-heirs with Christ. 
 
But such a truth can be difficult to swallow. It can be hard to see ourselves as part of such a family, to say of ourselves: I am a child of God. We might well be able to say it of almost anyone else, but of ourselves surely it can’t be true. There are all kinds of reasons we might harbour these misgivings. Perhaps our experience of crying out to an earthly father or mother was not met with the kind of care and attention for the analogy to hold much water. Perhaps the prejudices of society have communicated that we were not fearfully and wonderfully made but lesser, aberrant, ugly. Perhaps our struggles and affections were cast as beyond the interest or acceptance of God. Perhaps the circumstances and sorrows of our life have led you to feel far more alone than adopted. Perhaps other names you have been named, spoken in authoritative tones, have made a deeper imprint on your identity than the name child of God. None of these are easy to shake, they cannot simply be waved away or quickly overwritten. It is tragic. What’s the old line, a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has finished tying its shoelaces. The truth that we are children of God can be a slow truth to learn, and it can suffer setbacks. But for this reason we have the Spirit. Because when we do not know how to pray as we ought, when we do not feel able or ready to cry out Abba! Father! like children of God, it is the Spirit who helps us in our weakness. It is the Spirit who intercedes with sighs too deep for words, so that even if we cannot see ourselves as a child of God and co-heir with Christ, God does.      
 
Over the past month and a bit, various members of our community have shared songs or hymns that have shaped and sustained their faith. I have my own today to accompany this message. Julien Baker, a singer-songwriter from Tennessee wrote Rejoice in 2015, she was twenty at the time. The song, like much of her catalogue, wrestles with her experience of addiction, the death of friends, and the negative animosity toward her sexuality she experienced in her church. Despite the raw openness with which she gives voice to these wounds, woes, and wrongs, the song searches for and proclaims a ruddy hope. As she sings,
Give me everything good, I'll throw it away
I wish I could quit, but I can't stand the shakes
Choking smoke, singing your praise
But I think there's a God and He hears either way
I rejoice and complain
I never know what to say
 
Like the psalmist who sings, Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice! Baker proclaims in the face of her mistreatment at the hands of the church, in the face of her own mistakes, in the face of her frailty: I think there’s a God and They hear either way.* This is the Spirit bearing witness, that even when we do not know how to pray, even when we do not know there is someone to pray to, the Spirit groans and God hears either way. 
 
And because of this spirit of adoption, Baker is able to sing my favourite line: Lift my voice that I was made. I was made. There is perhaps no more important foundation on which to build a life. You were made. Fearfully and lovingly made. Who you are is not a mistake. Against the forces of sin and death which would say that some people are not made, are not children of God, that some people must hide, apologise, or assimilate some fundamental part of themselves, Baker lifts her voice against these forces to bear witness with the Spirit that she is a child of God. 
 
At the close of the song, Baker proclaims that the God who hears her, knows her name and all her hideous mistakes. But at this point she does not fall back into fear. For she has not been given a spirit of slavery to fall back into the bounds of earthly prejudice or limitation, but a spirit of adoption to say that she is heard, and if heard made, and if made, then a child of God. A child who, despite and amid the complaint, doubt, failure, and rage, might still sing, defiant and holy:
I rejoice, I rejoice
I rejoice, I rejoice 
 
((At this point in the sermon we listened to the song))
 
This Pentecost, may the Spirit lend voice to your rejoicing and complaining.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit comfort you with the truth that you are heard even when you have no words.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit remind you that you were made.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit bear witness with your own that you are a child of God.
This Pentecost, may the Spirit be a place of freedom.
 
This inner place of truth and freedom beats back worldly falsity and fraud. And it is out of this depth of love and understanding that the work of proclaiming the good news in all corners of your heart and your world begins. Out of this well-spring of trust may you find fresh words and deeds to tell out the good news of God’s grace. With tongues sparked to life by the warming of our hearts, may we find those bound by earthly lies and herald good news: where the Spirit is there is the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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* In more contemporary performances of the song, Baker changes the Divine pronoun as reflected here.