The 8th Sunday After Trinity
THE EIGHTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY
The Rev’d Dcn. Jason VanBorssum, Homilist
Today’s Epistle and Gospel lessons reveal two theological themes which are pillars of the Christian life: regeneration and sanctification. As we have been studying over the past several weeks, the Didache and the earliest writings of the Church Fathers emphasize the regenerative power of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. From her very beginning, the Church understood Baptism both as necessary and efficacious; that is to say, that in Baptism, by the power of the Holy Spirit something actually happens. As Saint Augustine would explain in the 5th Century, Sacraments are “outward and visible signs of internal and invisible grace.” They are signs not merely symbols. Signs point beyond themselves to a greater reality, whereas symbols are merely avatars, like emojis. The Sacraments of the Church, given by Christ, are sure and certain means by which we receive Divine Grace. An orthodox Sacramental Theology is therefore not un-Biblical. Far from it! Regarding Holy Baptism specifically, the Apostolic Church has always taken the words of Our Lord in his dialogue with Nicodemus seriously and literally:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”
The phrase “born from above” can also rightly be translated from the original Greek as “born anew” or “born again.” This is regeneration, rebirth, being born anew through water, and the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Similarly, regarding orthodox Eucharistic Theology, we take very seriously and very literally the plain meaning of the words of Our Lord when He taught “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”
When exegeting Scripture, grasping the original context of both the author and the original readers/hearers – as best we can – is critically important. It is not mere “background” that we can skip over. In the case of Paul’s Epistles – and the Letter to the Romans is Paul’s most seminal theological treatise – the Apostle’s overarching theme is that the confession of God carries with it the unavoidable corollary that the One God is the God of Gentiles as well as Jews.
There is a growing recognition in Biblical scholarship that the Gospels and Paul’s letters are part and parcel of the religion of the people of Israel in the 1st Century. Although Paul’s theology was transformed by his mystical conversion experience and can be considered radical, it was nonetheless within the broad mainstream of 1st Century Judaic thought. We may speak of Paul as representing the more “inclusive” strand of Israelite heritage, though still not an over-simplified antithesis between Jewish “exclusiveness” and Christian “inclusiveness,” a notion that developed later. Remember that Paul, the inclusive Apostle who powerfully proclaimed universality in Christ also affirmed his own ethnic and tribal bona fides (Phil. 3:5). As such, Paul is a Jew participating in 1st Century Jewish debates about what constitutes real Jewishness, about the full and true understanding of being in covenant, and about what God is up to in history.
The broad literary context of Romans is correspondence addressed to nascent churches or “assemblies” (ekklesiai) of Gentile followers of Jesus in Rome. In the same way that the Church in Syria wrote the Didache, Paul’s purpose was to instruct these Gentiles – former pagans – how they should live as well as how they should interact with (and recognize that they were actually part of) the Jewish community. At the time of the Epistle’s writing (50s A.D.) there was tension between the mostly Gentile ekklesiai – six or seven in number – and the Israelite synagogai. Although Paul was the “Apostle to the Gentiles,” he never rejected his own ethnic identity. Paul considered the ekklesiai a subgroup of an ethnically- and geographically-expanded Israel and, therefore, an authentic and prophesied expression of the religion of the people of Israel. This sounds odd to modern Gentile Christian ears. But Paul saw his apostolic mission as part of the realization of the fullness of God’s plan for all humankind, revealed: “to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”
Paul instructs Gentile believers that although they were not subject to proselyte conversion (e.g., circumcision), they must understand that, in Christ, and through Holy Baptism, they were full members of the larger community of Israel, even though they had not become Jews. This nuanced but important perspective reveals Paul’s understanding of Messianism and Old Testament prophecy. In other words, Paul, like the author of the Didache, instructed Gentile Christ-followers to practice the “Jewish” way of communal living without being bound to “works of law.” By rejecting polytheistic paganism and idol worship, covenantal membership, in and through Christ, would bring about the redemption of all Israel.
As I noted, in Paul’s time “Christianity” did not exist in a formal, institutional sense. Instead, Christ-followers were still identifying themselves in terms based on a covenantal relationship with the One God who created a people from the descendants of Abraham. All who shared Paul’s commitment to Christ were addressed and discussed, in terms of ethnicity, as either Jews or Greek, that is Israelites or members from the “other nations.” They were identified as members of specific Jewish subgroups within the larger communities of the people of Israel, not as members of a new religion or something other than Judaism. Understanding the historical context, let’s unpack today’s Epistle from Romans 8.
So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh — for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 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, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ — if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
The Spirit testifies that we are God’s children (Rom. 8:16). Paul calls them God’s children. Adoption takes place in Baptism. Formerly pagan Gentiles were now in covenant with the One God. For Paul and all the Apostles, “belief” was not simply intellectual assent. It meant making a commitment to follow the Master. Being a disciple of Christ didn’t just mean that you assented to the principles He preached. It meant that you would live your life according to those principles. In the 1st Century, unlike today, the problem of nominal Christianity did not yet exist.
So, what does it mean to be a child of God? It seems to me that there are four things that being children of God means, all beginning with the letter “R.”
1. The first R is that we are in RELATIONSHIP with God. Paul says: “….[B]ut you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry “Abba, Father” (Rom. 8:15).
Abba is a Hebrew and Aramaic word that is quite intimate and can be translated “Dad” or “Daddy.” It is a term still used by families today. But it’s even more profound than that. “Abba” also means “Source,” or “First Principle.” Isn’t it amazing that as Christians we can call Almighty God, Dad? We are privileged with a special relationship with God, a Father–child relationship. Over time, the Church came to emphasize the transcendence of God the Father (this is the “Source” or “First Principle” understanding of the Majesty of Abba). By the late 20th Century, some traditions revised liturgies of the Church in order to emphasize the immanence or “present among us-here-and-nowness” of God, the “Daddy” Abba. Modern liturgical reforms hoped to refute any implications conveyed in corporate worship that God’s transcendence means that He is far off and distant. Many Christians do perceive God in this way. But of the Mystery of God is both His transcendence and His immanence. The One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth is, to use the Hebrew, Melekh ha-olam, King of the Universe. However, to quote Church Father St. John Chrysostom, we know, O God, that “You have promised through Your well-beloved Son, that when two or three are gathered together in Your Name, You will be in the midst of them.”
2. The second R is that we have a RANK in God’s kingdom. Our rank is that of being daughters and sons of God. In the ancient world, if a man adopted a person as his son or daughter, that adopted child had the same legal rights and status as a biological child. The analogy is the same for us. When we receive Christ, receiving the regeneration of Holy Baptism, we are adopted into God’s family, His household.
3. The third R is that we are RECIPIENTS of God’s Holy Spirit. Again, in John 3, Jesus explains this to Nicodemus quite plainly. As children of God we receive the Holy Spirit in our lives. St. Paul said: “And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you” (Rom. 8:11).
If you have your Prayer Book, please turn to page 280. Take a look at the Order for Holy Baptism, and read along with me:
We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Child (or this thy Servant) with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him/her for thine own Child, and to incorporate him/her into thy holy Church. And humbly we beseech thee to grant, that he/she, being dead unto sin, may live unto righteousness, and being buried with Christ in his death, may also be partaker of his resurrection; so that finally, with the residue of thy holy Church, he/she may be an inheritor of thine everlasting kingdom; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
4. The final R is RESPONSIBILITY. Paul tells us that we have an obligation to live according to the Spirit and not according to our sinful nature. “Therefore, brothers and sisters we have an obligation – but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature you will die, but (if you live) by the Spirit…you will live” (Rom 8:12-13).
Through Holy Baptism, we receive regeneration, rebirth. We do not become Christians by doing good works – we become Christians by God’s Grace and grow as members of the Body of Christ through faith in Christ’s atoning death on the Cross. This is why we celebrate the Eucharist and receive the spiritually healing, nourishing Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion every Lord’s Day. Having received regeneration by water and the Spirit through Holy Baptism, as Christians we grow in sanctification. Once we are adopted as God’s own children, we have the responsibility of doing the good works that Jesus teaches us to do. We know this from, among many other passages of Scripture, the Gospel appointed for today. Jesus said,
“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.
By God’s Grace, in and through Christ, we have been set apart. Regenerated and cleansed by the Holy Spirit in the waters of Baptism, we are called to grow more and more into the likeness of God by prayerfully, faithfully, obediently modeling our lives after Jesus Christ. This is what it means to grow in sanctification. Having been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, we actively participate in sanctification. We cooperate with God, we work together with and through the guidance and governance of the Holy Spirit, becoming – by Grace – more fully alive, thereby reflecting the Glory of God. As Our Lord taught, those who belong to Him will be known by their fruits. And the greatest of the fruits of the Spirit is love. “They’ll Know We Are Christians,” a worship song written in the 1960s – based on John 13 – puts it this way:
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;
We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;And we pray that all unity will one day be restored.
And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.
We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand;We will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand;
And together we'll spread the news that God is in our land.And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love.We will work with each other, we will work side by side;
We will work with each other, we will work side by side;
And we'll guard each man's dignity and save each man's pride.And they'll know we are Christians by our love, by our love,
Yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love. Amen.
