Children of the Promise

Scripture: Galatians 4-5

If you want to learn how to think like a theologian then you must study the sayings of the greatest abstract thinker of our time. I refer, of course, to Hall of Fame baseball catcher Yogi Berra.

Yogi’s thought is not limited by the laws of time and space. So he observed that “The future ain’t what it used to be” and advised “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Nor is his thought constrained by the principles of mathematics. So he noted that “90% of [baseball] is half mental” and once instructed his teammates to “Pair up in threes.”

Occasionally, the concept of human mortality appears to place some parameters around his thinking. This explains his statement: “Steve McQueen looks good in this movie. He must have made it before he died.” But, in general, even death itself poses no serious challenge to Yogi’s reasoning. Hence, this suggestion: “Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t go to yours.”

Yogi understands a great deal about journeys of faith. Perhaps your own is described by Yogi’s trenchant comment “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.” In any event, it is absolutely clear that Yogi has the soul of a theologian. After all, it was Yogi Berra who once answered a reporter’s inquiry by saying “I wish I had an answer to that, because I’m tired of answering that question.” I’m confident that every theologian has, at one time or other, entertained just that thought.

In reading Paul’s letters, I have been struck by how often he had to answer one particular question. He had to answer it over and over again, and I wonder if he ever wearied of doing so. The question comes in different forms. But, at bottom, it always asks the same thing: “Who’s in and who’s out?”

Paul takes on this question again in the fourth chapter of his letter to the Galatians. Paul had personally founded the Galatian church, which was overwhelmingly made up of converts from Celtic paganism. It appears that, after Paul’s departure, some missionaries suggested to the Galatians that their conversion was incomplete and inauthentic because they had not accepted circumcision and other requirements of Jewish law.

This worried the Galatians, who apparently wondered whether their conversion had somehow missed the mark. From our perspective, this might seem rather amusing. We may grant that faith is not a matter of credentials while also acknowledging that conversion under the direction of the apostle Paul is a pretty good credential indeed. In any event, Paul wrote to address their concerns.

Now, there are many striking things about Paul’s answer. For example, in the course of responding Paul alludes to the parallel Hebrew Bible stories of Isaac and Ishmael and says “Now, this is an allegory.” It is a remarkable statement, really. Think about it: here we have Paul interpreting a Bible story and arguing for an allegorical and poetic—rather than a literal—understanding of what it means.

But, in my view the most arresting aspect of Paul’s answer lies in his description of our relationship with God. Paul points to two qualities of that relationship: he talks about its continuity; and he characterizes the relationship as an adoption. There is a lot going on here, so I want to look at these two themes separately. And then I want to talk about how those two themes, particularly when joined together, can comfort, inspire, and challenge us.

Let’s start here: the continuity Paul describes follows necessarily from God’s unchanging nature. Our God, Paul suggests, is a God of Promises—and has shown himself to be so since at least the time of Abraham. In the fourth chapter, Paul describes a foundational promise of freedom that God bestowed upon Abraham and Sarah and their son, Isaac. Paul declares that we, too, are promised and called to a life of freedom. He says: “You, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac.”

Of course, this has implications in both directions. Granted, ours is a God of Promises. But ours is a God who expects us to be a People of Promises as well.

So Paul warns that we must not take the freedom God promises us as an opportunity for self-indulgence. Rather, he urges, we must use that freedom to pledge ourselves to God, to the love of our fellow human beings, and to a life of service. If we accept God’s promises, without making any promises in return, we fall into the trap that Dietrich Bonhoeffer brilliantly describes as “cheap grace”—the grace we bestow upon ourselves and that costs us nothing.

It matters greatly to Paul that God has consistently exhibited this quality—that our God is and always has been a God of Promises. It should matter to us, too. It should matter because believing in a God who fundamentally changes—or, more specifically, believing that one kind of God ruled the Hebrew people and another kind of God rules Christians—can lead us into all sorts of problems.

Still, we can and do fall into this sort of thinking. So, perhaps you’ve heard someone say something like this: “The God of the Old Testament is a God of justice, judgment, and anger; but the God of the New Testament is a God of forgiveness, mercy, and love.” Maybe you’ve even said it yourself. Now, reasonable people can disagree about many matters of faith and biblical interpretation. But I’d like to suggest to you that such statements are much more wrong than right—and may even be dangerously wrong.

First, such statements deny a continuity of faith that Jesus himself acknowledged and embraced. Jesus was an observant Jew who taught in the Temple while still a youth, honored Passover, and quoted from the Hebrew Bible. He declared that he had come not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

Jesus teaches us many things about new ways to understand what God wants from us and to think about our relationship with God. And for us Jesus's death and resurrection are defining moments in our relationship with God. But Jesus certainly never declares that God fundamentally changed, that the Hebrew Bible became irrelevant, and that the God who loves justice and who passes judgment became defunct and disappeared and so now we can all breathe a little easier.

Second, such statements deny the reality of the texts. Granted, if you go looking for justice, judgment, and anger in the Old Testament and for forgiveness, grace, and love in the New Testament you’ll certainly find them. But it isn’t that simple.

In fact, the Hebrew Bible includes numerous passages in which God exhibits forgiveness, mercy, and love. Consider how God loved David, despite his conspicuous foibles. Consider how God forgave and embraced Jacob, the troublemaker who misled his father and tricked his brother out of his birthright. Consider how the Psalmist described the God he worshipped just as we describe the God we worship: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

By the same token, the New Testament includes numerous passages in which divine justice, judgment, and anger are put on full display. Jesus turns over the tables of the moneychangers in the Temple, and we cannot believe he does so in a warm and fuzzy way. He shows anger toward the Pharisees who refuse to answer his questions. He repeatedly refers to a time of judgment. Indeed, some theologians, like Albert Schweitzer, have maintained that this idea of divine and final judgment had a central place in Jesus’ preaching.

Now, why does all this matter? Well, it matters because harboring illusions about the Hebrew Bible encourages us to harbor illusions about the Jewish faith and our Jewish brothers and sisters. Throughout history, such illusions have fed one of the greatest evils to bedevil our planet, the evil of anti-Semitism.

And this also matters because harboring illusions about our own scriptures can leave us with a God who does not qualify for the name. To use Richard Niebuhr’s sardonic, and sometimes misused, description, it can leave us with “a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.” We may, even if unconsciously, cling to such an image because we find it comforting. But let me ask you this: is there anything less comforting—and more frightening—than the idea of a God who is one thing one day and something fundamentally different the next? How could we place our love and trust in such a God?

Still, Paul recognizes that, while God does not change, our relationship with God can. And he describes those who come into a new relationship with God as God’s “adoptive” children. This idea of “adoption” has prompted a great deal of debate and deserves some exploring.

It turns out that we actually know very little about “adoption” in the ancient Near East. We know that the Mosaic Law did not address it. But we also know that it was fairly common. We know that the Hebrew Bible includes some instances of adoption—Moses was adopted by Pharoah’s daughter and Esther was adopted by her cousin Mordecai. But we also know that such scriptural references are rare and fleeting. Neither the text nor the history of the scriptures gives us much help in understanding why Paul would have used this word.

So we are left to speculate—and we have, for dozens of centuries. Indeed, this question has occupied some of the greatest theologians in history. Thus, St. Augustine argued that “Paul says ‘adoption’ so that we may clearly understand that the Son of God is unique. For we are [children] of God through [God’s] generosity and the condescension of [God’s] mercy, whereas [Jesus] is Son by nature, sharing the same divinity with his father.”

Augustine expresses his point with characteristic clarity and power. But maybe Paul uses the word “adoption” for other reasons as well. Maybe he uses it because it is dense with meaning and suggestion. Maybe he uses it because, in that single word, he could capture a multitude of ideas. Maybe he uses it because this is Paul at his poetic, allegorical best.

So consider these possibilities. We are “adopted” because God has a defining, active role in the relationship. God takes us in. Indeed, God takes us in even if no one else will. Thus, Psalm 27 says “If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up.”

We are “adopted” because we can come into a new relationship with God from anywhere, from any place, and from any past. As the first chapter of the Gospel of John suggests, we all have the opportunity to become the children of God.

And we are “adopted” because we are invited into a fundamentally different kind of relationship with God. It is not simply a relationship of obedience. It is a relationship of trust and love.
It is, as Paul perfectly expresses it, a relationship in which we can call the most awesome power in the universe “Abba,” “papa,” “beloved parent.”

Of course, like all allegories and metaphors this one is imperfect. For example, it does not account for the fact that God made all of us and so we are all the created children of God. But we know that allegories and metaphors work in this rough sort of way. When Bob Dylan sings that someone is "like a rolling stone" we appreciate that there are actually more ways in which they're not like a tumbing rock than ways in which they are. Still, the image of "adoption" is a powerful and useful one.

Jesus calls us to make, and honor, these same promises to all our brothers and sisters. This can challenge us and frustrate us and exhaust us. But it can also motivate us and inspire us. And, finally, it can save us.

So we keep at it. We try to make the promises and to keep them. We try to do what we say we will do. We labor long and hard to tend to the family. And in this work we do not, we must not, we cannot rest. For, to paraphrase the words of Robert Frost, we have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep, and miles to go before we sleep.

Amen.