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June 7, 2009
Romans 8: 1-17Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
“Table Heirs”
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.”
You can name the movie as well as I can. So many movies to choose from, actually. It isn’t like there is only one to name. If not a movie, then a novel you have read. Who couldn’t name one; a movie, a novel, a play….where the scene unfolds around the dinner table. You kind of get this knot when you are watching or reading because you know it’s not going to be pretty….the family dinner table scene. A romance, a comedy, a drama. The gathering storm of the family dinner table crosses all genres. Right away you sense the tension. You know some awkward moment, some nastiness is about to burst forth, emotions will fly, chaos will soon define the family dinner table leaving hurt, destruction, and devastation in its path. The reader, the audience member knows whats coming because the scene is just so predictable. It is predictable and it resonates a bit too well. It’s part of the knot in the stomach, that far too many of us have been there, done that. Maybe not in all the exaggeration that a writer could muster, but we’ve been there nonetheless, in bits, in glimpses, around that family dinner table.
So when a pastor in worship stands up in the chancel and invites everyone to gather at this family dinner table in the household of God, I’ve been wondering if that’s all good? You have heard me say that “our yearning is for all to be as welcome at this table as if they were in their own home.” And I am wondering if that’s enough? When it comes to the place of the communion table, the expectation and hope we cite, the theological and liturgical image we imprint in our collective imagination, “family dinner table” just isn’t enough because far too many of us have been there.
When we cry “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God. Crying Abba. You heard the complexity of Paul’s argument here at the beginning of Romans 8. You can’t miss how the rhetoric moves so far beyond any simplistic reduction to bodily flesh-bad, the spirit-driven life of piety-good. He’s working harder than that. There’s far more going on for Paul when he is holding forth on the life in Christ Jesus or the law of sin and death, walking not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit, the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace, the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God, if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.
Amid this swirl of God’s way and the way of world, amid the battle between the kingdom of God and the powers and the principalities of this present darkness, amid obvious conflict between the way of the righteous and the way of the wicked, crying Abba is a death shattering, life-embracing, worldly noise piercing , salvation shout. “I am a child of God”. It’s the voice of the Spirit together with my voice, bearing witness to God’s resurrection hope, to God’s ultimate victory in my life and in the life of the world. Crying Abba, Father! With a grit and determination and edginess sufficient for the here and now. We are children of God! It’s not the cuddling cry of a child nestled into her father’s arms, it’s not the breathless embrace that comes when the father welcomes the prodigal home, it is a raucous act of praise, the daring finger point into the world’s puffed out chest, it is the crying proclamation that says no to the way of the wicked, for “we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, not to ourselves but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.” We are children of God!
Not surprisingly many who write about this part of Romans 8, many commentators, many scholars, many preachers, they get to these verses that include “Abba, Father!” and “the children of God” and their emphasis turns to the church, to the community of faith, as a family. I’m not convinced. I confess to you that I am less and less convinced that “the family” is a strong enough metaphor for the church. I think about that when a young single adult tells me about relocating to a new town for work and the hardest part of the transition is walking into a new church for worship on Sunday morning as pretty much absolutely everything presumes and proclaims an understanding of family that doesn’t include “single”. I think about that when we all know of churches where nastiness and tension and broken relationships put an exclamation point on “dysfunctional family”. I think about it when it is so easy to fall into that trap of thinking that all God expects of us in the church is to merely tolerate one another like we put up with Uncle Jake at the family reunion. I think about it when congregations so easily claim family values as a platform while shutting out others who may be different by family structure or family of origin or family legacy or family status.
The family as a metaphor for church. I think about it when I try to wrap my head around the notion that, according to the gospels, Jesus wrestled a whole lot less with any focus on the family than he did with the community of faith, and caring for the least of these, and loving your enemies, and praising the neighbor who showed compassion to the man in the ditch, and warning about serving God and serving mammon. Paul in Romans writes of the Spirit of God bearing witness that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Family’s not enough. Paul in Corinthians “Now you are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it.” Paul in Ephesians on equipping the saints for the work of ministry, “for the building up of the Body of Christ.” The church isn’t just a family. We’re the Body of Christ!
We were celebrating communion at an outdoor chapel along the Sea of Gallilee in the area where tradition would claim that Jesus fed the thousands with loaves and fishes. It was one of those priceless moments: listening to the sea lap against the shore, a gentle breeze, so quiet, a fellowship of weary pilgrims traveling together through the Holy Land, stopping to have eucharist together, a spot unlike any other to remember Jesus. Our celebrants at the Table couldn’t help but emphasize the remembering part of communion. Near the end of the liturgy but before we received of the bread and shared the cup, several bus loads of school children arrived. The children were running down the hill from the road making a bee line for the waters edge; laughing, skipping rocks, wading in up to their knees, shouting out in Arabic, Palestinian Christian kids romping around where Jesus fed the 5,000.
One my fellow pastors lamented the intrusion of noise. I couldn’t blame him, their arrival seriously broke the moment. He actually went out from our little chapel and tried to “sssh” the dozens of kids who were running around. I was struck by how silly he looked trying to demand quiet. The wise worshipping neighbor to my right, he leaned over, and he said to me, “I hope this is what it sounds like.” He could see I didn’t quite get what he meant. “When we feast at the table with Christ in glory, I hope this is what it sounds like” and he motioned toward all the children shouting and laughing and skipping stones. At Table with Christ in the kingdom of heaven. The table is not just about the past. It is about the future. God’s future.
There’s a future to the table. It’s not just a family dinner table. It’s not just a table of remembrance. The table has a future. It offers a glimpse, a taste. It is a sign of the kingdom yet to come. It is the table of our inheritance. If children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Inheritance comes with a future. Crying Abba! God’s Spirit together with our spirit, bearing witness to and claiming and working toward and celebrating God’s future, a future forever greater than our past, forever stronger than the world’s tomorrow. Our inheritance, the very promise of God, even now it stands before us, even here today at the table we cry Abba! As the theologian Karl Barth describes it, “today, today, [our inheritance] can and should be affirmed, and seized, and apprehended and put into effect. It is today, today that its content, the great hope, can and should be lived—the power of the world to come as the power of this world.”
Every time you eat of this bread and drink of this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death, until he comes again! Every time we eat this bread and drink this cup. It is salvation’s shout. A raucous act of praise. A daring finger point into the world’s puffed out chest. It is a crying proclamation that says no to the world and yes to God. The world, and our life in it, even our life together here as the church, all of it, our life here and now, it does yet reflect what God intends for us and for the world. So we are going to eat and drink at this table, we’re going sing, and we’re going shout, and we’re going to live, and we’re going to work, and we’re going to serve, and we’re going to pray, and we’re going to cry Abba! Father until it does. Until we do. Until God’s kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.
Because we not just a family! We are the body of Christ! We are the children of God!
© 2009, Property of Nassau Presbyterian Church
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