Daddy: A Sermon for Proper 11

Today’s passage from St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans begins with the assertion “so then,” which reminds us that it is a direct continuation from last week’s passage. We are in week 2 of a three-week run through chapter 8 of Romans. The fact that in Year A of the Season after Pentecost we get sixteen weeks of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans should tell us the significance of this letter.

Within this magnum opus that is the letter to the Romans lies chapter 8, which Bonnie Thurston calls the “hinge chapter” of the letter, where we get “the heart of Paul’s message in this letter and some of his most important spiritual teaching, as well as his thought about the Holy Spirit.”[1]

As such, one of the many significant aspects of Romans 8 is that we not only get St. Paul the systematic theologian, but we also get a glimpse of St. Paul, the mystic…St. Paul the Spirit-filled, Spirit-led pastoral theologian. We get a glimpse of Paul’s understanding of what it means to be, through the Holy Spirit, “children of God.” While Paul uses the word for “Spirit” only a few times up to this point in the letter, he uses it 20 times in chapter 8 alone! Clearly, Paul had a robust theology of the Holy Spirit, and he shares it with us here.

I think that if you were to ask Paul how he was different prior to and after his conversion and subsequent baptism, he would attribute much of the change to the power of the Holy Spirit. Prior to his conversion, Paul was a profoundly “religious” person. But he had an incomplete understanding of the fullness of the Triune God as being Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He was not, to use his own terms, “in Christ” or “in the Spirit.” As such, he claims that he was living according to the flesh – “the law of sin and of death” rather than according to the Spirit.

He goes on to say that “those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

Now, if we are not careful, we might hear these words from Paul as being heavy-handed, judgmental, and divisive. It appears that he is asserting that there are insiders (those in the Spirit) and outsiders (those in the flesh). And he is claiming to be an insider. And this is the sort of rhetoric that has always turned me off, and likely why I used to be so wary of Paul. But let’s stick with him for a moment and see what we can glean from this seminal chapter in his letter to the Romans.

After Paul lifts up the dichotomy between those who are in the flesh and those who are in the Spirit, he goes on to say,

“But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you... If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

These are pastoral words of encouragement that Paul is offering to the Christians in 1st-century Rome, as well as to us today. We will likely never be as devout, faithful, or influential as the Apostle Paul – but through our baptisms, the Spirit of God dwells within us just the same. As such, Paul is saying that we are filled with the very same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead! And that, my friends, is the great Good News of the Gospel. That is what Paul wanted the Christians in Rome to hear and believe, and that is what the Spirit wants us here today to hear and believe. The Spirit of God dwells within each one of us here today no less than the Spirit did in Paul or any of the other Apostles.

In today’s passage from Romans 8, Paul goes on to describe what it means to be “in the Spirit,” and he uses the language of “family” to do so. He says, “if we live by and are led by the Spirit, we are children of God.” We then see Paul distinguish between slavery and adoption when he writes, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.” Paul is not being sentimental here…he is being provocative. Because his Greco-Roman audience knew good and well the hierarchical structures that were presently in place in the Roman Empire. They themselves might very well have had slaves in their own households or even been slaves themselves. When Paul uses the image of slavery, he draws to mind the culture and ethics of domination that was all too familiar in 1st-century Rome, and sadly that still exists today. And with that as a backdrop, he is boldly claiming that in and through the Spirit, nobody is a slave anymore. As he would later write to the Church in Galatia, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” Nobody had ever heard language like that before. And that is the radical, groundbreaking Good News of the gospel that Paul was proclaiming.

In contrast to the “spirit of slavery,” Paul lifts up the “spirit of adoption,” and uses the illustration of family to make his point. To be “led by the Spirit and children of God” is to be able to know “God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven earth, of all that is seen and unseen – as our “Abba”, or “Daddy.” The Aramaic word “Abba” does not refer to domineering or even masculine qualities, but rather, this use of “Father” language “is used to evoke the familiarity, nurture, and safety of the healthy family.”[2]  As such, Paul uses adoption/family language to talk about the household of God, which was an entirely new and radical concept for his Roman audience, who had their own culture and understanding of hierarchical household codes.

Now, for me, I can honestly admit that I have never struggled with whether or not I believed that I was God’s child, or whether or not God loved me. That has been one of the great blessings of being born and raised in the Episcopal Church. I have never wondered if I was or would continue to be included in God’s kingdom. And perhaps that is how many of us here feel today. In that case, maybe Paul’s language of family and adoption doesn’t feel so radical. But sadly, that isn’t the case for all people, and maybe not even for all of us here today. Not everyone grew up in such loving, affirming households and churches as I did, and I am well aware of that, and I lament that.

But, in spite of my positive experience growing up in the Episcopal Church, there still remains something transformative and groundbreaking for me in Romans, chapter 8. In commenting on today’s passage, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams boldly claims that, as children of God, “the Spirit of God comes alive in us so that we are able to say Jesus’ own words, ‘Abba, Father.’” And that is what makes Romans chapter 8 come alive for me. As a child of God, having received the “spirit of adoption,” I am not just broadly and generally “in the fold” so to speak. I am not, to use a very popular term in the Episcopal Church these days, simply – “included.” As a child of God, having received the “spirit of adoption,” I am much, much more than that. I have been chosen by God to be God’s beloved child by adoption. And this God longs for me to call him “Daddy.” It's one thing to feel included by a distant, powerful God. It’s a whole other thing to recognize that this God wants me to call him “Daddy.”

And when we call out to God as our “Abba”, we are not slaves calling out to a master. We are children calling out to our loving Daddy, just as Jesus did. As such, we are, to use Paul’s words, “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ,” our very own brother. That, my friends, is the radical Good News that Paul is writing about in Romans, chapter 8. That is an example of how the Spirit transformed Paul and how the Spirit has transformed me. I grew up with God as the Father, and Jesus as his Son. And through the power of the Spirit, I have come to know God as my Daddy, and Jesus as my brother. And that is the God I want to share with others.

Thanks be to God that the Apostle Paul reminds us that as children led by the Spirit of God, we can, along with Paul, boldly and joyfully call God the Father our “Abba” and God the Son our “brother.”

[1] Thurston, Pondering, Praying, Preaching; Romans 8, p. 3. SLG Press.

[2] Thurston, Pondering, Praying, Preaching; Romans 8, p. 26. SLG Press.