2 Cor. 5: 14For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.  16So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

You awaken at 9AM, shower, dress and get picked up by a limousine at 9:30, and then are taken to your office, to which you are escorted by armed guards past other armed guards in gilded marble hallways with plush carpet. In your office is a silver pot with fresh, hot coffee, and a silver tray with croissants and fresh fruit. You have some briefing papers to read and some emails to answer before you are then escorted to a power lunch at a swanky, five star French restaurant with some bigwigs from a foreign government. Then its back to the office for another meeting, some photo ops with some visitors from non-governmental organizations, tennis with a visiting Hollywood celebrity, and then home, again by limo and escort, to prepare for a black tie dinner and ball that night with some heads of state and some movers and shakers in international business and multi-national corporations and conglomerations. Home around 2AM, you sleep in till 9. And then the next day is much the same as the one before.

No, that’s not my daily schedule. Its my impression, rightly or wrongly, of the life of some ambassador in some posh, cushy, peaceful foreign posting like I imagine Trinidad, Liechtenstein or Luxembourg might be. In doing a little online research this week on diplomacy and ambassorship, I found a common lament over the fact that such cushy, piece-of-cake postings often go to untrained political loyalists from Congress or business, outside of the usual State Department channels. Such postings are often rewards to someone who supported the campaign of the winning president and party, even or especially after they might have opposed them during the primaries.

But if you rise to ambassadorship over the years, through the ranks of the State Department, starting out at lowly and boring desk jobs in distant, difficult places, all the while proving your loyalty, your skill, your courage, competence and coolness under fire, then, when you finally rise to the top, you’ll get posted to …Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Belarus or Lybia, countries where you’ll have to exercise your diplomatic skills around dictators, in settings of conflict and corruption, where the climate, the environment and the economy can age one pretty fast and take five years off your life, where the first armored limo with bullet-proof windows to arrive at your house in the morning sometimes leaves with your double, your decoy, where you’ll never be out of sight of a dozen armed security guards, and where you’ll learn the different sounds of different kinds of incoming artillery, and know when to dive under the desk or keep working.

As I think happened with the US Embassy agent, not quite the ambassador but one of his higher assistants, who one day walked into our courtyard where we lived in Burkina Faso. We were surprised first of all to hear English, much less with an American accent, then to see someone new with our color of skin. We were even more surprised when we learned he was from the US Embassy and that he had come so far from the capital city of Ouagadougou. He was on a tour of the country, he said, and was just checking in on fellow Americans. After the initial shock and surprise, we warmed up to him immediately. He seemed so genuinely interested in us complete strangers. He was such a good listener. He was so warm, gracious and polite to both us and to the Burkinabe with us. He respected and represented his country quite well, even as he seemed genuinely interested in and delighted by what and who he was finding in Burkina Faso. When he left I found myself wondering how soon he might come again.

I’m pretty sure his first name was Charles, but I can’t remember his last name .Yet I’m fairly sure I recognized his first and last name when, more than ten years later, he was named as President Clinton’s envoy to some trouble spot in the former Yugoslavia, where he would have to deal with warlords like Slobodan Milosavitch and his adversaries. If we’re talking the same guy, our tax money was well spent.

Which all goes to say that, when we talk about being “ambassadors for Christ,” we may think in terms of friendly, courteous, glamorous diplomatic relations among friendly, courteous, glamorous people in Lichtenstein or London, who know the rules of diplomacy and who abide by them. But when Paul describes himself as an “ambassador for Christ,” he is experiencing and describing something more like the rigors of being posted to Kosovo or Kazhakstan. You only have to read some of Paul’s 2^nd Letter to his Corinthian disciples to realize that his ambassadorial position was a hardship post in a spiritual war zone. From internal clues in the letter you see that the Corinthian church was divided against itself and estranged from Paul and his missionary team. That’s because they were running after the latest, newest, hottest teachings and teachers, who claimed to be “super-apostles,” with disastrous moral and spiritual effects. When Paul says, “We are Christ’s ambassadors,” urging you to “be reconciled to God,” I get the impression that they had fallen pretty fast and far from grace.

But not so far, not so fast that there was no hope. Because God had already done his part to be at peace with us through Jesus, Paul says. Jesus took the place of sin, or a sin offering, and therefore God is no longer counting our trespasses against us. All that remains is for us to lay down our weapons and accept the peace that God has already made with us. But the new teachings and the new teachers, who were intruding into the work of Paul and the missionary team, constituted a rebellion, a renewal of hostilities, at least from the human side of the peace. So as Christ’s ambassador to the Corinthians, Paul and his associates had a difficult posting in hostile territory.

International law about diplomacy and embassies today is much like it was in Paul’s time, because the need is still the same. If there is to be peace between nations, then someone has to be free enough and safe enough to carry messages between their leaders. So Rome and its neighbors would generally guarantee the safety and security of ambassadors and diplomats, even in time of war.

But not always. Two hundred years before Paul, the Carthaginians declared war on Rome and made their point unmistakably clear by executing Rome’s diplomats. As a Roman citizen, Paul may well have known that story. It was the justification that Rome claimed for razing Carthage to the ground and sowing salt in its soil. Surely Paul knew that he was claiming the title of what could be a very difficult and dangerous job.

For one thing, ambassadors have a different nationality and loyalty than the country in which they reside. They are, in effect, voluntary exiles, for the sake of their country and its government. Paul saw himself in a similar way, as a representative of Christ Jesus and of his kingdom. He was technically and legally a Roman citizen, yet Paul here claims a prior, higher loyalty to another homeland, and when he told his Philippian disciples, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from there we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

If we would follow in the faith and the mission of Christ and his apostles, then the same primary loyalty to Christ and his kingdom is required of us. The worst genocide after World War II happened in one of the most allegedly Christian countries of the world: Rwanda. Students of Christian mission often cited Rwanda as Exhibit A of how to do Christian mission, because so much of the population claimed the title, “Christian.” But for mostly Christian Hutus to massacre mostly Christian Tutsis, millions of Christians evidently placed their loyalty to their tribe above their loyalty to Christ and his kingdom. They either never understood, or forgot when push came to shove, where their primary loyalty and identity lay. As the spiritual scars of that genocide slowly heal, one thing you hear over and over again is that forgiveness is indispensable to healing. And forgiveness and coexistence are only possible in that setting, with that history, when you remember that you are a Christian first, a Rwandan second, and a Hutu or a Tutsi third.

That is the basis of our peace stance, in the Mennonite Church. Not that we would think or even guarantee that peaceful means will always succeed and get us what we want more quickly or more certainly than will war or violence. Although war and violence have pretty poor, self-defeating track records. Our peace stance is based on our loyalty to a king who died for his subjects and his enemies rather than kill them, or send them out to kill, and on our loyalty to a kingdom that exists only when and where risky, costly, love is practiced, for friend and foe alike. The job description of an ambassador of that king and that kingdom would have at the top, “being a faithful representative of your king and your country in conduct and character.”

Even though their primary loyalty lies elsewhere, ambassadors are also expected to respect the people and obey the laws of the country in which they live. And to display some interest in the people, and love for them. Like the American diplomat who visited Becky and me. Unlike the diplomats at the United Nations a decade ago who used their diplomatic immunity to rack up, all together, millions of dollars in unpaid parking fines that they owed to the city of New York. Because they had diplomatic immunity from the jurisdiction of local courts! If we would join Paul as “an ambassador for Christ,” it falls to us to likewise show love, respect and interest in the people among whom we are posted.

In a few weeks, Mark Peter Lundquist and I and some other leaders of some churches and agencies will be hosted to a meal at a local mosque, with some leaders and members of their community, to build up relationships and trust toward the possibility of some sort of community work together. This is in response to their invitation, on their terms and their turf. Pray for us, that we would represent Christ and his kingdom faithfully, respectfully, that is, in ways that are respectful of our hosts and respectful of our king and his kingdom. I hope we go as humble, interested learners, even while we are solid and secure about who we are and whose we are.

Which can be a difficult juggling act sometimes. Sometimes the law of your host country can be at odds with the laws of the country you represent. If so, then the ambassador has to take some heat, pay the price, and suffer some consequences. The Saudi Arabian ambassador has to turn down invitations to pig roasts and Happy Hour. Some recreational drugs that are illegal here are legally available in some other countries. Yet American ambassadors there are probably not allowed to buy and consume them. They’re better off anyway. And the ambassador for Christ must be prepared for those costly moments when the values of his kingdom are at odds with those of his host country. We face that every time one of our young men turns 18 and is expected to register for the Selective Service Agency.

That tension is also at the heart of our peace position: that when the difference between the values of Christ’s kingdom and those of our host country gets us in hot water, we are willing to pay the cost, like Jesus did, or share the cost with those who pay it, rather than inflicting the cost on others.

Which leads to another thing about being an ambassador for Christ: Ambassadors carry out their country’s policy, but so they do while unarmed and vulnerable. Foreign agents in another country who carry weapons and who use them to enforce their own country’s policy are not ambassadors nor diplomats. They are soldiers in an army of invasion or occupation. Nothing could be farther from Christ-like diplomacy.

That’s why ambassadorship requires some trust. For the political ambassador, trust that the host government will observe the rules of diplomacy. US embassy staff may have some tough-looking Marines at the doors and gates, but they’re no match for a concerted mob action against the embassy, like what happened in Serbia and Iran, in recent memory. Embassy staff are really relying on the host country for safety and immunity. That’s why so many countries don’t have an embassy in North Korea.

The ambassador for Christ, however, knows something about the fallenness and fickleness of human nature. So our trust is in God, to protect us, or to make redemptive use of our sufferings, should ever the world treat the ambassadors for Christ the way Iranian militants treated US embassy staff some 30 years ago. Don’t take that analogy too far, though. We don’t have any papers to shred or secret agents and informers to hide.

“Ambassadorship for Christ” connects with our Biblical theme for this year: Jeremiah 29:7, from the letter which the prophet Jeremiah wrote to the first waves of Jewish exiles in Babylon: “Seek the peace and well-being of that city to which I have sent you.” After a series of revolts and uprisings against their Babylonian overlords, the Babylonians deported citizens of Judea and Jerusalem en masse into their own cities in modern-day Iraq and Iran. Soon, the Jewish community in what is now Baghdad became an important center of world Judaism, and actually remained that way until recent history. But always the majority of them always considered themselves aliens, exiles, strangers and citizens of a Jerusalem that did not exist anymore, or which was yet to come, when the Messiah came.

For some, this status of exile took on features of ambassadorship like what I have described this morning. Think of the prophet Daniel, a Hebrew exile who served as a counselor to several kings and administrations, first for the Babylonians, and then for the Persians, who invaded and replaced the Babylonians. In Daniel’s long career we can see some of the features of ambassadorship that I’ve just mentioned.

Even while he served and helped worldly kings and kingdoms, whenever a choice between loyalties had to be made, he was loyal first to God and to God’s kingdom. He was helpful, gracious, friendly, polite and respectful to his captors. He was genuinely interested in them and in their well-being, giving counsel that proved honest, helpful, courageous and wise. But he would not accede to demands that he betray his God and his laws. Nor would he bow down and worship anyone else but his God. For that he paid the price in opposition, suspicion, prison and even a death sentence, when he was lowered into the lion pit for a night. He had no guarantee, before that door was shut, that he would live to see the morning, but for him, faithfulness unto death was a victory in itself.

In Daniel we see the characteristics of godly ambassadorship that I have mentioned: 1) that we be clear and steady about who and where our primary loyalties are invested, where our true and enduring citizenship lies; if we would be ambassadors for Christ, then our primary loves and loyalties are for him and his kingdom;

1. that we fairly and accurately represent the king and the country of our citizenship in the country of our service and our sojourn. That means that our speech, our behavior, our values take their cues from Christ and his kingdom, and not from the world in which we serve. Christ and his kingdom informs our engagement and relationship with the world, and not vice versa.

2. That we don’t let the differences and tensions between our citizenship and that of the world make us hostile, withdrawn or fearful, but rather, that we show genuine interest in, and love for, the citizens of the realm in which we are stationed. Because such indiscriminate and unconditional love and care are hallmarks of the king and the kingdom we represent. Yes, we wish to share Christ with the world, yes, we wish to see the kingdom of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And we wish to see change in this direction even now. I hope so. But people are only changed by a love so warm and wide and deep that it doesn’t need to change them, in order to love them more. This is what I’ve discerned about relationships and friendship with people of other faiths and of no faith. I’ve heard it said that “Christians are quite friendly until they figure out that they aren’t going to convert us; then they forget us and move on.” You’d think that, when people have shared most deeply what’s on their heart, at the risk of disagreement and rejection, that is the start of true friendship, not its end. Just hanging in with someone and being there for them, in spite of some basic differences about what they hold sacred, is already a sign of kingdom transformation happening, the only kingdom transformation that we are capable of and responsible for. Only the Holy Spirit can transform people into lasting, Christ-like ways. So a stick-to-it, whatever the cost, unconditional love for and interest in the people among whom we are posted is a key feature of our kingdom ambassadorship.

3. That to fairly represent Christ means that we do so lovingly and peacefully, remaining unarmed, non-retaliatory and vulnerable, because our trust is not in the reliability of those among whom we serve, but in the reliability of God to protect and deliver us, in this life or the next.

I hope these are helpful thoughts as we find our way and our place in a new community and a new worship location. We’re here, in this neighborhood, and in this world, as exiles and aliens from a city and a kingdom that we have only glimpsed from afar. As Hebrews 11 puts it, “Here we have no enduring city, but rather, we look forward to that city which is to come, whose builder and founder is God.” That makes us ambassadors of the future.

As difficult as that may seem at times, with our posting and position come the honors and the dignity of the one whom we represent. Christ Jesus is God’s ambassadorship to the world. Christ has declared on the cross, and demonstrated by the resurrection, that God is at peace with us. That’s the One we represent. And the message we bring. If we share his hardships and reflect his policies and interests faithfully, we shall also share his honors and his title.

The following is about a recent visitor in church one Thursday afternoon, and what he taught me:

ON WINGS OF ASSURANCE

12Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation—but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. 13For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, 14because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship [adoption]. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” 16The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

We had a visitor in church the Thursday before last. He came in, uninvited, unexpected, and frankly, unwanted. He got in while folks from Messiah Church were moving in some furniture from the annex across the street. And he stayed for about six hours, until I finally got him out of here. I first saw the intruder here in the sanctuary, walking across the ledge underneath the stained glass window portrait of Christ behind me. When I tried to approach him, he fled. For the rafters above.

Obviously, that was not a person, but a pigeon. So I opened the front doors to the building, facing onto 25^th Street. I still faced the problem of getting him down from the rafters. But you know, these woven offering baskets make pretty good frisbees. And he didn’t like having them fly up at him. But instead of going toward the door, he went up to the balcony, to which the doors are locked. I wasn’t about to toss these baskets up there, or we’d never see them again.

As much as it hurts me to admit it, that little bird brain had outsmarted me. And the way he was strutting around on top of those pews, he seemed to know it and was rubbing it in. So I called Jim Poplett, our trustee, and at his suggestion I called Messiah Lutheran Church, our landlords. It would now be their problem. So I left the sanctuary, closed the front doors, and went up to my office for a few hours of work.

Later, on the way out that afternoon, I heard a racket in the library, that room with the green shag carpet. I looked in and saw that the pigeon was trying to get out through the windows there, which don’t open. It would have been much easier to catch him there, against that window, than it was in the sanctuary. I’ve caught and handled chickens before, plus maybe a sparrow or two. And I regularly handle fish, live or dead, and even clean them with no problem. Plus I collect my own bait by hand, like night crawlers after a rain, or crayfish from a creek. But…and here I make my confession….I hate pigeons. They give me the willies. Pigeons, up close and one on one, creep me out, even though I know, logically, that they’re simply part of God’s good Creation.

I think its because, growing up near or in inner city neighborhoods like this one, pigeons were my first encounter and experience as a little child with death and dying. If there are a lot of live pigeons around big inner city homes and buildings, then there are dead ones too. And they don’t have the common courtesy to dispose of themselves properly. That’s where my initial childhood fears around death and dying went: to pigeons.

So I closed all the doors to the sanctuary, opened the front doors again, and tried to shoo him out toward 25^th Street. But his little bird brain said “Up is the way to safety,” and soon he was in the upstairs hallway trying to get out by the window on the south end, which doesn’t open either.

After a half hour of trying to get close enough to drive this panicky, fluttering pigeon into going back the way he’d come, but without getting close enough to actually succeed, I realized three things: 1) this ought to make a good sermon illustration some day; 2) that if I was scared and creeped out by proximity to this pigeon, that was ten times as true for this poor bird. I’m the big bad predator here, the lions, tigers and bears all rolled up into one, and all my efforts to help him are just scaring him all the more; 3) if I’d just gotten over my fear and loathing of pigeons and caught him when he was still fluttering against the library window, I could have been home already.

Fear. There at the end of upstairs hallway was a stand-off between two frightened characters, wasting precious time and energy to fear. The pigeon’s fear made sense to his little bird brain. My fear, by contrast, made no sense, not even to myself. I had invested that poor bird with all my fears about my own mortality, frailty and vulnerability. A lot of time and effort and frustration could have been saved by facing that fear and overcoming it as soon as I recognized it.

“Just think of it as a little chicken, grab it and release it outside the door!” I finally told myself.

Which goes to show that sometimes our fear of something does us more harm than the thing we fear. To paraphrase Franklin Roosevelt, “Sometimes, the thing we must fear most is fear itself.”

“But God,” Paul tells us, “has not given us a spirit of slavery again to fear.” Notice two things: 1) Paul did not say that God did not give us the capacity to fear. He did, actually, as part of our survival tool kit. Thank God for fear: it keeps us from stepping into the path of an oncoming truck. Thank God that fear makes us reach out and grab a child before he or she runs into the path of an oncoming truck.

Paul says, “God did not give us a spirit of slavery again unto fear.” That’s the second thing I ask us to notice, that God does not want us to be slaves to fear. Again. There’s all the difference in the world between a momentary fear that saves us, and a persistent fear that enslaves us. God did not make us to be ruled and restricted by fear, such as the fear of death, frailty or vulnerability. But when Paul says, “God did not give us a spirit of slavery again to fear,” that word, “again,” implies that slavery to fear is where his audience used to be, what our fallen condition is outside the grace and the gifts of God, before Christ enters our lives.

Like Martin Grey, ten years after the end of the Second World War, when people were telling him, “Slow down, relax a little, marry, settle down and enjoy a family; you survived, now try living. You survived the Nazi occupation of Poland; the Warsaw Ghetto, and torture in a Gestapo dungeon; you escaped and survived the death camp of Treblinka; the Ghetto uprising, service with the partisans, and in the Red Army; you even escaped across the Iron Curtain and got asylum in America. So now, instead of just surviving, try living for just a change.”

But after six years of running from the Nazis, who had exterminated almost all of his Jewish family, Martin found it hard to stop running. It was as though, after having run out of a burning building, he was still running with his head down, miles and years after the fire had been put out. The fear that had alerted him to dangers and saved his life was now running him ragged when it was no longer needed. He blamed his hectic work life on fear: the fear that, should ever such evil arise again, he wouldn’t have the money nor the influence to protect himself a second time. There was another fear driving him: the fear that death would take away those he loves, just like it did in Nazi-occupied Poland. So he avoided love and commitments. He kept burying himself in his work and travels as an antique art collector and salesman, to the point of deep depression and total exhaustion. Only when he met Dinah did someone’s love overcome his fear to the point where he was ready to stop running himself ragged, settle down, marry her and raise a family. It was love that broke the chains of fear for him. Or, at least love which diminished fear’s power so that he could get on with living, not just surviving.

Which is like what Paul says: God has given us the “Spirit of adoption, by which we cry ‘Abba’ Father.” The love of God is our antidote to the slavery of fear. With that phrase, “Abba, Father,” we get a glimpse into the prayers and the worship of the first apostles and the early church. That’s what first generation First Century Christians of both Jewish and Gentile stripe were taught to call God: “Abba, Father.”

They got that directly from Jesus, who often addressed God with that term in his Aramaic, of endearment and affection from a son or daughter for her father, “Abba,” kind of like “Daddy” or “Papa” in our common usage today. One of the times we find Jesus calling his Father “Abba” is pictured in this sanctuary, in the Garden of Gethsemanae, when he was praying for release from the trial to come even while he prayed for strength to endure it. Today’s passage is one of several New Testament verses where it shows up again. The apostles passed on to their disciples the way of prayer that Jesus taught them.

But calling God “Abba, Father,” was not just a matter of tradition. Paul says here that if we have any sense, any feeling, any confidence that God is our loving Father, any hope and assurance, however weak, that God welcomes our prayers the way a good Father welcomes the time and attention of his son or daughter, that is not just wishful thinking; that’s not being prideful or pretentious; that’s God’s will for us. That confidence and assurance are gifts from the Holy Spirit and signs of His presence. Not as flashy or dramatic as what we celebrated on Pentecost Sunday last week, when the first apostles evangelized in languages they hadn’t learned. But unlike those momentary and unique gifts, the one we’re talking about today is every believer’s birthright in Christ. Indeed, the comfort, assurance and peace of the Holy Spirit, that we are God’s children in whom he is well pleased, becomes another name in this passage for the Holy Spirit: the Spirit of Adoption.

Or is it, “Sonship?” And here we hit a controversy that might be reflected in your various Bible translations. Some might say, “Spirit of adoption,” while others say, “Spirit of sonship.” While the language is masculine and patriarchal and reflects the laws of inheritance from fathers to sons, among free people, and Gentiles, Paul is talking as much to women as to men in the kingdom of God because, “in Christ there is neither male nor female, slave nor free, Jew nor Gentile,” in Paul’s own words.

There’s not a controversy over the word in the Greek. Its a controversy over how to translate it. And here’s why: Let’s say a Roman man, the head of the household, recognizes that his son, at age 14 or so, is showing enough of the promise and potential to replace him one day as the head of the household, with all the rights, responsibilities, privileges and properties that come with this status, including Father’s name as one of his. So Dad would arrange a religious ceremony with oaths and a lot of feasting, with priests and witnesses, to say that from now on, this son was no longer just a protected but powerless child. He is now a legally responsible adult, and shall increasingly be treated that way, as the primary designated heir of the household. The Greek word used for that ceremony and that status is the very word that Paul uses to describe the work of the Spirit whom God has given us, sometimes translated as “sonship.”

But let’s say that Dad looks at his sons and says “No way! What an oafish lot! They’re hopeless.” Or let’s say that there are no sons to inherit Dad’s property, name and position. Then he might adopt someone from among his more distant relatives to be heir to his property, his status and his name. Or a young man he has come to know, trust and admire in the community. Or even, in a few eye-popping cases, a trusted slave. Then there would be the same ceremony of “sonship” for the adoptee. And the results, and the adoptee’s status would be the same as if he were born to the manor, with the same name and status. This adoption ceremony even went by the same title.

This adoption/sonship word would carry a lot of weight for Paul’s Roman audience. Because that’s precisely what many of the Roman emperors did. Julius Caesar adopted, or “son-shipped” his nephew Octavian, so that he inherited Caesar’s name and Caesar’s throne and became Caesar Augustus. When Paul wrote this letter, Nero was Caesar because he had been adopted, or “son-shipped,” by the previous emperor, Claudius Caesar.

So which one does Paul mean? Were we spiritually adopted, or did we come of age, spiritually speaking? Well, we can either wait to ask Paul in heaven, or, in a worse case scenario, someone could start a new church: The First Church of Adoptionism/Mennonite. Or of Sonship. As long as its Mennonite. Or we could try both conditions on for size and see if the results fit with the rest of the Bible.

Let’s say that by “sonship” Paul means that the Spirit of God has moved us from the state of a restricted and irresponsible childhood to something like the status of a responsible and privileged adulthood. That would fit with the fact that we all start out as children of God by the mere fact of our creation. The same is true of anyone we meet, whatever their race, their gender, their beliefs, their character or their conduct: they are children of God equally as much as ourselves, by virtue of being created by God, and because of how much God loves them.

But are we always children of God in the sense of our wills and our desires, our spirits, and our trust, especially toward God? Or in terms of the eternal inheritance we expect and embrace by faith? Not according to what Paul says in this passage. Again, he says that before Christ we were “slaves to fear.” Like me trying to talk a pigeon out of the hallway and down the stairs. Like Martin Grey letting his fear of death run him ragged long after the war was over.

His use of the word, “slavery,” makes me wonder if Paul is not also acknowledging that most of the Christians to whom he is writing are also slaves. Because most of them probably were slaves. In York, England there is a tombstone dating back to Roman times, on which we can read that a freedman (that’s a former slave), Cecilius Maximus purchased the tombstone for the widow of his deceased former master, Cecilus Rufus. The fact that they both have the same first name, Cecilius, means that the former slave had been adopted as the son of his former master. And that’s why it fell to him, as the adopted son, to buy the tombstone for the woman who had effectively become his mother. So even in pagan, class-obsessed Roman society, such fairy tale changes did happen. On vary rare occasions, at least.

And that’s why I favor the translations that call the Holy Spirit “the Spirit of Adoption.” Because God did for those Roman Christians what very, very few of their masters would ever do for them. And whatever our status, our story of redemption is still every bit as awesome and stupendous as was the adoption of a slave into the status of freedman and head of the household. Before this status was ours, we too were slaves, not sons and daughters, at least as far as our loves and our loyalties toward God were concerned. Slaves to fear. The story of Cecilius Maximus, in Roman England, is effectively our gospel story today. Even though, in our fallen human condition, we start out as slaves to fear, God offers us a new status through the gift of His Holy Spirit. One sign of that gift is the assurance that we have been adopted into God’s home and family as though we had been part of the family in every way since our births.

That means at least two things: 1) that nothing about our past can disqualify us from being part of God’s forever family today, and heir tomorrow of all that he has promised us in Christ. If Cecilius Rufus could adopt a slave, make him his son, his heir and give him his name, how much more can God do the same, and even more, with anyone, regardless of their status, their struggles, or their past? Secondly, life just has to be different, and better, when our assurance and confidence of God’s love and adoption begin to overcome our slavery to fear, and to replace that slavery with a new freedom. Not just when it comes to getting pigeons out of church buildings. But when it comes to facing all the curves that life throws us.

Because we’ll never be done dealing with fear. Frightening things come at us all the time, real, possible, or imagined. If our anxiety level is also a biological or psychological condition needing medical help, then we should avail ourselves of that, too. With each challenge comes an opportunity to exercise our faith, develop our trust, learn something new, and develop our spiritual fighting muscles. That’s called growing up in faith and character. Like sons and daughters, not slaves.

But with each challenge there also come lies, whispered by the father of all lies, telling us that every setback, every grief, every trial and temptation is simply proof that either God does not exist, or that God does not care for us, nor care about us. In such times, Abba Father looks and feels more like absent father.

That’s when we must cling to the Word and the witness of God’s Spirit, the Spirit of Adoption, who testifies to our spirits that we are God’s children. Its easy to feel the truth of that when things are going well. But when we cling to it by faith when our feelings of confidence vanish and our fears say otherwise, God is honored, we are strengthened, and the father of lies is defeated. Again.

That’s got to help in this life, as well as the next. And with more than intruding pigeons. By the way, if you’re wondering what happened to him, don’t worry, he’s not roosting in the rafters above you. Back to that window at the end of the hallway: as soon as I worked up the courage to get close and try to grab him, the pigeon took off over my head, shot for the staircase, went down and landed on the steps three feet away from the open door. And there he sat, to my surprise, just looking at freedom and safety, for the better part of 30 seconds. Again, I imagine that little bird brain thinking, “A big rectangle of light that looks open? Yeah, right. I’m not falling for that again, Mister!”

As I wondered, “What’s wrong with you that you won’t fly out to freedom, now that you’re looking at a wide open door?” it occurred to me that God must sometimes look at his human children and ask the same question. “With the resurrection of Jesus I’ve opened a door through the worst of your fears, I’ve given you wings of faith, hope and love with which to fly, and my Spirit for comfort and confidence during your journey. So why do you just sit there looking at your freedom from slavery to fear?”

I’m happy to say that, finally our feathered friend found the courage to try again, and strutted out through the front door as though he were saying, “Thank you; this is one of the nicer church buildings that I’ve visited; can’t say as much for your pastor, though.” Once outside, he spread his wings and flew off to the sound of my cheering and clapping.

You and I have been given wings too. The wings of trust, of faith, of the assurance of God’s love for us as his children, heirs to all that belongs to Jesus, especially his Spirit. We’ve all had frightening and frustrating times of beating our heads and our wings against closed doors and windows. I wish I could say that all fears and frustrations were over. But will we choose to remain slaves to fear, or will we keep rising to the light until we find the way through? When its hardest for us to trust, hardest for us to continue, we have an ally, the Spirit of God, who witnesses to our spirits that we are God’s children, and joint heirs with Christ. And we have each other, to remind us of that love, to remind us of our royal status, whenever we forget and fail to fly.

..a thorny issue for Christians. And no, I’m not going to advocate breaking out the sacrificial knives and trying to catch pigeons to dispatch during our worship services. But, contrary to the spirit of our age, is law always loveless, and love always lawless? That’s the challenge laid before us in John’s Second Letter:

OF LAW AND LOVE

I John 5: 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4For(everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.

The American man who bought the Italian woman flowers expected, or at least hoped, that she would get the point: that he loves her. Instead, she got angry and agitated. Then someone explained to him: the red poppies that he thought were so beautiful—and they are—she grew up knowing to be signs of eternal slumber, used at funerals. Woops.

Sometimes its hard enough knowing how to show our love for flesh and blood people. Two weeks ago we considered the stirring and strenuous words of John chapter 4: “This is how we know what love is—Christ Jesus laid down his life for us.” If the willingness to die for someone, if need be, is the litmus test of love between people, then how do we mere mortal humans express love for God? Especially a God who already owns everything, especially a God who has given us life, the world, and himself through Jesus, who died for us? After all, that’s what our gathering here is about today, isn’t it? That’s what our hymns and prayers are about, expressing love to the God who loves us, to God who is love. Is that all it means to love God?

So I imagined the following dialog between myself and God, over the stretch of many years. As I pondered over today’s passage, I came to realize that this very question, “How am I to show love to the God who loves us, the God who is love?” is the driving question of my spiritual journey. So I start this imaginary dialog with God at a visit, some 25 years ago, to a beautiful, ornate, Medieval Gothic style cathedral in southern Belgium. The light filtering through the stained glass windows, the glow of candles, the sound of the organ, the smell of incense, the layers of gold enfolding sacred objects, the jewels and pearls on boxes holding the relics of saints who long ago gave their lives for the love of God (so they say), were so magnificent and inspiring, they had had me wondering, “Is this how to show love for God? By building or enriching these majestic cathedrals with their spires towering over the fir trees and farm fields of southern Belgium? Is this how I should show you my love, O God, by building or maintaining such monuments to your glory as this?” I wondered.

And it seemed as if, down through the years, I have almost heard the whisper of a voice from a realm more solid and enduring than this one, saying, “My child, do not judge too harshly those who came before you in the faith, for you are no wiser nor purer than they. But do not be too quick to copy them either, for as I told King David, another imperfect servant who loved me, ‘I do not dwell in houses made by mortals, nor can any building made by human hands contain me. Instead, I am building a home for fallible mortals like yourself. Indeed, I am making of you a temple in which I dwell, a temple built of all who love me, together. Such people have met and worshiped me in spaces like this sanctuary that humbles and inspires you. But if you are also distressed by the fact that the gold adorning these objects was obtained by conquest and loot, taken from the mouths of the poor and the needy, I am all the more so, for it was done in my name. If it grieves you that from this ornate marble pulpit was preached a call for Crusade to kill Muslims, allegedly for the love of me, know that it grieves me all the more. For anyone who says he loves Me and yet hates his brother is simply lying. At least to himself. My dear child, if you would show your love for me, I would much rather you built up and strengthened the cathedral of flesh and blood, of loves and lives that I am building, than that you would ever build me a cathedral of stone, gold and glass.”

And then I came back to my country to find that people were building cathedrals, yes, of glass and concrete, but more so of power, wealth and success, also in God’s name, for love of God. Some were building religious and political coalitions on the political right to advocate for war and weapons or against certain social changes, while some were building religious and political coalitions on the left, to advocate for social changes. Again, they were all doing this in the name of God, for the love of God, the same God, and with equal militancy, stridency and even anger. But with widely different opinions about what pleased God.

And so I prayed, “Is this how you want me to show my love for you, O God, by joining and leading one of these strident political and religious crusades? By building cathedrals of coalitions, mailing lists, phone banks, donor banks, lobbyists and legislators? If so, which one, on the political right or the political left? Because they both have compelling arguments, and passionate spokespersons. And they both invoke your name.”

And it seemed as though I could just hear a still, small voice coming from a realm more pure than mine, and yet as close as my own heart, which said, “Do not be too quick to judge people in either camp, for I know better than you which ones truly love me most, and which ones love power. But do not think that the wrath of man can achieve the purposes of God, nor that my power is beholden to the power of princes, nor that my will can be fully explained by the limited alternatives and definitions that mortals can comprehend. The closest you can come to knowing me, and my will is through something your political demolition derbies fail at: love, love that looks like a cross.”

So if God doesn’t need us building cathedrals of worldly stone, glass, gold, or of power, wealth and influence, then how do we show God that we love him? Then it occurred to me: We can just tell him, with our mouths, as we do in worship. There’s a lot of that in Bible. Like Psalm 116: “I love the Lord, because he heard my cry for help,” and Psalm 18: “I love you, Lord, my strength, my force!” And in response, God said: “”The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me? I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure  in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts?   Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—  I cannot bear your evil assemblies. …. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you;  even if you offer many prayers,  I will not listen.”

Oh dear. I didn’t just hear that in my heart or soul. I read it from the Prophet Isaiah, in response to the worship of his contemporaries. Why, I wondered, would God ever reject his people’s worship, the corporate and public expression of their love for him, and in such hair-raising, spine-tingling, devastating terms? God goes on to say, “[Because] Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.  Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.” Amazing, God takes so seriously, so personally the way people treat each other, as though the way we treated others was the way we treated God. Get that down right, and then our worship will be pleasing, our expressions of love sincere.

Which is what John the Beloved seems to be saying. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” Is that how we’re supposed to show our love for you?” I asked. God. “By keeping and obeying your commandments?” Then I asked what looks, in hindsight, to be the world’s most stupid question: “What does your law have to do with love?”

It seemed that from the throne of glory I could hear a chuckle. Or was it a sigh? And then a voice that asked me, “O my child, are you so enslaved to the spirit of your age, that you should think that my law is always loveless, and that love is always lawless?”

I had to hand it to the Spirit there, that was a pretty good description of the age I live in. And that was the lesson, unfortunately, of all those hours in theology and ethics classes, reading books like Situation Ethics. Most of our ethical deliberations and discernment in those classes were based on case studies, true-to-life, of someone, say, in a Nazi death camp, like Auschwitz, in which the hero of the story has to decide between stealing food from other inmates or letting her children starve, or selling her body so that her children can eat. Then we pitted two laws against each other, like “Thou shalt not steal” against “thou shalt not kill.” By the time we were done haggling such things out, we would throw up our hands and say, “You can’t say one way or the other, everything is relative, everything is dependent upon the situation, you can’t rely on God’s laws, like the Ten Commandments; you just have to determine what is the most loving thing in any situation.” And so we taught a whole generation of people to assume that law was essentially loveless, and that love was essentially lawless. And that’s why I asked God, “What does your law have to do with love?”

And then it also occurred to me: Nearly 100 % of the time, my pressing moral questions are not, “How am I going to handle this terrible catastrophe, or survive this life-threatening hardship?” but “How am I going to handle my privilege, my power and everything that comes with my relative wealth, strength and security?” I don’t live in Auschwitz or a Japanese POW camp. For such a blessed, privileged life as mine, there is no reason to search for an exception clause to “Thou shalt not steal,” or even, “Thou shalt not covet.” If anything, my responsibility to such laws is greater because of my privilege and security.

Thirty years later, it seems obscene to have used so much of our leisure, education and power thinking up reasons why people might not be able to honor their parents or be faithful to their wedding vows. It is better by far to use our powers and privileges to work for a world in which people are not put into the heart-breaking, gut-wrenching dilemmas that we debated so hard and so long. For that, following the Ten Commandments is a necessary start.

But I wasn’t done arguing with God. “I thought we weren’t saved by obeying your commandments, but simply by your grace through our faith,” I said. Once again, I couldn’t tell if that was a sigh or a snicker coming from above. And it almost seemed, again, as though I could hear the Lord of heaven and earth asking me, “What did I save you for, my child, but for an eternal life of love? And what better definition of love have I given you than my commandments? What better description of love have I given than in the kinds of relationships bounded by my commands? What is the essence of the law but that you love me and your neighbor? And how can you love and obey me if you don’t trust me? What did my Son say to those who asked him, ‘What is the work of God, that we might do it?’”

I paused and searched my memory until God said, “If that doesn’t ring a bell, type the words into your internet Bible site.” I did, and up came John 6: 29: “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one whom he has sent.” So there it is, the first work of the law is faith, trust in God. Faith is where obedience starts. Love is the nature of the law, and God’s laws give form, definition and boundaries to love. Yes, of course Christians are released from the ritual and ceremonial laws of Moses. But from the earliest times Christians have taught, and have been taught, the basic moral and spiritual structure of God’s covenant with Israel, embodied in the Ten Commandments, and in the supreme law on which they hang: to love God with all our heart, mind and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves. And there you have clear descriptions of love.

That’s when I remembered something from an Old Testament class. That the Ten Commandments can be translated not just as “You shall not murder…” or “You shall not covet….” but as “You will not murder” or “You will not covet….” In other words, to love God and our fellow humans, you will not have other gods before God; you will not make a graven image to bow down to and worship; you will not take God’s name in vain; you will honor your mother and father.

Since love is the nature and goal of the law, then we could even say, “Love does no murder….love does not covet…or coveting is not love.” Think of The Ten Commandments as the Ten Boundary Markers. Inside those will-nots, we have a lot of freedom. From those boundary markers and beyond however, we leave the land of love. Love will not steal; love will not bear false witness; love will not kill…”

So I asked again, “Is this what it is to love you, God? Simply to obey your commands?” As soon as I posed the next question, I knew it was foolish, but it popped out of my mouth anyway. I have a seminary degree, but still I blurted it forth: “But words like ‘obey’ and ‘obedience’ seem so harsh and so unloving! ‘Obey’ and ‘obedience’ are for taskmasters and people we fear, not for someone we would love. I don’t demand that anyone I love obey me.”

Then it seemed as though I could hear another sigh, and a voice repeating the words of John that follow his words, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” The words were: “ And his commandments are not burdensome.” But disobeying them sure is burdensome. Just ask the business man who robbed banks to keep his office supply business afloat. Or at least he tried to. But the only place he could process all the money he got without raising eyebrows was at the race track or a casino. He hoped to be able to take his money from gambling to the bank with proof that it came from his winnings, not from banks. As often as not, however, he lost more than he gambled. And he may have gotten addicted to gambling, and to the rush of making bank tellers tremble. So he had to keep robbing more banks. By the time he was caught and sentenced, he actually said he was relieved. He wished they had caught him sooner! It would have been so much easier, he said, if he had simply let his office supply store go bankrupt and never get started on a secret life of addiction to theft and gambling. Obeying the eighth commandment, or the 8^th description of love, “You will not steal,” would have been so much easier, much less burdensome.

But God didn’t tell me about the penitent businessman. I found his story in an online news source. Instead a question occurred to me: “When you object to words like ‘obey’ and ‘obedience’ have you forgotten just who is the Creator and who is the created, and what the Creator’s rights are?” But that wasn’t God who asked me that. It was me.

What God seemed to say was, “My child, I gave you my commands out of love for you, not out of any desire to burden you or stifle you. I want you to know joy and an eternal quality of relationships.” I didn’t hear that from heaven, nor from a burning bush. It comes out of the whole scope and sweep of the Bible, the sense that God gave his commands as a gift, not a burden. “He has revealed his word to Jacob,” says Psalm 147, “his laws and decrees to Israel. He has done this for no other nation; they do not know his laws.”

Twenty- seven years ago, when I taught at a Native-American-run school in St. Paul, I was given a precious gift. On a day when no students were in and we were catching up on grading and administrative stuff, the oldest teacher in the school invited me out to a hole-in-the-wall around the corner for coffee together. After we chatted about other stuff, like the students, I asked him what life was like when he grew up on the White Earth Indian Reservation, during the Great Depression. He organized his tales around the seasons: April was for maple syrup-making and fish spearing; May for planting gardens; summer for building, fishing, farming and gardening, fall for hunting and gathering fire wood; the dead of winter for cutting timber for pulp and lumber companies. Not only was he giving me lessons in history and culture, he was sharing an important glimpse of himself. I have always treasured the gift of that hour over coffee, talk, and self-disclosure.

That’s how our Hebrew spiritual friends and ancestors have understood the gift of God’s law and the commandments. Not as a way to earn God’s love, but as an expression of God’s love. Even as God expressing himself, giving us a description of himself, even a piece of himself. The commands we hear through scripture tell us as much about God as they do about ourselves, or what we can be. They call us to covenant faithfulness and trustworthiness with each other, because that’s who and how God is.

It is said that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery. So we show the sincerity of our love for God by imitating God. God’s commands simply tell us how best to imitate God through love. The laws of God are love’s definition, or love’s boundary markers.

And then I think I heard God saying that any more words and questions on this matter would only show that I want to make loving God more complicated than its supposed to be, and therefore this would be a good time to stop talking and start doing and let a loving life of obedience and submission to God be the rest of my sermon. The end.