God’s Children

Today we have blessed and welcomed two children into our congregation. And I want to give a very simple message today for the children of our congregation, and to all of us who have been children. And that is that the truth of your being, the truth of your identity, is that you are good. You have come into the world from God, and God dwells within you. The essence of your truest, deepest self is one with God, not separate from God. The source of your deepest desires is God’s energy, not something wrong or to be avoided.

We have in the Western Christian church a powerful and sometimes damaging doctrinal inheritance. In particular, we have taught and believed the idea that the truest and deepest thing about humans is sin. That who we really are is alien from God. That Christ comes to us as something essentially different from us in order to save us from being ourselves. We have said that we need Christ in order to make us children of God, instead of knowing we have always been children of God, whether we have acknowledged that or not.

We have taught children that the basic fact of their existence is that there is something wrong with them, when we should have been teaching them that they are image bearers of God.

Am I saying that there is no such thing as sin? And that there is no need for Christ’s salvation? No, that is not what I am saying. It is as clear as day that our world is broken, that people are broken, and that we cannot on our own behalf achieve the peace and wholeness that we long for. But why do we long for peace and wholeness if there is not something deeper within us than the brokenness? Sin is a reality, if we see it as an infection, as something that distorts and falsifies what is good and beautiful in us. But I want to affirm that the goodness and the beauty are the deeper realities, and sin the distortion, rather than sin being the deeper reality and goodness and beauty an accidental by-product…something that remains after the fall, but in a patchy and unreliable way. Yes, sin is pervasive - it infects families, systems, organisations as well as individual humans, yes it affects and taints all of us - it is not to be taken lightly. But how ugly our minds have become if we can look into the face of a newborn baby and see there a ‘sinner’, rather than a glimpse of the mystery of God.

The consequences for our world of our acceptance of the original sin doctrine have been profound. This doctrine has allowed Christian imperial powers to dominate and conquer, subduing the ‘corruption’ they perceived in indigenous or foreign peoples.

It has legitimated violence on a large scale and a small. It is even now being used in some Christian circles to legitimate violence against children in the name of discipline.

It has bred fear and self-loathing in people, even people supposedly assured of the grace of Christ. Hear this story from Celtic writer J. Philip Newell:

“I was awakened in the middle of the night by an earth tremor. But I did not realise what it was. Being a good little evangelical boy, I thought Christ had come to take the saved to heaven. But being not such a good little evangelical boy, I thought Christ had come and left me behind. And I thought it was probably related to the fact that I had been kissing the girl next door in the garden at home. So Christ had come and taken my family but left me.”

How many of us, I wonder, have experienced the same fea—that ultimately, we will be rejected, left behind by the one who we have also been taught loves us the most? How have we managed to take a message of bountiful, abundant grace, and use it to instil fear in children that maybe they are not quite going to make the grade? And moreover that this ‘not making the grade’ will probably have something to do with our physical desires?

Hear two passages from the First Testament that speak of God’s intimacy with us:

The first from Isaiah:

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands”  (Is 49:14-16)

And the second from Psalm 139:

For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

I accept that we might question or doubt these affirmations when confronted with our own suffering or the sufferings of another. But even so, they stand resolutely against any theology that says we are all, from conception, estranged from God, essentially sinful.

The prologue to the Gospel of John says that all things came into being through Christ the Word . . . what has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

Yes, we live in darkness. But we come into being in and through Christ, the Light. And by ‘we’ I mean all humans, and every created thing. This light continues to shine within our own darkness and in the darkness of our world. This light cannot be overcome.

Let us teach our children about the light within them. Let us look for the light within ourselves. Let us commit to the spiritual path that invites God to uncover this light more and more. Let us seek the light in one another, working hard to see through and beyond the distortions and the distancing that are products of pain and habit.

These children that we blessed and gave thanks for this morning do not have to do anything, say anything, or not do anything, to deserve the love of their parents, and their identity as Christians, or members of this community. This is also true for all of us. As Christians, we are not called into something that is alien to who we really are. We are called to remember who we really are…children of God, made in the image of God, bearing the light of God within us. And so I say to all of you, regardless of the circumstances that brought you here today: We welcome you and we bless you in God’s name. You are loved and you are wanted. There will always be a place for you among God’s people.

Amen.

This sermon was based on ideas in J. Philip Newell’s book Christ of the Celts. I am grateful to him for his insights.