Adopted into Life
Some moments in life are forever. One of mine came on a date, my third date with Meg. She had this little boy Bobbie who was 4½ and we decided to take him to see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That was a fun movie, we all loved it and were chatting about as I drove them home. We were in Meg’s car which had a bench seat in the front – you never see that anymore – and Bobbie was right between us. We were stopped at a traffic light in Lakeland, Ingram Avenue and Main Street, westbound on Ingram to be precise, when he turned his little blonde head my way, looked up at me and said, “Can I call you daddy?”
Did I mention this was our third date?
That was, of course, a huge question. It brought into clear focus the fact that I wasn’t just dating his mother. This budding relationship involved the heart and happiness of a little boy.
It was just a few weeks later that the answer became “Yes!” About 6 months later we were gathered in Judge Stokes’ chambers at the courthouse in Bartow to make it legal by finalizing and signing his adoption papers. There I sat at one end of a conference table, Judge Stokes at the other. Meg, Bobbie, her parents and my parents were all there with us.
Judge Stokes looked me squarely in the eye and said, “Do you understand that once we sign these papers, he will be yours? He will be yours equally in every way with any other children you may have, no different than if you were his natural father?” I said I did understand, we signed the papers. Rob got a new identity as my son and I became a daddy that very day.
That was a big moment. It was life changing, life transforming. The reality of Judge Stokes’ words were underscored when his new birth certificate arrived a week or two later. There I was, listed as the father. Rob’s birth certificate looks exactly like his siblings’, as though I were there from the very beginning, right in the hospital. It was in a very real, legal sense a rebirth for both of us.
Maybe I should have saved that story for Father’s Day in a few weeks, but it draws us into the heart of this whole issue of being adopted children of God. It’s very easy to see the radical change that occurred from the moment Bobbie turned his little blonde head up at me. He didn’t have it all figured out. He had a hole in his heart, a hole in his life, that needed to be filled. His heart turned my heart. (It’s a good thing I had already fallen in love with his mother!) The bond was formed and later formalized. There were rough patches ahead, but we were both drawn forward by the vision of what father and son ought to be. We are there, and I’m most happy to note that he has a great relationship with his four children.
What does God want from us but that heartfelt turn towards him, when we come to Him and call him Father, and not just in the procreative sense but in a relational sense? (It is helpful to think of Abba as “daddy” in Aramaic to underscore the relational aspect.)
This famous encounter between Jesus and Nicodemus occurs early in John’s Gospel. All John has shared about Jesus’ ministry to this point is the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned the water into wine, that he cleansed the Temple and did some signs, whatever those were. Then we get a very curious setup for this most famous encounter: “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.” (John 2:23-25)
Now comes Nicodemus. Nicodemus comes by night, which illustrates his obscured vision. Despite all of his knowledge and experience as a Pharisee, he’s spiritually in the dark. But a light shines in his darkness, he is starting to see the truth revealed in Jesus and he wants to understand it, to reconcile it with everything else he knows.
Jesus said we cannot see the Kingdom of God unless we are born from above. Nicodemus counters with a very physical analogy, but it runs much deeper than that. How can anyone be born after having grown old? As far as he understands it, he is standing on thousands of years of witness. He is standing on Moses, David and all the prophets. All of that is very old and formational to them.
We don’t know how much Nicodemus has seen and heard from Jesus to this point, but it’s clearly enough to raise a very important question: What is missing? The Spirit, the life-giving font of relationship with God which Nicodemus will gain through Jesus. It is as though Nicodemus has just been plopped onto the front seat and wondering, “Who is this guy?” and it is just dawning on him that he can turn his little blonde head up and call him Daddy.
Nicodemus isn’t quite there yet. Note that all we really hear from Nicodemus is the same question asked 3 times in different ways. How can these things be? The answer Jesus gives becomes obvious once he says it. How can they not be! How can he be a teacher of the scriptures and completely bypassed all the references to the Spirit of God, the heart of God? Even the rules and regulations aren’t there for their own sake, they are all meant to direct us on the path of loving God above all else and loving each other. If we are going to turn to God and ask him to be our daddy that is absolutely going to cause a rebirth far beyond what Rob and I experienced. And we get a lot more siblings, too!
All of this draws us into relationship with Him. And this is the point of Holy Trinity Sunday. Yes, it presents the theological concept of One God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. But the bigger issue is what God is doing in that process. The essence of God is relational, among Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Augustine likened it to lover, beloved and love. God is drawing us into that relationship with him.
We wind up, as Paul notes, on the same basis as all God’s other children, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. God then sees us just as he does all his children, including Jesus. Welcome to the family of God!
AMEN