God's Children

There is a sense in which all people are God's children. We are created by God in his image and are wonderfully made. Through the covenant with Abraham, God has claimed the first people of the promise and made covenant with the children of Abraham so that wherever the descendants of Abraham and Sarah might be, these children will serve as a blessing to all nations. Through these children of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, God is in the mission of calling all people unto himself, as Isaiah 25 declares that all nations on the last day will be drawn to Israel's holy mountain for a feast which shall know no end. God has done this. Through the waters of Yam Suph (the Sea of Reeds or what we commonly call the Red Sea) God called the descendants of Jacob out of slavery and called them into the wilderness where they might worship the God of their ancestors. In the waters of the Sea, God drowned Pharaoh's army and chariots and liberated a people whom God had called to be his people. God's mission is proclaimed in the oldest piece of Scripture in Exodus 15, in a song attributed to a woman sung as an antiphon by women: “Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea.” This victory at the sea in which the people are called from bondage as their enemy is drowned in the waters. This freed people and former slaves are called to be a people who are led through the wilderness by God's presence who nourishes and leads them to the land of the Promise. This prefigures our own baptismal living.

It is God who leads us with the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night and who nourishes us with the Word, providing bread and water for the journey. God's mission is that of calling a people into the promise. God is in mission in our own world. This mission is made visible in the incarnation of his Son. In our own Baptism we joined to the promise of Israel. Yam Suph is an archetype of our own Baptism. We die to the claim which sin has upon us. In the waters of Baptism we are reborn and brought safely into a life of service and a life of following the one who calls and leads us. Christ, our rock is our sustenance and drink. The Son whom the Father has sent in mission is our guide in life’s wilderness. We have died in our Baptism with Christ, but we have been raised to new life. We are thus reborn as we are joined to his death burial and resurrection in what we call the great paschal mystery. Ecclesiastes 3:2 tells us that there is a time to be born and a time to die. In Baptism we are told now is the time that we die and we are reborn. In Baptism, we are adopted as God's own children; grafted into the promise made to Abraham and Sarah's descendants. Like slaves who are freed or manumitted in ancient times, we renounce our connection to our old master and claim obedience to a new master. The old master which we renounce is bondage to evil, the devil and sin. We declare that we are subservient now to Christ as we profess our faith in the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit. When we were Baptized we were led by the Father through the Spirit to to the Church, the body of Christ which is our mother. We pass through the waters of birth and are taken up from the waters into a life into the Church, which is the body of Christ. As such we are initiated into the Church, just like the midwife or doctor who helped to deliver us in our first birth. Like the manumitted slave who in ancient times was adopted by the master's family, we take on the name of the one whose family we have now joined. We bear the name Christian. We are anointed with oil with which kings and priests in ancient times were anointed. We thus are anointed for Christ’s threefold ministry which into the prophetic, priestly, and royal ministry which Christ has called us to share in with him. We also share in the same sevenfold gifts of the Spirit which Christ as our brother was the legitimate recipient which Isaiah 11 recalls: “2 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.” We are marked with the cross of Christ. Like slaves who once bore the tattoo or mark denoting that they were slaves, we bear the mark indelibly of our slavery or servant-hood in the name of our master and the one who has called us. It is this indelible mark which is recalled and made visible in a cross of ashes on Ash Wednesday. As Christ's own, we bear on our brows the mark of him who has died for us. Like the Israelites, we are nourished by the God who has called us from our Baptism into the wilderness. Just as Jesus who in Mark's gospel is baptized and is driven by the Spirit into the wilderness where he is tempted and yet cared for by the Father, we too by the Holy Spirit are driven from our Baptism into the wilderness places in our lives. Yet God sustains us, and despite temptation, God sends his holy angels to care for us. Like a pillar or cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night God leads us, until that day when we come to Jordan and we are called by Christ, who receives us unto himself on Canaan's side. From the wilderness, across Jordan into the Promised Land, we as the Baptized children of God are received into the presence of God in the beatific vision and with the Church triumphant, into the visible gathering of the communion of saints of all ages. We are led into the land of Promise by the great shepherd of the sheep, who calls us by name. We who were called to the waters of Baptism, are called, and hearing the voice of the Son of man, are raised with him. As St. Paul reminds us, this mortal nature puts on the imperishable. In this resurrection we witness the fulfillment of our Baptism. The goal or our Baptism is in our death, both a death by water in which our sins are drowned, and in our mortal death as we return to the dust of the ground from which God created us. But the completion of our Baptism is in our bodily resurrection, as we are raised like the one who is the first fruits of those who have died and fallen asleep. hen shall come to pass the vision of Isaiah 25. We shall gather with all nations in the land of the promise on God's holy mountain. As the baptized children of God, we are called to live in the wilderness in the meantime, always recalling the victory
which God has accomplished for us at our Yam Suph, that is our Baptism.