The Trouble With Prepositions

            Here are the questions that I want you to ponder today:  What does it mean to be a child of God?    Why are prepositions important?    Does the object of the preposition make a difference?  What do prepositions have to do with being a child of God?

            Trinity Sunday is the one Sunday a year when we try to understand the mystery of the three persons of God and their unity in the mystery of the Godhead.    This story has been told of St. Augustine, one of the most astute thinkers the Christian Church has ever produced.  St. Augustine was walking along the seashore one day while pondering the doctrine of the Trinity… Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.  He seemed to hear a voice saying, "Pick up one of the large sea shells there by the shore." So he picked it up. Then the voice said, "Now pour the ocean into the shell." And St. Augustine said, "Lord, I can't do that.  The shell is too small." And the voice answered, "Of course not. In the same way, how can your small, finite mind ever hold and understand the mystery of the eternal, infinite, triune God?"    Whether the story is true or not, the final question is:  How can our small, finite minds ever hold and understand the mystery of the eternal, infinite, triune God?    Yet, we are called the children of God… and that, alone, calls us to attempt an understanding of that great mystery. 

            What does it mean to be “of” God… to be children of God?    When a child is born, the adults that play a significant role in its life are its mother and father.  Science tells us that, within a short time, the child recognizes, first, its mother’s voice, which it also heard while in the womb, and then its father’s voice.    From the moment of its birth, the child begins the struggle of understanding what it means to be born “into” a family… to be a child “of” someone.    And, that initial struggle is difficult.    Imagine, for a moment, what life must be like for the newborn.    Put yourself in its place. 

You have just spent nine relaxing months in your own private hot tub, continuously fed nourishment without ever having to seek it, always hearing the steady, rhythmic thump-thump of your mother’s heart close at hand and the gentle, muffled sound of your mother’s voice, filtered through layers of water and skin, and all the while being able to move freely in a dark, weightless, warm and cozy world with no enemies. 

Suddenly, without explanation, you are ruthlessly shoved out into a cold, noisy, and incredibly bright world, where the comforting thump-thump of your mother’s heart is replaced by clanging, banging, clapping, thudding, and loud voices… a myriad of noises you have never heard before.  A panoply of strange troll faces push themselves at you, constantly talking to and touching you.  The hot tub is gone.  And the food service is incredibly slow and usually only appears if you scream bloody murder at the top of your lungs until your face turns purple.  There are bright lights everywhere.  And, worst of all, you have no privacy at all.  Even total strangers… which is everyone to you… is allowed to hold, poke, examine, pull, twist, chuck, and bounce you.    Sleep… if it comes at all… never comes when you are gently suspended in a warm, thick liquid, but only on hard surfaces that jiggle much too often and are covered with scratchy cloth.  Why would any newborn want to live past the first hour of life?    They must be convinced they have arrived in hell. 

But, having survived that hour, this child spends the rest of its first year… if not its entire life… trying to figure what it means to be… a child “of”… in my case… a “child of Dick and Evelyn Bryant.”  And psychologists make a lot of money helping us figure it out. 

You heard my discussion with the children today about what it means to be the child “of” someone… to belong “to” some family… both in terms of privileges and responsibilities.  In Jewish families, children also had privileges and responsibilities.  Sons, in particular, knew that they carried the family name… and with it, all the honor and status of that name.  The children also had access to the power that came with that recognition.  The sons knew that they would inherit the family’s land and wealth when their parents died.  At the same time, they knew that the privileges of that name brought with it certain responsibilities…the responsibility to live their lives so that their actions would reflect the honor of the name… the responsibility to live and act as others would expect of someone bearing that name… the responsibility to uphold the family’s traditions…to enforce the family laws…and so on.  

In the six verses of our text today, Paul does a great job of bringing in all three persons of the Trinity and illustrating their relationship to us.  Paul says that we are the children of God…and that the Spirit of God bears witness to this fact. We are children of God by adoption into the family of God and, through that adoption we have gained all the rights and privileges reserved for sons in that family.  As children of God, we are loved and protected by God… and the power of God’s name, which we now bear as sons of God.    We have all the status and privileges of sons and we are heirs… and co-heirs with Christ, our brother… of all that God has created.    At the same time, we also have all the responsibilities of the one who bears the family name… the responsibility upholding the family’s traditions… representing the family in public places... of enforcing the family law… and so on.   You see, it is not possible to have the status and privileges without the responsibilities that come with it.    But notice that Paul interchanges the word “son” with the word “child” throughout this passage to illustrate that these privileges and responsibilities fall on all of the children… young and old… male and female…of God.  There are no “second-class” citizens here… and no “second-class children.”  In the eyes of Paul, we are all raised to be with Christ … brothers and sisters of Christ in the family of God… with the Spirit as witness and guide.  (P)

Paul uses a lot of prepositions.  According to Paul, we are children “of” God… and heirs “of” God… if we are led “by” the Spirit of God.  And this Spirit, according to Paul, is not a spirit “of” slavery, but a spirit “of” adoption.  That spirit allows us to be freed from the deeds “of” the body, so that we are not debtors “to” the body… to live according “to” the flesh… captive “to” the needs and desires of our human existence.    In fact, if we are led “by” the Spirit of God and we are children “of” God… heirs “of” God… then, we are joint heirs “with” Christ, who is our brother.  “Of”, “by”, “to”, “with”…when you read some passages in the Pauline epistles, you can get lost in the prepositions.  Every phrase has a preposition. It reminds me of the passage we studied last week where Jesus was praying to God for the disciples and saying that they…the disciples…were “in” the world, but not “of” the world…again, a nuance of prepositions.Yet it is the prepositions that take us to a deeper understanding of our faith.

            One of my favorite foreign language instructors once told me that prepositions are what determine mastery of a language… and, if you cannot master the prepositions, you will never master the language... for native speakers of a language use prepositions in a manner that is unique to that language… and cannot be translated to another language.    In fact, subgroups… or dialects… within a language group often use prepositions differently… and native speakers will pick up that nuance… or the lack of it… in those who are speaking.  So, when we find ourselves deep in the Pauline epistles... buried in a flurry of tiny prepositions … we know we have arrived at a place where Paul is making fine distinctions in the markers of our faith… in the things that identify us as being “true” Christians.    Are we native speakers of the language… or have we just picked up enough phrases to get by… like a tourist in a foreign country?    It is the prepositions that will tell others whether or not we are truly Christian.    Do we live “by” the Spirit… or are we debtors “to” the flesh?    Are we merely “in” the world… or are we also “of” the world? 

            Paul makes clear that the boundaries between the realm of the Spirit and the realm of the flesh do not run simply between believers and nonbelievers.  He clearly points out that believers can live either in the realm of the Spirit or in the realm of the flesh.  Living “in” the realm of the flesh, however, does not constitute an obligation or an indebtedness “to” that realm … to abide by its rules and its culture.  Being “in” the world does not mean one must be “of” the world.  Being “of” the flesh does not constitute an obligation “to” the flesh.  Believers can make a choice… and, Paul says, to choose the flesh and the ways of the body is to choose corruption and death.  Do we live “by” the Spirit… or are we debtors “to” the flesh?    Are we merely “in” the world… or are we also “of” the world?    Do we have a spirit “of” slavery… or a spirit “of” adoption? 

            I want to use that last question to make a point:  Do we have a spirit “of” slavery… or a spirit “of” adoption?    Notice that the prepositions in the two phrases are the same… a spirit “of” slavery… or a spirit “of” adoption.    Perhaps it is not the preposition, but the object of the preposition that is important.    After all, a preposition merely links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence.  A preposition usually indicates the temporal… spatial… or logical relationship of its object to the rest of the sentence.  It is the object of the preposition that completes the verb’s meaning.    If that is the case, then, it is not the word “in”… or “of”… or “by”…or “to”… or “with” that is important, but the word that follows that word in the sentence.    Are we living by “the Spirit”… or by “the flesh?”    Are we children of “God”… or of someone… or something else?    Do we have a spirit of “slavery”… or a spirit of “adoption?”  Paul says that we need to be led by… possessed by… the Spirit and allow the Spirit to control our lives… our desires…our needs… our appetites.  This Spirit is the Spirit of Christ… the Son of God.  By allowing this Spirit to control us is how we live out the reality of our relationship to God… with God… and how we… like Christ… become true children “of God.”  Possessed by the Spirit, we are freed from bondage… even though that sounds like a contradiction… possessed by the Spirit of God, we are freed from the bondage of sin… freed to be truly God’s people… and children of God.    This week, check out the object of the prepositions in your life.  See whether that object is the Spirit of God… or something else.  What links the parts of your life together and completes its meaning?    Amen.

Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17