God Sent His Son

by Robert Hamerton-Kelly

"But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons."

-- Galatians 4:4

In our Christmas celebrations so far we have meditated mostly on the Gospel, presenting a concrete and matter of fact account of the birth of our Savior. Today on the first Sunday of Christmas we step back from the stable and the straw, the sheep and the shepherds and take a more distant, more reflective point of view. With the Apostle we ask, “What really happed here, and what is its significance?” Let Paul help us answer those questions as we meditate on his text.

“The time had fully come.” I remember that the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” includes a number in which Judas, I think, asks Jesus why he came before the invention of the mass media. I remember classes in church history where scholars explained that the time was right because Rome had unified the world and put in a system of roads, all of which made it easy to spread the Gospel. All of this is nonsense of course, because God’s time is always the right time, and our giving advice in these matters is ludicrous. “O, by the way God, you should have waited for the internet,” as if the Gospel has not done quite well down the centuries without our media experts, or “Congratulations Lord for thinking of the Roman roads! Might as well use those military installations to spread the Gospel.” In any conceivable case God’s time is the right time.

What happened at the right time and in the right place? “God sent forth his son.” This is a vivid way of stating the significance of the miraculous birth of this child. He was born of a woman, not of a man and a woman together, the Holy Spirit was his father and Mary his mother, and for that reason he was called, “Son of God.” Paul puts this event in poetic terms; the virginal conception means that God sent his Son.

He was born “under the Law” of Moses, and thus into a particular religious and cultural specificity. He was a Jew, but Paul says that the reason why he was born under the Law was to make Jewishness irrelevant to God’s work, to purchase our freedom from Mosaic Law and culture, so that we might receive adoption and become not the slaves of God, with a status defined by law, but God’s adopted children, and therefore free as members of the family. The reference to “purchase” alludes to the manumission of a slave upon the payment of a certain price.

Indeed, those who through faith in Jesus become children rather than slaves, receive the Spirit of God who enables them to call upon God in the same way as Jesus did, “Abba” “Father!” The relationship with God is for the faithful believer in Jesus, essentially like his own, one of filial intimacy. As the apostle concludes, “therefore, you are no longer a household slave but a son and member of the family, and if a son, you are an heir of God.” 

Thus far I have simply summarized the Pauline passage, now I suggest we try to discern and then understand its focal point. I think the focal point is this: The birth of God as a human being makes all cultural distinctions irrelevant to a relationship with the divine. Paul was a Jew and Jesus was a Jew, and that is irrelevant. Indeed, God sent his son in a particular cultural setting precisely to show the irrelevance of culture to the relationship with the divine. That is what Paul means when he says that Christ was born under the law to purchase our freedom from the law and to enable us to enter a new covenant with God, of adoption. Adoption has no ethnic or cultural connotations; it is a human act alone, without any qualifications.

This is the point I believe Paul is making and I suggest that in the aftermath of Trent Lott’s disgrace, we think about it again. Cultural, Ethnic, Racial, and yes, Religious distinctions are irrelevant to our relationship with God, and therefore irrelevant to our value as human beings, nevertheless, our pitiful little human species, so full of pride, so puffed up in fury, thinks these distinctions are everything, cannot live without them, and is willing to kill in their name. Lott shows that in this country many whites still regard themselves as of more intrinsic value than blacks. The Republican “Southern strategy,” is so successful because it is covert white racism, and racism is still as American as motherhood and apple pie, and now even a bit enlarged in scope to include Hispanics, and anyone of a darkish complexion and a Middle East point of origin.

Here’s a snippet from a website linked to the GOP web page in Guildford County North Carolina, a page that carries the pictures of Elizabeth Dole and President Bush. The link is to IslamExposed.com, which describes Islam as “one of the greatest evils on our planet…This false religion is nothing more than a barbaric occult invented by savages for savages.” The GOP apologized after the Council on American-Muslim Relations protested, and severed the link. Why do I suspect that such ignorant nonsense comes from Christian sources?

Mention of the Middle East reminds us of the most shameful example of religious bigotry bursting out in savage violence on the planet today. I for one, find it easy to understand the situation as the nemesis of idolatry, - idolatry of land, race, ethnicity, and culture, all the things Paul says Christ came to free us from.

The message of Christmas that the Apostle Paul wants us to hear and accept and act on is this: In Jesus Christ God became a human being and thus empowered the category of the human beyond all culture, ethnicity or religion. In other words, those who by the miracle of faith enter a relationship with God in Christ experience an empowerment that enables them to cross the boundaries of culture, without losing their humanity, sets them free from the bondage of place and past, reveals their real humanity and sustains it in power. They realize their identity as children of God beyond all this-worldly distinction, because they are bonded to the universally human. Or at least that’s what should be.

Alas, it has pertained only in small pockets, and often against institutionalized Christianity. We know that we have made a mockery of Christ in these matters, more than we have praised him. I bet Trent Lott and most of his crypto racist constituents are Christians with a capital K (cf. Justice Thomas’ recent rare exclamation in the Supreme Court on the subject of Cross burning). And here in Woodside we tut-tut about “all these immigrants,” meaning Mexicans are not entitled to earn a living here as we are, when we should rather be welcoming them for the extraordinary contribution they make to our work and progress!

Meditate on this: God became a human being, a poor human being, whose life from the beginning was threatened by shame and rejection in the special circumstances of his virginal conception, and by the murderous rage of the tyrant Herod shortly after his birth. (We used to think that a tyrant having every child of a certain age in a certain village murdered was too bad to be true, but anyone who has been awake during recent history knows that it is nothing unusual). This means that we must like Joseph, Mary’s husband, stand by the poor and weak and protect them. God loves the poor; God values the weak. So must you and I.

And meditate on this: As you enter into the faith of Christ you will receive the gift of that Holy Spirit who cries in you, “Abba, Father!” As you realize this fatherhood of God for yourself, so you will realize that every other human being is your brother and sister. The order of this action is important; first internalize that you are God’s beloved child, that God is your Father, God knows you by name, loves your every part, and cares for you entirely. As that marvelous love rises in your mind so you will be empowered to love your fellow human beings, the other beloved children of your beloved father.

Amen.