A God Who Adopts
If memory serves me correctly, one of the persistent themes in a lot of the TV shows and movies I watched as a kid involved adoption. It always struck me as a little strange that, in many of these stories, the revelation that a character was adopted was so often treated as a devastating piece of news. Sometimes this was presented in a jokey way; at other times the tone was more somber. But regardless of the mood, there was usually a stigma associated with being adopted that seemed odd. Perhaps this was because of the work that my mother did. For years, she was the director of a crisis pregnancy center, and her mission, day in and day out, was to help young women who were struggling with difficult decisions surrounding children they did not plan to have, children that, in many cases, they felt wholly unable to welcome into the world. In this context, adoption was viewed as the happiest of outcomes. Not only was it a decision that often led to life rather than death; it was also a decision that led to a couple receiving a beautiful gift, the chance to be parents. In so many of the cases that I witnessed during those years, the decision to adopt often led to a beautiful relationship between the birth mother and the adoptive parents, so that God was working to create ties of community and family where before there had been none.
I couldn’t help but think of these powerful, beautiful possibilities as I read this week’s lectionary passages for the second week of Christmas. Here, in the aftermath of a child’s birth, as we continue to celebrate the coming of the Son of God, these texts point to God’s work of renewal, reconciliation, and, perhaps most astonishing of all, adoption. John’s gospel tells us that, while the Son of God was rejected by many, while many of his own did not receive him, to those who did receive him God gave the power to become children of God. That is, through the coming of the Christ, through the incarnation of the eternal Word, the family of God grew that much more, as God made space for all who would be open to what this Word made flesh was doing.
Paul expounds on this in his letter to the Ephesians, where he writes that God destined us for adoption as his children according to his good pleasure. The redemption we have through Jesus Christ grants us an inheritance, a place at our Heavenly Father’s table, that would have been unthinkable otherwise. Of course, when Paul speaks of this adoption, he’s making it clear that this choice, this act of God to bring into his family those who formerly were without a home in this world, is manifest even among the Gentiles. This is all part of God’s plan to gather up all things in him, making whole that which once was fractured, binding up that which was broken, and drawing to himself that which was scattered.
This act of gathering, of restoring, of adopting serves as a fulfillment of Jeremiah’s prophecy, which, even centuries before the birth of Christ, looked forward to a day when God’s children would be gathered from among all the nations. And this story is particularly fitting in this time of transition between Christmas and Epiphany. The magi, after all, saw a star in the East and came from far off to worship the child who had been born in Bethlehem, heeding God’s call, listening to God’s wisdom, and encountering the Word made flesh. It’s not hard to imagine that these travelers from a distant place came away from that encounter transformed, with a sense that God’s promises might be a blessing even to them, and that there might be room in the family of God’s people even for them. Our God is a God who adopts, a God who provides an inheritance and a place at the table and a family for those who need it most.
