Chosen Children

Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text for this morning comes from John 1:12. "But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God."

We don't have many orphanages in America anymore, do we? There used to be lots of orphanages. Orphanage was where a child would go if they lost their parents, or if their parents couldn't support them, they'd go to an orphanage, and they'd be raised up in that orphanage. And sometimes, the children of the orphanage would be adopted. And some would grow to adulthood without ever knowing life in a family other than the orphanage.

We are familiar with some stories that involve an orphan. You may remember The Little Princess, the movie with Shirley Temple. She becomes orphaned when her father goes missing during the war. And while she's at a school for young ladies, once the father's missing, everything changes in her life, and she becomes a servant.

You may recall the story of Anne of Green Gables. She was an orphan. And she was sent to a brother and sister to help them on the farm. And when she arrives, the brother and sister, they're kind of dumbfounded because they had requested a boy to help with the farm. Instead they get Anne.

Even in America, there was train called The Orphan Train, and it would pick up orphans - between 1854 and 1929 about 200,000 orphans - from cities like New York or Boston or Philadelphia. And these trains would go west with these orphans, and they'd stop at various towns. The children would get off and the people of the community, they'd come by and they'd look over the children. In many ways, much like they would look at a horse or a cow. Because they were looking for someone to work on the farm or the ranch.

Well, one of those orphans, a man by the name of Lee Nailling, wrote a book entitled The Orphan Train Rider: One Boy's True Story. Lee and his two brothers were put on the Orphan Train by their father in New York. And the father had given to Lee an envelope that had the father's name and address on it. And the father said, when you get to your destination, your final destination, write to me. Let me know where you are.

Well, at one of the towns, two of his brothers were adopted. But not Lee. He continued on and on on that train, finally being picked out by a family in Texas. And by the time he, himself got off that train once and for all, that envelope and that address were gone. There was no way to contact or reach his father. Probably no way to get in contact with his brothers. He was lost. He was abandoned. And so are you and I. We're sometimes - if not orphans - maybe feel like orphans. Lost, abandoned, forgotten, rejected. And yet, God promises that He will not leave us as orphans.

Jesus, Himself says those words to the disciples before his Ascension. "I will not leave you as orphans, but I will come to you."

How does our Lord come to us? He comes to us in His word that is spoken and read. He comes to us in the remembrance of our baptism where God claimed us, adopted us as His children. He comes to us with the very body and blood in His supper with which He redeemed us and paid our ransom. That's how the Lord comes to us. And He comes to us in the Holy Spirit, who works through that water and that word and that meal to sustain us in that faith, which that very word has created in us.

Now, when we have a natural-born child, like even when I was growing up, it was rare that anybody knew whether they were having a son or a daughter. You pretty much had to wait till the day of the birth for the doctor to say, you have a healthy son. You have a healthy daughter. There weren't any of those ultrasounds that - I give a great deal of credit to those who read those things, cuz to me, it all looks like a blur. But they can tell, "Well, there's the head, and there's the feet, and there's the heart beating" and all that wonderful stuff.

And so today, we can know if we're having a son or a daughter, and maybe we find out, but we keep it from everybody else. I think that would be kind of hard to do. But for the most part, you couldn't say "Well, I want a boy, and I want him to have rusty hair, and I want him to be nice and muscular, cuz I want him to be able to help on the farm." No, you pretty much got whatever the combination of you and your spouse's genes worked out to be. And you couldn't hand it back to the doctor and say "Um, can I exchange this?" There wasn't a 30-day, you know, trial: well, I can't handle the diaper changing and the feeding and all that stuff; I want to return it. No. No. But in our world today, even more so and more so, it's almost like going into a make-your-own-pizza place. Where you pick what color hair and what color eyes and what kind of dimples and everything. And you can pretty much know what you're going to get.

But with an adoption, well you may know what you get. Maybe you foster the child for a time before you adopt them. And God, well, He adopts us. And if we're honest with ourselves, we're really not what God would want, are we? We're sinful. We're ornary. We grumble. Kind of sounds like at home sometimes, doesn't it? And there's a cost. I mean there is a cost to having a child naturally, of course. But there's also a cost when you adopt someone. Maybe having to go over to another country to visit orphanages - because as I said, we don't have any in America hardly at all anymore. And there's all the legal work. And that cost.

And just like there's a cost for adopting a human child, so too, there's a great cost to God our Heavenly Father to adopt you and I. To adopt you and I as a children. Great cost. In fact, it cost God His own dear Son. His own dear Son.

And I imagine there's a great deal of preparation, particularly if you have children of your own and you're going to bring someone into your family through adoption. Will you welcome the new child as your brother or sister? A little work there. Maybe there will be some jealousy issues.

Of course, our Lord Jesus was perfectly prepared for what was going to be entailed in the Father adopting you and I as His children. And in fact, God wants to adopt every child into His family. He does that through baptism. He doesn't want any to be without.

When we look at those words of John, He gave the right to become children of God. God the Father, the One who created everything, He's the one that gives the right for us to become children of God. He adopts us. He takes us in. And children of God - that's what we are. A couple of weeks back, John in his first epistle says: see what love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God. And that's what we are. And if we're an adopted child into a family, we share that name. We are part of that family. We are no longer an outsider.

Now, unfortunately, Lee didn't necessarily know that kind of love. People were just interested in somebody to work as a hired hand, only work for free.

God welcomes us as children. And as children, that means we're heirs with Christ Jesus, of all the blessings of heaven. He gave the right to become children of God. Not born of blood, of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.

Some of those orphan stories, they don't have a happy ending. Some of them may work in factories - cuz a child could work in those factories in the late 1800s into the early 1900s. Maybe they worked and labored. Maybe they were injured. It wasn't an easy life.

But we know, as children of God that we're not left as orphans. He comes to us. And while our story in this world may have its trials and may have its tribulations and may have its difficulties, we know that also, it too has a good ending. A happy ending. That just like Marilla and her brother Anne, with all that entailed, God the Father welcomes us with all that we are, all that we do. The good and the bad and the ugly. And He accepts us as His own. And He gives us a good ending. A good, permanent home with Jesus as our elder Brother. And we all, all those who call upon the name of the Lord as brothers and sisters, living together in peace and harmony, we indeed are chosen children. Just like a family will choose whom they will adopt, God our Father has chosen each and every one of us to be His child.

He's placed His name upon us in our baptism. He continues to care for us. And He wants so many more. He is ready and willing to adopt so many more. No need to be an orphan, left in a dark cold world, where evil and shame and guilt are all around. But to become a child adopted by a gracious Heavenly Father, with an elder Brother who cares for us and defends us. And for the Holy Spirit, who comforts and guides us.

Yes, my brothers and sisters, we are chosen children, chosen by the very will of God to be co-heirs with our Lord Jesus, our elder Brother. As we continue to await His return, we are reminded again that He is ever-present with us, and thanks be to God for His choosing us to be His very own. And may we show forth that love and that peace and that joy with those who still, still are in need of that adoption, as well, for their comfort and well-being, as well as for the glory of God, our Heavenly Father. Amen.

And now may the peace of God, which surpasses our understanding, keep our hearts and our minds in faith in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.