All Saints Lutheran Church

Pastor Raita Neely

Christmas 2B  January 5, 2003 Ephesians 1:3-14; John 1: 10-18

Adopted!

A most blessed New Year to each of you.  In the church year, the twelve days of Christmas are coming to an end. The world around us has new headlines - massing of troops, results of bowl games, the latest shooting in the cities.  But in the church, we linger in the Christmas season, we are in awe at the mystery of God becoming human.  We continue to sing and be joyful over God's goodness.  We celebrate the birth, life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ whose light overcomes the  darkness in our world.   We rejoice that his light makes a difference  in each of our lives as  God shares our humanity in the Word made flesh.  And today, once again, in the Lord's Supper, the Word is made flesh in each of you as well, that you may go from this time of praise, fellowship and worship to share the light of Christ in your daily lives.  This is your heritage - God with you in Jesus Christ making you God's child.  You are adopted.  Jesus is part of your family tree.   My cousin Janis can tell you about family trees.

He makes his living from them. He inherited a Latvian forest that has been in the family for several hundred years.  The trees he harvests were planted 180 years ago by  our great-grandfather.  The trees he plants won't be ready for market until his great-grandchildren are born.  He's part of a chain.

"Every generation must make a choice," he told me.  "They can either devastate or plant.  They can rape the landscape and get rich, or they can care for the forest, harvest only what is mature, and leave an investment for their children."  With the economic situation in sad shape in Latvia , it would be so tempting for him to cut down more than he should, but that is not what he chooses to do.  He harvests seeds sown by others he never knew, except in family photographs and stories.  He sows seeds to be harvested by descendants he'll never see.  Dependent on the past, responsible for the future; he sees himself as part of a small family  who have depended on each other, loved each other, and who carry a responsibility for leaving a legacy to each other.  Having been raised during the Communist occupation, my cousin is uneasy with people outside the immediate family.  His question?  After all, whom can you trust?

How different for Karis.  She was adopted at the age of six weeks.  Brought to the United States from Korea .  Separated by many miles from the parents of whose flesh and blood she was created.  Her adoptive parents loved her very much and part of that love was shown in helping  her learn her Korean heritage by attending Korean camp, learning the language and  learning to cook and enjoy many ethnic foods.   Growing up in a small town in Minnesota as a Korean girl was not easy.  I remember a day when she was a first grader.  We were there to help Karis celebrate her sixth birthday.  She had been outside playing with other children.    Apparently the others had been teasing her about the fact that she looked different from them.  She ran into the house with tears streaming down her little cheeks.  I remember her looking at her mother with deep longing and asking, "Mommy, when will I look like you?"  Blond, blue - eyed, white, Norwegian-not possible.

Yes, growing up for Karis was not always easy, but what impacted the most who she has become was not the fact that she was Korean, or that she was adopted by a loving American family, but rather that her family told her from the time she was a tiny baby that she had a much bigger family than the one in Korea or here in Minnesota , she was a child of God, baptized, claimed, loved, made in God's image.  Karis takes this heritage very seriously.

In their last  Christmas letter to us she wrote. "I began 2002 as a senior at Concordia, Moorhead-finishing classes, beginning student teaching, completing a global literature anthology research grant, serving as Student Association president, and leading children's programs at Trinity Lutheran and a Korean Presbyterian congregation.  My collegiate career culminated in a graduation celebration- summa cum laude honors, Concordia's servant-leadership award and many a fond farewell.  Last summer, I tutored Somali students, visited family and friends around the state and country and prepared for a year as Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in South Korea.

I'm ending  2002 on Korea 's Jeju island south of the peninsula-teaching over 800 middle school girls, living with a wonderful host family, volunteering at an orphanage, traveling the continent, and continually adapting to Korean culture-things like fish soup for breakfast.  In July, two weeks after my arrival in Korea , I met my birth family after one visit to my orphanage in Seoul and five days waiting.  I never expected to meet my Korean family and could not have imagined so idyllic a reunion with such fine people.  I'll celebrate this Christmas in Seoul with my Korean mother, father, four older sisters, their significant others, my older half-brother, and new nephew.  I look forward to acquainting my two wonderful families with each other when my American family visits Korea this coming February."

Karis ends her letter by writing, This Christmas as we experience the joy of Christ's birth, we hope for peace in our broken world and send you our love. Our story begins and ends with these words.... For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  (John 3:16)

K aris sees the world as her home and family.  All are her brothers, her sisters, needing her care, her compassion.  She feels at home wherever she goes, because she knows God's love and care for all people.

As you stand at the brink of a new year, how do you see the legacy, the inheritance that is yours?  We are all children of the past.  We are all parents of the future.  We are all heirs, benefactors, recipients of the work done by those before us.  We are all born into a world we didn't seed.  How do things look to you?  How do you feel?  Are you proud of what you have received and of what you are passing on?  Maybe you have an inheritance of rich soil, nurtured by parents who loved you and taught you well, not only about who you are, but about who God is in your life and your responsibility in the world that is so much bigger than your small family.  Were you taught the deep values that make life good?   Is part of your inheritance a fiery faith caught from your parents?  Did they tell you that you are adopted?  Did they tell you that you are not only their child, but also God's child?    Did they tell you that the Almighty and merciful God destined you for adoption as the Lord's  child through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of God's will, to the praise of God's glorious grace that God freely bestowed on you in Jesus?  If so, give thanks to God, for you have been blessed .

But some of you may never have heard this good news.  You have a legacy of spiritual poverty, of shame, maybe even abuse.  You grew up on arid land where you had to dig deep to plant good and solid roots.  You thought you had to make it on your own.  Nobody cared.  You might feel like the young woman who told me, "No one has ever done anything for me, and I don't intend to do anything for anyone."  What a sad, sad legacy.  No seed was sown in her soul so she could grow.  At a young age, she is already showing signs of spiritual withering.

Perhaps you grew up in a home of bigotry and so you are intolerant of minorities.  Perhaps you were reared in a home of greed, and as a consequence, your desire for possessions is insatiable.  Perhaps your childhood memories bring more hurt than inspiration.  Perhaps the voices of your past cursed you, belittled you, ignored you, abused you.  As a child, you thought such treatment was typical.  Now you know better.

Maybe your past was not much to brag about.  Maybe you've even seen evil.  What are you to do, do you rise above the past and make a difference?  Or do you remain controlled by the past and make excuses.  Will you live in the land of "if only....."    Maybe you have to flip way back in your family album to find an ancestor worth imitating.  And today  you find yourself trying to escape what was and to forge something new and different for yourself and those you love.

Whether your life has been filled with the knowledge of God's love for you,  or not, this morning, put away your family album and turn to your Bible.  Read again the passages we heard from Ephesians and the Gospel of John.  Let God's love speak to you.  Your parents gave you your genes, but God gives you truth and grace and claims you as part of God's family.  Your parents gave you your body, but God gives you God's Spirit to guide you and to give you the possibility for a new life.   You may look like your mother or your father, but God invites you to follow Jesus and ask him to guide your life.

Your past does not have to imprison you.  God calls you today, on this first Sunday in the year 2003 to hear and believe some new things about God and about yourself.  You can take a new path.  Hear God's word to you today:  "Be  an imitator of  God, as a beloved child and live in love as Christ loves you and gave himself up for you."  Ephesians 5:1-2  Amen.