See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him (First John 3:1, NRSV).

I was dreaming, but I didn’t realize I was dreaming. I was on second base. We were down 4 to 3, with two outs in the ninth inning, in the championship game. My brother Kevin was on first. This was strange, because I don’t have a brother named Kevin; I don’t have a brother with any other name, either.

If I could score, the game would be tied. If Kevin could score, too, we would win. I could feel how much I wanted us to win: the way a man in the desert wants a drink of water. I took my lead off second. Something distracted me, a sound or a flash, and I looked away, and in that moment the pitcher whirled and threw to the second baseman, and I barely caught the movement and dived back toward the bag. The second baseman had raced in behind me, he was standing on second, and he reached back to his left to catch the ball and then slapped the tag to his right. His glove smacked me hard in the face, but I had my hand on the base. And dirt all over my shirt, dirt in my eyes and up my nose, and I was sure a big red bruise was forming on the right side of my face, from above my eyebrow across my cheek to my jawbone. “Safe!” yelled the umpire, arms wide, hands flat.

If the pitcher’s throw had been a little more accurate – straight toward the second baseman’s right knee, instead of outside his left hip – then bam, I would have been out: the third out, ballgame over, we lose. But I had a big grin on my face as I got back to my feet, trying to wipe the dirt from my eyes and nose and mostly just smearing it around. I knew I was a mess, but it didn’t matter. This was the moment, I thought, that they could have gotten me out, but they missed. That had been their chance to win. Now it will be our chance to win. And we won’t miss. I’m almost home, I thought. In another minute I’ll be crossing the plate to tie the score, and right behind me Kevin will score the winning run.

But as I looked at the pitcher, and past him to home plate, home plate seemed like it was a long way away. I could see it. I could see a left-handed batter, and the catcher, and the umpire: but they were so far away I could not see who they were. The batter was on my team, but I couldn’t see who he was. That was strange. Sometimes in dreams we can see things so clearly; but sometimes your eyes are blurry and sometimes there’s fog, and sometimes things are too distant to make out the details.

When I saw how far away the plate was, when I saw a teammate too far away to recognize who he was, that’s when I began to wonder if I might be dreaming.

I was leading off second again, not as far this time, and I was watching the pitcher. He was watching me, too, looking back over his right shoulder. He looked at the catcher and came to his set position, staring in at the catcher’s glove. He looked back at me. I hadn’t moved. He looked back at the plate, and fired a fastball. The batter swung, a little late, and slapped the ball over the shortstop’s head. I was running with the crack of the bat.

I’m a catcher. Catchers are famous for not running that fast. And in a dream, you never can run as fast as you want. As I came toward third base, I could see the coach waving me on, his arm spinning like an engine, urging me to round the base and score. But in this dream – by now I had figured out that it had to be a dream – in this dream I was unable to run any faster.

You can’t run fast in a dream. At least, I never can. And yet sometimes in a dream you can fly: have you noticed that? So I could see that was the thing to do: I needed to fly. I banked to the left, slammed my right foot in a crossover step into the corner of third base and pushed off hard, and I flew down the line toward the plate. I was almost home. I knew I was going to score. Nothing could stop me.

Then I saw a streak of lightning come in from left field, and it smacked into the catcher’s glove. The left fielder had delivered a perfect throw. I was flying, but I could not fly faster than lightning. But I could see faster than lightning that I was going to be out by thirty feet. I was almost home: but I was going to make the third out, and that was that.

Or was it? I paused.

If this had been real, I couldn’t have stopped that quickly. If this had been real, I had too much momentum to stop, if I tried I’d end up taking another four steps or so, at which time I’d be too close, easily tagged out. If this had been real, the best I could do was to try to slide around the catcher, hoping to touch the plate before the catcher could get the tag on me. It would not have worked. If this had been real, I would be out for sure.

But in this dream, I paused. You can’t run fast in a dream, but sometimes you can fly, and sometimes you can stop on a dime.

My brother Kevin had stopped, too. Apparently he had been able to run faster than I could in the dream, and so he had nearly caught up with me. Now he was standing right behind me. “What do we do?” he asked.

I said, “I don’t know.”

Most everyone is at least a little bit familiar with the gospel of John, with signs in football stadiums that say John 3:16. Many people remember the passage about Jesus the Good Shepherd, and the story of raising Lazarus from the dead, and some of them know Jesus’ famous statement, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” But many people don’t realize that there are three other books of the Bible that have John’s name on them: three letters written by John, one of which is quite short, and the other two are even shorter. These three letters are named, with marvelous creativity, the first letter of John, the second letter of John, and – anyone have a guess? – yes, the third letter of John. Or, for short, First John, Second John, Third John.

I’ve often quoted from First John chapter 2 during the Sunday liturgy, after the Prayer of Confession:

Whenever anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous: and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.

Today’s reading from First John is the first verse of chapter 3: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. It expresses wonder and astonishment about the reality that we are the children of God, because God loves us so much! And it recognizes that not everyone in the world gets this: not everyone gets it that we are, indeed, the children of God. So it helps to remember there’s a difference between two things: the first is the reality itself, and the second is how people think about that reality. The reality is real because God has established it as real. Verse 2 exults: Beloved, we are God’s children now! But how people think about that reality varies enormously: some people are confident in the truth of that reality, some people feel unsure, some are convinced that it isn’t real at all.

Sometimes when we think about this, we’re full of questions. What happens if people don’t believe it’s real, this love of God that establishes us as God’s children? What happens if you actively deny the reality of God’s saving grace? Don’t you have to believe in Jesus in order to be forgiven? How much do you have to believe? Just once, for maybe fifteen seconds, and that’s enough? Or do you need to believe day by day, from the time you first started to believe till the day you die? What if you miss a day? What if you’ve missed hundreds of days, scattered throughout your life, days when you didn’t believe in Jesus, days you were all full of doubts or all full of distraction or all full of sorrow or all full of rebellion and not at all full of faith: what then? When we all get to heaven are we going to discover that not all of us get to heaven, that all of us who failed to believe in Jesus are not going to be there, and that all of us who believed a little, but failed to believe in Jesus with all our heart and soul are not going to be there, and therefore many of us who thought of ourselves as Christians are not going to be there: is that what we’ll discover? Then what happens to all the people who were kind of believers, part time Christians, deeply faithful some days and not so faithful on many other days? And what about the people in the world who have never heard of Jesus? Are they just damned, nothing they can do about it?

There is an answer to all this, but it’s a little complicated. The first part of it is to recognize that yes, all the unbelievers are damned, and there’s nothing they can do about it. As soon as I say that, eyebrows go up: but don’t object yet, because there is more to come, because all the Christians are damned, too, and there’s nothing we can do about it, either. The Bible teaches us that we are all in the same situation: we have all sinned, we have all fallen short, we have all cheated, and lied, and stolen. We have all failed to do the things we were supposed to do. And we have all repented, from time to time: we have declared that we will do better, from now on we will never do those bad things, we will never break the rules, we will be honest and just and pure of heart: and then we failed again.

The point the Bible insists on is this: apart from the grace of God, not one of us is going to make it. Not one of us. Not you, and not your grandmother: apart from the grace of God, not one of us will make it. But God is rich in grace, abundant with grace, lavish with grace: and God has provided the full and efficacious application of grace, establishing full and complete forgiveness for everyone. For all of us believers, yes. But not just for us believers. “Whenever we sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. And not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Sometimes that bothers people, when I suggest that the death of Jesus established the forgiveness for all the sins of all the world. Sometimes they want to argue with me about that. Sometimes I say, “There’s no point in you arguing with me about it. I’m just quoting scripture. If you want to argue, you must go to heaven, look up the Apostle John, and explain to him he was mistaken to include that verse in his letter.”

So. Now we are called the children of God, identified as the children of God, established as the children of God: the text insists that this is so, because God Almighty has established that reality, and so that is what we are: the beloved children of God.

That is, our identity as the children of God is real. It is important to understand that we are not the ones who make it real, by our good deeds or by our pure hearts or by our sincere faith. No. God is the one who makes it real. God is the one who made the decision, God is the one who established this reality: we did not do it. That’s good, because most of the things we do don’t last too long. The prophet Isaiah said that the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will last forever: and so when scripture insists that we really are the children of God, that declaration tells us something that is real, something that will continue to be real throughout eternity.

Now it’s also true that some people don’t get this. They don’t understand it, or they don’t believe it, or they ask for some kind of proof that it is true. I can declare to you that what God has done is real; God genuinely has made us his children. But you may well wonder how I know that it is true, and you may well wonder how you can know that it is true.

Once again, the answer is a little complicated. I will start by telling you something that you already know: which is that when things are real, they are real whether or not you or I happen to know that they are real. When things are real, we may eventually come to understand that they are real, or we may never know that they are real, but their reality does not depend on our knowledge.

Next, let me remind you that for every single thing you know, at some point you did not know that. We’ll start with an easy example: 7 + 4 = 11. When you were very young, you did not know that. Someone – probably someones – taught you that. By now you have so much experience with addition that you might not have to think about it to answer the question, how much is 7 plus 4. You just know. But you didn’t always know that. The reality was that 7 and 4 add up to 11, and they always have, even when you didn’t know that. Notice: arithmetic did not become real the day you learned how to add. This new skill has had a great impact on your ability to understand the world: but powerful as your knowledge of numbers may be, you did not bring arithmetic into existence.

Here’s an example that’s a little harder. The sun appears to rise in the east, travel across the sky, and set in the west, but the actual motion is the rotation of the earth, from west to east. When you were very young, you did not know that. What you experienced as a child – and what all of us continue to experience as adults – is the visual: we can all see the sun rising, we can notice that as the day progresses the position of the sun shifts across the sky. At some point our teachers taught us that this apparent movement of the sun is actually the movement of the earth. And again, we need to notice: the rotation of the earth did not start on the day we learned this basic reality of planetary mechanics. The rotation of the earth was real, even when we didn’t know about it. Our new understanding has a great impact on our ability to understand the solar system: but our increased knowledge did not change the reality of the solar system.

And so in today’s text John writes, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” It begins with this basic declaration about what is real: we are the children of God, because that is how the Father has called us, because he loves us. It is the Father’s love that has established this reality. And the next line says, “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” Which is to say, there are a lot of people in the world who don’t get it. They don’t know us, and they don’t know the Lord: which is to say, they are skeptical of Christians, and they are skeptical of Jesus. Nevertheless, even when people haven’t understood it yet, the reality of what Jesus has done is real.

Then I saw that the catcher had taken off his mask. Then I saw that the catcher was Jesus. Then I saw that the catcher didn’t have the ball in his glove any more. He didn’t even have his glove. Then I saw that Jesus had his arms open wide, welcoming me into his embrace. I looked at the umpire. The umpire wasn’t there. No, the umpire was there, but the umpire was Jesus, too.

I looked at Kevin. Kevin looked at me. He asked again, “What do we do?”

I shrugged. “We’re almost home,” I said. “Let’s just keep going this last little bit, and see what happens.”

So I jogged the last thirty feet to reach home, and then took one last giant stride and planted my right foot squarely onto the middle of the plate, and then stepped off and turned around to watch Kevin. Kevin was maybe three steps behind me, and he did a big bunny-hop onto the plate and just stood there, radiant with joy. Jesus the catcher had a big grin on his face as he caught me up into a tight embrace, and then he let me go and hugged Kevin tight, too. I looked at umpire Jesus. He was grinning at me, too, and he had his hands out wide as he called, “Safe!” Then he looked at Kevin, and moved his hands in to his hips and then snapped them back to full extension, and he again called out “Safe!”

The game was over, and it was a victory. I could have been out at second. I had thought for sure I’d be out at the plate.

But I still don’t know what this was. A dream? A vision? A parable? It is somehow the story of what it means to be the children of God. It turns out we have brothers – and sisters! – we never knew we had. It turns out we have teammates so far away we can’t even tell who they are. We face some tough opposition, and it looks like that opposition will defeat us: we feel vulnerable, like the smallest mistake could cost us so much, it could cost us everything. This could so easily be a loss.

And yet we are almost home. Sometimes it feels like our opponents will surely put us out, out, forever out. And still: even when we are dying, we are almost home. And the catcher who catches us and embraces us and will not let us fall: that’s Jesus. And the judge, the umpire, the one who decides whether we are safe and victorious, or out and lost: that’s Jesus, too.

We’re all like a couple of kids stopped halfway between third base and home, trying to figure out what to do. Will we get put out, or will we make it in?

But the scripture proclaims: See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are! Believe it, children of God: believe it. We’re almost home. So like I said to Kevin: let’s just keep going.