Abba: It
Wasn’t Just the Name of a Band
Romans 8:12-17
First Presbyterian Church, Vancouver, Washington
Trinity Sunday, June 3, 2012
When we cry, “Abba!
Father!”
I
am pretty sure I am showing my age when I come up with a title like the one for
today’s sermon; that is, until I opened the New
York Times not long ago and read an article titled, “While in Surgery, Do
You Prefer ABBA or Verdi?”[1]
Not that it’s all that pertinent to today’s message, but the article discussed
the differing musical tastes of physicians populating operating theaters. For
those among us who don’t connect the name ABBA with music, they were a
Scandinavian band whose disco-style music was on the pop charts for an
impressive 10 years from 1972-1982. They have been called the most popular
musical group ever to come from Scandinavia, though I have to say, I don’t
think there’s a crowded roster of contenders, no offense intended.
Now, if you still can’t recall who ABBA was or what
their music sounded like, that could well be an advantage in understanding
today’s scripture without getting distracted. I recall struggling through Bible
studies and cofirmation classes with young people in the churches I served
during the years of ABBA’s popularity. In those days, when we came to this word
abba that both Paul and Jesus used
for our Heavenly Father, the discussion inevitably would take a wrong-turn and
there was no rescuing it from animated conversation about this or that song
from what was then a popular band.
So, I want you to know, if the word abba in Paul’s letter to the Romans
distracts you with thoughts of a glittering disco dance floor, please remember
that the name of the band was simply made up of the first letters of the first
names of each of the four people in the band. Paul’s use of abba refers to an Aramaic word that
Jesus employed when speaking of God. It was also a word that Jewish children
would have used to address their fathers in a familial way, it could as well be
translated “Daddy” as “Father.”
When someone says to us, “We plan to treat you just
like family,” would we be likely to respond, “Fine, do you mind if we drop by
your attorney’s office in the morning to make sure that your estate planning
has provision for me along with the rest of the family members”? Not likely!
When someone wants us to make ourselves at home, it’s just a figure of speech,
a manner of telling us they want us to be comfortable, to relax. There is
little chance that they literally hope to adopt us into their family, to make
us heirs along with their own children.
At the beginning of today’s passage from Paul’s
letter to the Romans, Paul called us brothers and sisters, which, after all
these centuries, seems a natural enough way for church members to refer to each
other. I remember a funeral director in Port Arthur, Texas who always referred
to me as “Brother Elder,” as in, “Let’s have Brother Elder stand over here by
the flowers.” And he wasn’t even a standard issue Southern Baptist, but a
Lutheran, albeit a Texas Lutheran. “Brothers and sisters in Christ,” seems a
gentle enough way to refer to those who are related to each other through their
common church affiliation.
Even so, Paul was just getting warmed up with the
family metaphor when he began by addressing us a siblings. He goes on to say
that all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. I recall many
Sundays throughout the course of my ministry when I have held a child up before
the congregation, saying, “See how God loves us, that we should be called ‘children
of God.’” It is a powerful claim to make, that we are the very children of our
creator. I remember one little tike I baptized over 25 years ago who grew to 6’7”,
and played collegiate basketball. I would definitely need help holding him up
in front of a congregation today, but he is no less a child of God for that!
Logically enough, this idea that we are God’s
children leads Paul to the affirmation that if we are brothers and sisters, and
children of God in the Spirit, then God is our abba, the old Aramaic word for “Daddy.” He tosses in the word, “adoption,”
and then reasons that those who have been claimed as adopted sons or daughters
can lay claim to the status of heirs. This means that somehow we have been
entitled to an inheritance, since that is what being an heir is all about.
Finally, comes the crowning declaration of this
escalating use of familial language: “and if [we are] children, then heirs,
heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
This, then, caps the passage. Christ, whom we
declare to be the only son of God, has effected our adoption so that we stand
not under him, or near him, or slightly behind him on faith’s family tree, but
right alongside, joint heirs, truly brothers and sisters not only with each
other but with Jesus. Amazing! Christ has gone beyond our most fabulous
experiences of human hospitality, treating us as family, as heirs on a par with
those who are verifiable members of the family. Now there is someone who treats us like members of the family!
Now, to back up a bit, what do you suppose Paul
meant when he said we are children of God as we are led “by the Spirit of God”?
How are we made into a family, exactly? This is Trinity Sunday on the church
calendar, which is the traditional day for preachers to try to help their
congregations make sense of the doctrine of the Trinity. That’s assuming
preachers have made sense of it for themselves, which might be a pretty big
assumption for some of us!
Probably,
most Christians are happy to talk about God having redeemed us through Jesus
Christ and leave it at that. But Paul claims that the work of the Spirit brings
us into the family of faith. God as Father, Son, Spirit, it gets confusing. Why
can’t we just say God or Jesus and leave it at that? I recall the memorable words of one theologian on this
complicated matter of the Trinity: “We need to respond to God as [God has
chosen to be revealed] – not invent simple ideas of God which, although much
easier to believe, do not actually correspond to God.”[2]
It
may be easier to believe in a God “up there,” and leave it at that. But if we
do that for very long, while we may wind up with something religious-sounding,
it certainly won’t be Christianity. The most basic of Christian affirmations is
that God became human, became a person named Jesus, lived among us, and after
he was crucified and raised from death, his followers continued to sense the
presence and ministry of God among them. A God who is “up there,” beyond space
and time cannot know us or become self-disclosing. We certainly cannot be said
to be the children of such a God in any way. This would be a God who created
but cannot redeem, bearing no resemblance to “the God who [is made] known to us
through scripture, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and
through Christian experience [in the continuing presence of the Spirit] – in
short, [no resemblance] to the God of ordinary Christian piety and simple
faith!”[3]
When we talk about God, who are we actually talking
about? The God about whom we share, week after week in this church, is the God
who created the world we know, the God who claimed a people who came to know
themselves as Israel, a God who helped to rescue them from enslavement in
Egypt, who moved with them to a land of promise amid signs and wonders, a God
who accompanied these people when they went into terrible and painful exile in
Babylon, who inspired prophets to map the course of return to covenant
faithfulness for them, a God whose messenger angel visited young Mary one night
with the news that she was to give birth to a son, to name him Joshua – or
Jesus, which meant “God saves,” because that is what Jesus would do. It is the
God who then raised this Jesus from death when he was murdered. And announced
the purpose in doing so, for “God so loved the world that God sent the only
son...”[4] This
same God has raised up in each generation new believers to carry the good news
of the gospel, and in the process, lives have been changed, hospitals built,
universities established, missions carried out, all in the name of the God
about whom we speak.
Now, when we talk about God, who are we talking
about? When we say, “God,” hasn’t it become a shorthand way of saying all that
we believe God has done for and among us? For Christians, isn’t the word “God”
shorthand for “the one who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,”[5] and
made preachers out of fishermen at Pentecost, but including all the rest, from “the
one who brought Israel out of Egypt,” down to “the one who gives us strength to
hope in life after death, even after we have watched death take away the ones
we love”?
When we say we believe in God the Abba, Son, and
Holy Spirit, it is a shorthand way of summarizing the high points of salvation
history, of God’s dealings with his people, of God’s mad lover’s quest for us.
·
If God were
just a deity in heaven, we might be likely to think of God as a distant and
far-removed creator of the world, like a general directing the front-line
troops from the safety of a far-off bomb-proof bunker. But Christians know God
isn’t like that. Christians believe in a God who is involved in our lives.
·
If God were
just a “son,” a man namded Jesus, we would have to think of God as identical
with a single human being. We would have to think of the eternal God as
concentrated in a single person, like a billion gallons in a one quart jar. But
Christians know that God just isn’t like that. Jesus wasn’t talking to himself
when he prayed. The New Testament is most careful to insist upon a distinction
between the Abba God and the Son.
·
If God were
just “Spirit,” we would have to think of God as contained in our own
experiences of the world. The Spirit inspires us, but beyond our own experience
of the Spirit, and that of others we know or know of, we can’t say we know. To
believe in a God beyond our own experience of him, we must believe in a
creator, in God the Abba. And so, we cycle back to the beginning of the
Trinity.
Paul has affirmed that it is the Spirit of God that
moves us to become fellow heirs with Christ. All three persons of the Trinity
in one passage, at work in making us members of the family of faith, children
of the God who created us. Understand the Trinity? We may never fully
understand it, but then most families don’t fully understand each other. They
just live together in love. As Augustine once wrote, “Wherever there is love
there is a Trinity: a love, a beloved, and a spirit of love.”
Dear brothers and sisters, “it is that very Spirit
bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God.” We’re all
children of God. Welcome home!
Copyright © 2012 Robert J. Elder,
all rights reserved
