Abba

                     Luke 15: 20-23, Galatians 3: 29-4: 7

 

 

          Behind my house, the AC unit sits on a concrete slab. If you look closely at that slab, you will see handprints, the handprints of my children. If you were to look on the inside of the door to my old law office, you would find copies of little hands and pictures of my children when they were very young.  Same thing on our refrigerator. These places are a chronology of love moments and remembrances in my life as a father.

                    My children are grown now. They come home to visit when they can. They call or skype or email. Every time they contact me, I have to concentrate on letting them be who they are. You see, for me, they are not just who they are…they are also who they were. It may be a 35 year old on the phone, but for me, he is also 25 and 15 and even 5. In some mysterious way, I see each child over the continuum of time. No matter how deep the voice or how experienced they come across, I see them as toddlers and children and adolescents even as they talk to me as adults. I find myself littered with all that history, even in the middle of a current conversation.

          I think God sees us that way. In the gospel of Luke, the prodigal son returns home, having squandered his inheritance on loose living. He looks a wreck. But when his father sees him, even from afar, he doesn’t wait for the explanations or the apologies. He calls for the best clothing and a ring and shoes and orders not a meal, but a feast! For the loving father looks up that road and sees not a problem or a beggar, but his son. His eyes may identify the change in appearance, but the eyes of his heart see someone different, and he cries out in love and acceptance. That’s the way God sees us. He looks beyond the sin to see that bond between him and us. He sees us as he made us and as we can be, not just as who we are. God sees not only the imperfection of what stands before him, but also the perfection of his creation; he sees his children.

          My favorite word in the English language is Daddy. When my son grew up, he shortened it to Dad. Curiously, all three daughters still say Daddy. I love to hear it. It’s a term of endearment, of love. It’s who I am to them. Paul talked about this same feeling with the people of the Galatian church. He reminded them that God sent his only son Jesus to redeem us, so that we could be adopted as God’s own children. Adoption then and adoption now carry the same identifying marks. Once you are adopted, you are part of the family. It doesn’t matter where you came from, what your roots are. God sees us as sons and daughters.

Thanks to Jesus, that’s the relationship available to us with God. We who believe now stand beside Jesus himself as the family of God, his adopted sons and daughters. God loves us so much that, in the words of Paul, he “sent us the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” That’s right! Believe it. The Spirit of God’s Son lives within our hearts.

          When you think about your relationship with your father, or your relationship with your child or children, that’s not so hard to believe, is it? Don’t we fathers send our spirit into our children every way we can, every day we can? Don’t we sons and daughters carry the seeds of our fathers’ love wherever we go?

          It’s the same with Jesus. God sent his Spirit into us. It goes with us, advises us, cares for us. We are adopted. We are family! We are full heirs to our Father’s kingdom. Paul thought it so loving, so endearing, that he compared the relationship to the sweetness one feels when calling out to Daddy, for that is what “Abba” means in Aramaic. Abba. It is a term of endearment, so sweet, so informal…intimate, like family is.

How long does it take for you to love your child? For me, it was love at first sight not once, but four times. I always marveled that my heart could grow to accommodate more children. I first thought that I would have to reclaim a little bit of my heart for each child, but that’s not the way it works. Your heart just grows. There is no limit. It grows to surround each child we are given. But even that is nothing compared to God. He loved us before we were ever even a thought in the minds of our earthly fathers. If I can love my four children the instant I lay eyes on them, if their mother could love them even before they were born, if their stepmother could love them as deeply as if they came from her own womb…How much more can our Heavenly Father love us…all of us!

          Yes, it is wonderful being a father. We have been given that gift, that privilege, by God as part of the relational revelation that teaches us about the kingdom of God and how it is between us and our heavenly Father. We are fathers, mothers, sons, daughters. Each relationship carries with it a very personal stamp, a footprint that teaches us about love and life and family. It also teaches us about God.

          I was privileged to hear one of those stories just the other day. Recently my home church had a Youth Sunday much like ours. One of the messages was given by a high school senior. His father suffers from early onset Alzheimer’s disease. He has had to grow up from a young age without his father being there in the way you and I have taken for granted. There was no fatherly advice, no sitting in the stands at his events, no handing over a set of car keys. All that was lost to my young friend through no fault of anyone, but lost it was. So he talked about growing up in the church, about finding role models among those men at the edges of his life. He talked about his mother, who has also suffered through this living loss. And then, he talked about his Heavenly Father. He talked about the relationship that had developed, about how it started when his earthly father could still lead him, but continued long after that could no longer happen. He ended his message with this thought: I know that my Heavenly Father hears me, even though my earthly father doesn’t know my name. There is much wisdom in that thought, a wisdom far beyond the tender years of that young man. And he is dead right.    

Perhaps the greatest feeling of all is the knowledge that we too, at every age, are still defined by God as his children. We who believe are invited to come close, to let down our defenses, to call him Abba…daddy.  He is there. He is always there. And he is our Father, today, tomorrow…and forever. Happy Father’s day, Daddy!

 

Let us pray.        

6/19/16,  rev. 6/18/17