Crying “Abba!”

Sermon preached by the Rev. Canon Dr. Titus Presler

St. Matthew’s Church, Enosburg Falls, Vermont

Year A, Proper 11, RCL: Genesis 28.10-19a; Psalm 139.1-11, 22-23;

Romans 8.12-25; Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

Some time ago at the airport in San José, California, I was having a quick meal at California Pizza Kitchen when I was arrested by an odd repeated sound, like this: "Aehhh! Aehhh! Aehhh!" I looked over and saw that the sound was coming from a young girl, perhaps 10 years old, who was engaged in some distress with her mother and father, who were sitting with her at another restaurant across the concourse. I immediately realized that the girl was disabled both mentally and physically: she was unable to articulate words; her motions were jerky and uncoordinated; and there was a wheelchair nearby. The sound was loud, and I was concerned as well as curious.

"Aehhh! Aehhh! Aehhh!" The parents were feeding the child, so I wondered whether the problem was that the food was too hot, but then I saw they were feeding her a salad. But when they fed her some ice cream she seemed to calm down a bit. 

Then her father came over to California Pizza Kitchen to pick up something else, and the child was left with her mother. The child stared after her father, her eyes now riveting in their intensity as she followed this parent with her eyes. The mother wiped her daughter's mouth and nose, but still the child would not take her eyes off her father. When he disappeared behind a partition she set up her chant again, only now there was a difference. No longer was it "Aehhh! Aehhh!" Now it was "Pehhh-Pehhh! Pehhh-Pehhh!" She was calling out to her father, using the only name for him that she could articulate, something like Papa. Sure enough, the father presently returned and took her with him to whatever he was up to in California Pizza Kitchen, and she walked haltingly beside him, now quiet.

It could just as well have been the mother who left, and I expect the child would have set up some kind of Mama chant. I was moved by this tableau. I stopped by the mother on my way to the gate and told her how impressed and touched I was by the gentleness and persistence with which she and her husband handled a clearly difficult child. 

In that child's cry I heard and saw the dependence of child upon parent that is universal in the human family and common to the biography of every child born into the world. We all know this dependence from our experience with our own parents. We may know the particular tear in our spirit that comes with the death of a parent, usually later in life, but for some quite early in life. We may know this dependence from the other side, the experience of being parents and having the lives of children dependent on us – especially in infancy and childhood, of course, but in other ways in teenagedom, young adulthood, and so on. Yes, being a parent never stops! 

In the cry of that child in the airport I heard and saw the pathetic helplessness that is a part of each one of us, somewhere in our being. It was more vivid coming from her because she was older, no longer an infant, and yet she was voicing and not concealing this deep need. No matter how adequate we may appear to others, no matter how adequate we may feel in ourselves, no matter how adequate we may wish to portray ourselves to others, and no matter how adequate we may actually be – and there is certainly plenty of solid adequacy around – nevertheless there is some part of each one of us that feels alone, inadequate and helpless, a piece of ourselves where we want to be taken care of, a place where we do, in fact, need care, nurture, support and closeness.

That, dear friends, is the place that Paul so tenderly identifies as the nerve ending of our relationship with God. When we cry, "Abba! Father!" he says, it is the Spirit of God “bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ – if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.”

"Abba!" That's a word in the Aramaic language that was commonly spoken in Palestine and that Jesus himself spoke. Yes, it means father, but it's a term of familiarity, the kind of name that a child might actually use to address his or her father, more like Daddy, Dad, or Papa. It's striking that Paul, a Hellenistic Jew, for whom Greek, not Hebrew or Aramaic, was his natural language, such a man writing to a mixed group of Jewish and Gentile Christians at Rome, for whom Greek was their natural language, would bring into this argument, all of it written in Greek, that Aramaic term for Daddy, Papa. In the early Christian churches the preservation of that form of address in a language far from the experience of most people in those churches probably represented a way of staying connected with how Jesus himself experienced and addressed God. 

Over these last weeks in the lectionary we've been walking alongside Paul's compelling presentation of the Christian life in his letter to the Romans: how we are brought into right relationship with God through faith; how in baptism we participate in Christ's death and resurrection; and then how without Christ we can't make headway in our struggle with sin and death. Now, in the eighth chapter, his point is that for those who are in Christ anything and everything is possible because the Holy Spirit dwells in us. Left to our own devices, of course we'll fall back into the life of the old nature, but through the Spirit we're empowered to live transformed lives in Christ Jesus. Why, says Paul, it's that indwelling of the Spirit in us that enables us to cry, "Abba! Father!" That indwellingness of the Spirit signifies how we are so connected with God that we can be called the very children of God. 

So Paul is assuring the Roman Christians of their deep connectedness with God, a connectedness through which they can rely on the very presence and grace of God working in their lives through the Holy Spirit dwelling in them. Evidently they needed this reassurance that they were not alone in their struggles.

Today, 2000 years later, do you need that reassurance that you are so connected with God in Christ that you can rely on God as a child relies on a parent? I don't know about you, but I do! And, by the way, I'm saying parent rather than father here, because it could just as well be God our mother as God our father – the focus is on the relationship of parent and child and on the spiritual DNA that is the image of God imprinted on our being. Yes, it's at the heart of our faith, but don't you need to be reminded of it? I do. Oh, how I can rely on myself! Oh, how self-sufficient I can feel! And, oh, how I pity myself when I then feel alone and isolated: “Oh, God, I feel so alone – where are you?” And God replies, "Right where you last abandoned me and decided to go it alone.”

So how do we nurture that connectedness? By letting God nurture such connectedness within us. That means being available to God in open-agenda quiet time with God. It needs to happen both alone and in the company of other people. The worship that happens here every Sunday is such connectedness in the company of other people. The worship we undertake together is not primarily something to be arranged and organized and worried about. Rather, we gather to support one another in crying out “Abba!” to God. We gather to help one another receive the altogether amazing gift of God’s overwhelming love for us as we acknowledge our childlike dependence on God.

Cultivating the habit of being available to God individually is equally important. Coming before God alone is a one-with-one encounter, with all the opportunities such encounters offer. We can be candid. We can take the time we need to collect ourselves out of our distractedness and bewilderment. We can fumble as much as we need to. We can take time for silence, for listening to however God may come to us. We can offer up all the anxiety and anguish we have within us. And all the gratitude and joy that may overcome us. 

So set aside time for alone time with God, dear friends. It helps to have a regular time and place for that – a time that is yours and a place that you enjoy. For me the time has always been first thing in the morning. We’ve lived lots of different places, so the particular prayer spot has varied: the top of our garage in Hamilton, Massachusetts, a chair or couch in my various studies, a balcony in Texas, behind a mountain in Africa, on our terrace here in Vermont.

In such times allow for silence. Allow for spontaneous prayer to struggle out of your spirit. If you need help, there’s plenty of that handy. The Daily Office in the Prayerbook is helpful, as are the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families. The Daily Lectionary readings can nourish your reflection and prayer, as do the Psalms. Verses from this morning’s psalm, for instance, could catalyze your prayer:

Lord, you have searched me out and known me;

you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar.

You trace my journeys and my resting-places

and are acquainted with all my ways.

Search me out, O God, and know my heart;

try me and know my restless thoughts.

A committed prayer life can bring surprises, often when we least expect them. Consider Jacob in today’s Old Testament reading. He was fleeing his brother, who was furious with him for deceiving him. He was alone in his guilt and cowardice. Yet still God came to him with blessing and promise as he slept in the wilderness, and the experience was so powerful that when he woke up he marveled, “Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!” And he called the place Bethel, which means House of God. Each needs to have times and places in our lives that we can call Bethel, House of God, because we have know that God was in those times and places in our lives. 

The key is to give yourself time and space where you can cry, "Abba!" and rest in your deep connection with God the lover of your soul. As that child in the San José airport cried out, “Peahhh-Peahhh!" so we cry out “Abba!” – Daddy, Mom, Papa, Mummy. Think of that Abba as you pray the Lord’s Prayer this morning: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” 

As Isaiah says, once the word of God goes forth, it does not return empty, for it accomplishes the purpose of God. That has happened in the lives of each one of you, such that you are here today.  In the wonderfully careless and profligate way in which God sows seed in Jesus' parables, some seed does take root. Its sprouting in the lives of each one of us means that through the Spirit of God we can cry out "Abba! Father!"  That is the heart of it. That is everything. 

The Rev. Jane Butterfield

June 19, 2011

St. Matthew’s, Enosburg Falls

Father, Son & Holy Spirit; Dad, the Kids & Mom.

How is Dad doing?

Gensis1:1-2:4a, Psalm 8, 2 Cointhians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20

There is the character building Dad, ever pushing for the next goal, the one who reminds us of how easy we have it:

 “I had to walk to school. Barefoot. In the snow. Uphill both ways.”

And then there’s the pal Dad, a coaxing companion on life’s way.

He’s the father who runs alongside, reassuring:

 “There’s nothing a little duct tape can’t fix.”

Most fathers mix the two up depending on the situation, but whether you have a duct tape Dad or a life-is-an-endless-climb–barefoot-in-the-snow kind of Dad, you know how important that person has been in your life. And you are grateful for him!

And if he has been absent, well, you might realize the great gift that a Father is precisely because of how much harder or sadder his absence made your life.

Today is Father’s Day and Trinity Sunday and it’s probably not the first time the two have coincided. 

Happily, there are some ready lessons to be wrung from human fathers sharing the day with the grandness of the Three-in-One God. 

I want to focus on just three of many possible points:

 Commitment, Creation and Caring

Or, in Bible-language,

 Covenant, Creation and Stewardship.

A good father,

 the type we hope our sons will be and our daughters will marry,

 combines all three of these dimensions of Godly character

 that we see in the (long) story of Creation.

The first chapter of Genesis is our introduction to who God is,

what God is like and the Community of the Trinity that is God.

Notice how God is not alone?

Let there  be light

Let there be a dome in the midst of the waters

Let the earth put forth vegetation,

Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures

from black flies to trout to chickens to sheep, goats and above all, COWS.

And finally,

 Let US make humankind in our own image,

 According to OUR likeness.

Which is to say, let us make a community of people who

- will be capable of making deep commitments of mutual love

- will not only create children (and grandchildren) but raise them to be creative, to use their full capacity to make new things and make all things new, whether with duct tape or by virtue of heroic perseverance

- will care for each other and their world with the wise, visionary and inexhaustible compassion that will ever distinguish these creatures from the four-footed variety.

Fathering is highest calling a boy can set his compass to;

 The true north of the male character.

Which is why I was moved to tears when our youngest child, Amos, announced to me at the age of four that more than anything else,

 he wanted to be a Father when he grew up.

He was aiming high, fully integrating all the dimensions of his humanness,  inspired by the full range of his godly nature.

Of course, Amos's childhood ambition may have been related to the fact that

when he asked if he could have a little brother,

we responded by getting him a nice little puppy instead.

But now he is a devoted father,

and little Thomas has entirely reordered his life priorities!

A man doesn’t have to get married and make babies to fulfill his fatherly nature.

Jesus, for example, fathered an entire community of disciples,

  A movement that redeemed and re-created the world.

His mission demanded that he embrace all of humanity, as it were,

 In order to father a new order of humankind into being –

He was both the life is ever uphill in the snow barefoot kind of father,

And the running alongside duct-tape Dad;

God covenanting with humanity, recreating humankind and entering into an infinitely compassionate and caring relationship with all people forever.

Jesus made all things new,

 and with the most humble material one can imagine –

 Simon who became Peter, Mary Magdalene, you and me.

He was a creative genius of the highest order,

Combining compassion with commitment.

Nothing less than these three can make a family or a community work.

God created them male and female. And God blessed them by turning all that God had created over to their care and stewardship. The word Dominion is used in this morning’s translation, but we have all come to realize that the most effective way to care for this environment we inhabit begins with an attitude of humble gratitude and patient discovery, and a resolve to manage it wisely and effectively.

So it is with this sacred task of fathering.

The fathers we celebrate today have made a new life in their image,

 With another, of course, as the biologically essential community of two

 generates an new and other creature in their image.

Let us sum it all up by looking at the symbol of the endlessly creative community of the Holy Trinity in our bulletin:

See the dynamic movement of creative grace that is the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit or the Creator, the Created, and the Creative -

 Generating the community of Church that expands into the world to renew the face of the earth, ever in union with the One creative, caring, committed God.

As Dad might say, “Be like me,

 The uphill-all weather-meet every challenge hero - man and

 The resourceful, ever loving, reinventing and patient pal.

To paraphrase Psalm 8,

“What is Dad that you, O God, should be mindful of him?

You have made him almost an angel, at his best moments,

aglow with glory and honor,

You give him mastery over the works of your hands,

You offer him ability and responsibility to take care of the whole Creation,

and especially his family that with your blessing he has created.

O Lord our Creator,

 What an exalted vision!

May we all, fathers, mothers and children - but especially today, our fathers -

grow into the fullness of your purpose for us.

With Commitment, Creation and Caring

 In the Spirit of Covenant, Creation and Stewardship.

Bless all fathers this day as they seek your grace to fulfill this high call.

February 20, 2011 - 7th Sunday after Epiphany

St. Matthew’s Church - Morning Prayer

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18

Psalm 119:33-40

1 Corinthians 3:(10-11,16-23

 MATTHEW 5:38-48