We had a great community worship service this morning! We welcomed Rev. Rick & Mary Warne back this morning and Rick preached our message. The music was amazing; combined choirs from community churches, soloists and groups. And the food was really great afterwards, too!
Many thanks to EVERYONE who helped out in any way.
It was a great time to renew old acquaintances and make new friends!
Deuteronomy 20:10-20, Matthew 5:21-26, Psalm 72:1-14
Two days ago, Canadians everywhere stood up a little taller, threw their heads back a little further and stuck their chests out a bit more as their hearts swelled with some well-founded pride. But as they heard or sang the noble tones of the Canadian national anthem, it was quite possible that some felt a little stirring of frustration in their patriotic hearts because, if you have been paying any attention to national affairs lately, you know that there has been talk of that thing that fills the hearts of all Presbyterians with fear and dread. There has been talk of change.
Now, I have absolutely no intention of getting into the middle of a discussion about whether or not Canada ought to change the words of its national anthem. I’ll let others argue and fight over the virtues and vices of change. I just mention it (with some trepidation) because it leads us to an issue that I do want to raise. All the discussion has focussed our attention on one line that we all learned like this: “True patriot love in all thy sons command.” My question is this: whether or not we all want to be called “sons,” what does “true patriot love,” look like today and what does it mean to “stand on guard” for our country?
When those words we are presently disagreeing over were first added to the anthem (and, no, they aren’t actually the original English words, they were changed in 1914), at that time I think that people had a pretty clear understanding of what they thought “true patriot love” looked like. It seems very likely that that a reference to “sons” was added as a way to boost the recruiting of the young sons of Canada to go and stand on guard for their country in the battlefields of the Great War in Europe.
And, while I know that we would offer nothing but praise for the sons and daughters of Canada, past and present, who have served their country in the military, surely none of us would suggest that that is the only way to give patriotic service to your country. So I think, in the aftermath of Canada Day 2016, we have to be willing to ask what are the best ways for us to stand on guard for our country today.
There is a commandment in the Book of Deuteronomy that I think might be helpful to us as we think of these things. It comes in the midst of a section that is all about war, sieges and other not-so-pleasant stuff. There is a whole lot of it that would be absolutely unacceptable today: attacks, wholesale slaughter and mayhem.
I included that part of the passage, not because if find it admirable, but because it is a fair depiction of what people back then were dealing with. It was generally accepted that this was the kind of stuff you had to do in that world to stand on guard and preserve your country. Taking care of your country meant that there would be a difficult struggle in which some people would be hurt. I’m not saying that was wonderful or glorious; it was just how things were.
But I notice, in the midst of this struggle to build up their land, a curious law comes up. It is something that applies specifically to laying siege, a common part of war in the ancient world. When your enemies shut themselves up behind protective walls, the business of getting them out of their secure location could be very difficult indeed.
The law restricts where you can get wood from while conducting a siege because wood was always needed. Armies needed firewood, stockades, ladders, towers and a host of other things all made of wood – wood that they would commonly cut down from the surrounding countryside. “If you besiege a town for a long time,” the commandment states, “…you must not destroy its trees by wielding an ax against them. Although you may take food from them, you must not cut them down…. You may destroy only the trees that you know do not produce food.”
It is a very specific commandment very much tailored to the kinds of warfare that people engaged in at that time and to the materials that they used. On a very practical level, you might say that it has absolutely no application to modern life at all because, first of all, the besieging of cities almost never happens in modern warfare and, second of all, modern armies do not use hardly any wood for their arms or defences. So I guess we can just forget about this one, an ancient commandment that has absolutely no modern application.
Or does it? Maybe if it was just an arbitrary rule that God gave for no particular reason, we could say that. But I don’t happen to believe that God gives arbitrary rules. There is reasoning behind this commandment that we need to pay attention to. The prohibition is specifically against cutting fruit trees to obtain wood to besiege a city. In that part of the world, it would include plants like olive trees, fig trees, date palms and pomegranates trees. The thing that is special about fruit trees, of course, is that they produce food. But it is also very true that they were made of wood and wood could be very useful in a siege.
When you are conducting a siege, when you are in the midst of most any military situation, you are almost always dealing with a certain amount of desperation. The need for victory seems paramount in that situation and you feel the need to use whatever resources you have to feed that victory. The temptation to cut down any tree (fruit bearing or otherwise) when you need wood that desperately is very real.
But this commandment says no. Why? Well, understand this fact (a fact that ancient Israelites would have understood without being told): fruit trees require a long-term investment. Take olive trees for example – perhaps the most import fruit tree for them because olive oil provided their diet’s only source of fat, without which human beings cannot survive. Did you know that if you plant an olive tree and allow it to grow, it will not produce any olives at all for five or maybe six years? Thereafter it will produce a bigger and better crop every year until it is about fifty years old when it produces a truly abundant crop but also begins to die. Fruit trees such as olive trees take a long term commitment but if you let them grow undisturbed for many decades, they will bless you in great abundance.
So that is what this commandment is talking about. In that world, cutting down a fruit tree to get wood to besiege a city was about sacrificing years and years of abundant production of olives or figs or dates for the sake of the immediate need for victory in battle. An olive grove sacrificed in order to take a city was something that would take five decades – half a century – to replace.
Can I make a confession? When it comes to Biblical commandments, I always prefer to hear them in the King James Version of the Bible. Modern translations just don’t seem to cut it. So for me, this particular commandment will always sound like this: “thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them.” So I’m wondering, given what this commandment meant to the ancient Israelites (what it meant about not sacrificing long term blessings and life to seek short term gains), what would be a consistent application of it in our modern world. What does it mean today to “not destroy the trees thereof.”
What does it mean, for example, if you happen to run a company or corporation? I know that it’s tough to be in business today. And one of the things that makes it particularly tough is the unrelenting expectation of growth and profits. The company has to make money for its shareholders and the more it makes, the better the rewards for management. That is just what business is like these days, it seems.
What that means is that the returns for this quarter become the thing that you obsess over kind of like you might obsess over getting enough wood to win a siege if were in the middle of one. And when short term gains become the most important consideration, what do you do? Do you cut back on research and development, laying people off, in order to trim expenses this month because research and development may take years to come up with that new product that won’t bring profits until years after that? Do you fire all of your employees who have experience because they’re expensive and replace them with cheap temporary workers? Sure, the temps won’t care about the long term health of your company and will probably mess things up completely within a few years, but boy will the balance sheet look really good this quarter? Those are the kinds of things that companies find themselves doing as they prioritize short term gains. I suggest that what they are really doing is destroying the trees thereof.
And if it were just businesses who were so tragically focused on those short term needs, that would be trouble enough because, of course, these companies affect the lives of many people including their employees and the communities in which they are established until they decide to move to some other country where they can pay people less.
But this fixation on short terms needs infects more than just the business world. Even as I celebrated our country on Canada Day, I continued to be concerned with how our country has fallen into such thinking.
Too often, it seems national decision making has seemed to be all in service of that short term with little consideration for the long term costs. When, for example, the price of oil rose to unprecedented heights several years ago, our government saw this wonderful opportunity to create all kinds of prosperity in the economy. Huge amounts of money could be made, thousands of really well paid jobs could be created so all kinds of resources were dumped into and used up in the tar sands areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan.
And, don’t get me wrong, the benefits to the economy, to employment and to government revenues were fantastic. If there might be long-term losses in terms of the irreversible pollution of groundwater and surface water, environmental destruction and increases in greenhouse grass emissions, well those problems would be with us for the long term and we could deal with them later. That seemed to be the thinking. The short term gains made theoretical long term risks seem okay. Of course, the trade-off didn’t seem so great when the price of oil took a nosedive.
But that is exactly the kind of thinking that often dominates our political thinking. It is practically built into a system that is geared towards winning the next election cycle. That is why we must do our best to support those rare leaders who are willing to lift their heads up from the ground and look down the road to where our policies are leading us. Sadly, however, we often end up destroying the trees thereof instead.
As loyal Canadians, we promise to stand on guard for our country. We promise it every time we sing the anthem and nobody is talking about changing thosewords. But if we’re going to stand on guard for this country, we need to be willing to look beyond immediate threats and short term needs. To truly stand on guard for Canada means that we have to find a vision for long term greatness and prosperity. To do otherwise is simply to destroy the trees thereof.
And all of this continues to happen at all levels of society. In the church it is so easy to focus only on our immediate needs and not bother to look beyond that to the mission that God is calling us to in the world. But without a mission, without a vision for the long-term, the people will perish.
In our personal lives, even there, God would encourage you to lift up your eyes and look at where you are going and not get bogged down by the needs of the moment. God is wise, he knows that if we can’t do that, we will end up destroying the trees thereof.
There is great wisdom in this ancient commandment. Though it was written for a very different people living in a very different world, it can certainly apply to many things today. I believe that its concern for looking beyond the needs of the moment comes directly from God through the scripture. There are so many reasons why we continue to need to be cautious about cutting down the trees thereof.
#TodaysTweetableTruth "Don't destroy the trees thereof" Standing on guard for Canada means guarding longterm life, not just shortterm needs.
Exodus 20:1-7, Matthew 5:17-20, 33-37, Psalm 119:1-8
S
omewhere around 3500 years ago (as the story is told) there was a group of tribes wandering together through the desert when they encountered their God in a pretty remarkable way. And the God that they met in that desert apparently had some clear ideas about how ancient tribal people like them needed to live their lives and what they had to do. And so God gave them commandments – rules that they were supposed to live by. Even more important, he promised them that if they lived according to these rules they would be blessed and live good lives in a land to which he would lead them.
And they were good commandments and wise commandments. But they were also tailor-made for tribal people living somewhere about 3500 years ago. What I mean is that, for them, the application of the commandments was usually pretty straightforward. The situations that they came across in their normal lives were pretty much anticipated by the commands.
But today the world has changed. We don’t live as desert nomads or tribal people anymore, yet we still revere those ancient commandments. They are part of our Scriptures. Though, as followers of Christ, we don’t believe that we are justified by following commands (we are justified by grace through faith) we would still like to know that we are on the right side of these commandments, at least as much as we can be. But the application of a 3500 year old commandment may not always be so obvious in the world today.
For example, this morning we read one of the big ten – one that many Christians look at with a great deal of seriousness. It goes, in the best known translation of the King James Version, like this: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”
What did this commandment mean to the ancient tribal people who first received it and passed it on? It is a little hard to know. For one thing, they lived in a pre-literate society – a society in which very few people (if any) had any experience with the written word. And we know that pre-literate people thought about words very differently from how we do. The spoken word, for them, had remarkable almost magical power to shape reality. Words were alive. They sprang into being when they were spoken and they lived as long as people heard them and repeated them. Understand that we don’t see words in quite the same way that they did.
And it wasn’t just words. Names, in particular, had great power for them. The name of a person and how it was used was able to define and limit the power and influence that person had in the community. So the people who first heard this commandment had a pretty clear understanding of what it meant to take the name of their God and to use it in vain – to use the power of that name to support things that they had no business applying it to.
Application of the commandment was pretty straightforward for them. But, as you may have noticed, people have struggled with the specific application ever since – especially as people have sought to live it out in very different cultures where words don’t have quite the same powers and where names don’t quite mean as much as they once did.
For example, when Ancient Judaism went through a massive cultural shift (when they transformed from a largely illiterate society to one where reading and writing were valued and taught to everyone – which didn’t happen, by the way, until after the time of Christ – Jews began to apply this commandment in a very particular way. They became so worried about the possibility that they might misuse the name of God – perhaps even by accident – that they stopped using it altogether.
To this very day most Jews will not pronounce the name of God at all. When the ancient Hebrew name of God, which was probably pronounced something like Yahweh appears in the Scriptures, they simply will not read the name aloud and will substitute another word altogether. Many will even refuse to pronounce the English word God and the translations of that word into other languages too. I cannot think that it was ever the intent of the commandment in the original context to outlaw the pronunciation of certain syllables, but that is how later Jews made their peace with this commandment, perhaps out of an overabundance of caution.
And then, of course, there is the question of how Christians have dealt with it. I think if you were to ask most Christians today what it means to “Take the name of the Lord in vain,” they would probably say it has something to do with what we call cursing. They would say that it means that certain words and phrases are just out of bounds – at least in certain contexts. For example, it is not that we can’t say the name of God or the name of Jesus Christ but I certainly know Christians who frown on people saying, “Oh my God,” or “Jesus Christ,” when they are not actually praying, in church or in the midst of a theological discussion. In many ways, it is a similar response to the Jewish one except that, instead of not saying the name of God at all, we are just really careful about when we say it.
Of course, many will also push this just a little bit farther and apply this commandment to inappropriate speech in general. As you may have been told, there are certain words in the English language that you are just not supposed to say. They are words that are so bad, apparently, that I dare not tell you what they are – especially not here and now. Comedian George Carlin called them the seven words that you cannot say on television. You can’t say them in church either. I hope I don’t need to give you more information than that.
There is nothing wrong with the words themselves. They are just sets of sounds – the same sounds that are used in other languages with no offence. And they are not even strange or innovative words. They are, in fact, among the oldest words in the English language. People have been saying them for a very long time. Nor is there anything necessarily offensive in the meaning of the words. We have other words that we use to refer to the same things that are quite acceptable. Nevertheless, I know many Christians who would extend the rule about “taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain” to the use of such words.
So is that what it is really about – prohibiting the use of certain syllables? If the original commandment reflects, in any way, the real concerns of the eternal God, I have my doubts that God has that much of a grudge against certain words and certain syllables in certain languages. Words and manners of speaking are, above all, cultural matters. Certain words and expressions are acceptable within certain cultures and others are not.
While I am a great lover of the English language and would very much like to hear people use the language better than they do these days, I am very much aware that this comes from my own cultural bias. I know that, as a middle class white man who is a lifelong Christian, I have learned a bias against certain ways of speaking.
And some of this is actually problematic. There can be a not so subtle racism to it. Some of the words and phrases that we might call “taking the Lord’s name in vain” are simply expressions that belong to a culture that is not our own: maybe the black inner-city culture, another generation or another economic group. I think we are on dangerous grounds when we begin to treat cultural differences as matters of morality. So I really have some questions about how we have traditionally treated this particular commandment.
But I do believe that even ancient commandments like this one matter. I do believe that, in this commandment, there is wisdom that we need to figure out how to follow if we are going to thrive in the world today. That is what these commandments are for. So is there a way to understand and live out this commandment without becoming obsessed with certain words, certain combinations of sounds and certain syllables? It is a commandment that is intended, clearly, to instruct our speech, but, as far as I am concerned, it has to be about more than just the surface or the incidental sounds of that speech.
Remember that ancient people did believe in the power of words, especially in the power of a name to shape and to change reality. In this, they may well have been wiser than us. Words are more powerful than we often realize. What if this commandment was given to caution us more about how we speak than it was to prohibit certain words and sounds? Is that a radical idea?
Let’s say that you have issues with certain people in your community – people who are different from you in some way. It happens often enough. Maybe you struggle to understand a people who come from a different race, a different culture or background. Maybe it is because they are new to your place and don’t understand you or people like you. That is understandable. It is a thing that happens often enough in this world and that we all have to work through from time to time. I don’t necessarily see a problem with that, if you are working on it.
But what if, instead of working towards greater understanding, you just decide that it is you against them (whoever they are). And, what’s more, you decide that God is on your side against them. Suddenly, because you have adopted this mode of speaking, understanding has become impossible. Do you know what you have done? You have just taken the powerful name of God and applied it to an empty thing. You have taken the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
In fact, if you reject anybody, it doesn’t matter who they are, who is simply being the person that God created them to be, who is just trying to be true to themselves even though that may be uncomfortable to you, what have you done? Were they not created in the image of God just as you were? If you are denying who they are, are you not also denying the image of God within them? And if you are doing that, aren’t you taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain?
If you use God and the name of God, to accomplish something that serves yourself above all else, if you use that name to convince people to hate others and go to war against them, if you use the name of God to demonize people just because you don’t see things like they do, are you not taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain?
If you say “God bless my country” to the exclusion of all others, if you demand that God make your team win the game, if you proclaim that God is on your side, are you not making your country, your team and your side to be the master over your God? Are you not taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain?
What we say matters. The ancient Israelites certainly got that right. You can do more harm with a few misplaced words than you can do without just about anything. This powerful commandment could go a long way towards teaching us to be cautious about using the name of God to achieve our own goals, gain our own power or to bring other groups or individuals down.
What do we do with this commandment? Traditionally we just use it to police polite language. I am not so sure that the great Lawgiver would be impressed with how we use it. If we really took the application of this commandment to heart, I believe it would lead us to a new concern for how use our language about God for good and not for ill in this world.
#TodaysTweetableTruth Taking the name of the Lord thy God in vain: about outlawing bad words or how we use God to achieve selfcentred goals?
Week after week, we always have important and meaningful things going on at St. Andrews. Even though Summer has now officially begun that is still true for June 26. This Sunday:
We will welcome three more members into our congregation. Three weeks ago we had seven new members, but there were three who were unable to be present because of important family reasons. We rejoice to welcome them this week!
Martin Bohl will be filling in at the organ this week and next. Martin is a very talented organist and we will certainly be blessed by his musical leadership
We will honour the work of Amy and Laura with our youth and thank them for their contribution to the life of Christ's church.
The minister will begin a new summer series of sermons focusing on ancient commandments and asking what it would look like if we applied them to life today. The first commandment: "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain."
Sunday, October 16th, 2016 at Crieff Hills Conference Centre. Registration will begin at 1:30 pm, the walk/run to start at 2:00 pm. Fun & Food afterwards!
If you like, you can choose a specific person to sponsor. The church who raises the most money (in the Presbytery of Waterloo-Wellington) will win a lunch, so please help us!
Do you remember that kid, the one back in middle school who, every time the class was told to run a few laps of the track or to head out across country - that one kid who fell right to the back of the pack, who pulled up with a stitch in the side, who was panting like a dog?
That kid was me.
To this day, though I enjoy being active, I probably would not choose running as an enjoyable activity. I've heard of people who derive a great deal of pleasure from running. I have heard of what is called a "runner's high," but I can't say I have ever experienced it. Nevertheless, I am planning to run 10 km this fall.
Why am I running?
The Event
I am running because the Rev. Jeff Veenstra Memorial Walk-a-thon in support of Presbyterian World Service and Development (Better known as the Jeff-a-thon will be held on Sunday October 16, 2016 at Crieff Hills Community in Puslinch, ON,
The Man and his Passion for a Better World
I am running because this event is being held in memory of a really extraordinary man and (though I didn't know him for long) a good friend. There were many great things about Jeff Veenstra, but one of them was definitely the great passion he had to build a better world. He believed in the work of Presbyterian World Service and Development and was committed to their dream of a world where justice, sustainable development and hope could thrive. His passion for the work inspires me to do what I can to support it.
The Cause
The particular cause that the Jeff-a-thon will support is a Child and Maternal Health project in Malawi and Afghanistan.
I am very excited to be supporting such a project because it is with mothers and their children that the creation of a better world can begin, especially in such parts of the world where women, in particular, have so much going against them. This is a project that will demonstrably make a difference in tangible ways and help to build a much better future. What's more, the project is also supported by the Canadian Government which means that many donations will be matched by the government, effectively doubling our impact.
So here is what I'm going to do
I'm going to run.
I will run in the Jeff-a-thon on October 16. I have a lot of work to do before I can manage to run for 10 km. My body will have to learn a lot about strength and endurance. Maybe I'll even discover what a runner's high is between now and then. But I want to do it so I am going to work towards that goal.
And here is what (I hope) you're going to do
Well, first of all, you can run or walk too. Everyone is more than welcome to participate in the Jeff-a-thon. For information on how to sign up, look HERE.
Secondly, whether you participate yourself or not, you're going to sponsor my run, aren't you? You're going to sponsor it because chances to do so much good for the world so easily don't come around that often, do they? You're going to sponsor me because you want to find out if I can run 10 km too, don't you?
How are you going to do it?
Well, if I'm going to see you between now and next October, I'll have a sponsorship sheet with me and you can sign up with me when I see you. Donations of $20 or more will be receipted on request.
If I'm not going to see you face to face, though, you are not out of luck. Just follow this link:
Select "Jeff-a-thon: Scott McAndless" from the drop-down box, fill in your amount and credit card information and your are done. Canada Helps will take care of receipts and everything. It is so easy you could do it right now. In fact, why don't you just go ahead and do it. I'll wait.
Here is a short video to introduce the summer sermon series at St. Andrew's Hespeler:
Please join us this summer as we explore some important commandments and talk about how we might live them out today. Click HERE and then click "share" for options to share this video with your friends.
Long before the time of Jesus, it was not uncommon for people to use father language to talk about God and about various gods. Take the Romans, they loved to use father language to talk about their gods. The ruler of all the Roman gods was a fellow named Jupiter and his name actually meant “Father God” in primitive Latin. In addition, the Roman emperors were also worshipped as gods by the Romans because they were the so-called fathers of the nation.
But when the Romans spoke about their gods as being fathers, they had a very particular idea of fatherhood in mind. Fatherhood, in ancient Rome, meant one thing above all: authority. The Latin name for a male head of a family was paterfamilias: father of the family. And a paterfamiliaswas not just a warm and fuzzy dad figure sitting in a La-Z-Boy, wearing slippers and reading a newspaper. For the Romans, he was a man who had ultimate authority over every single person in his household.
And when I say ultimate, I mean ultimate. A paterfamilias could expect complete and utter obedience from everyone under his charge. If he didn’t get it, he was not just permitted but actually required to discipline family members with what we would call torture. He could do things like beat them, whip them, imprison and starve them and be praised for it. In fact, if he chose to kill them, that was considered to be his business. All of this makes me feel like maybe Father’s Day was not the really the fun lighthearted event in ancient Rome that it is for us. Rather than sending cards that said, “Happy Father’s Day to the world’s greatest dad,” they probably said, “Revered Patriarch, please don’t kill me today!”
So, when the ancient Romans and many other ancient peoples (including ancient Jews) spoke of God using the word Father, the word carried all of that baggage with it. When they addressed their Father God, they were speaking to a God who was a tyrant, a God who ruled over his people with an iron fist and who didn’t pull back from torturing and even smiting them. It was God as paterfamilias.
And when people address God as Father to this very day, the word may still carry a lot of the same baggage. I certainly do know some people who feel very uncomfortable with the idea of addressing God as Father. In some cases, of course, that may be because they have had some very negative experiences with the father figures in their own life. You can understand that, of course. If the only experience you have had with a father is abuse or violence or worse, you are not going to take any comfort from calling God your father. You’ll probably have a hard time believing that God is any better than the fathers you have known.
But that’s not the only problem that people have. You may have had nothing but the best experiences with your own father but you could still have some good reasons not to want to call God by that name just because of all the ways in which male dominance in society have kept women down and treated them like second class citizens. Addressing God as Father can certainly make him into the figurehead of that whole system of male dominance and so responsible for all of the ills that have come out of it.
Jesus used Father imagery all the time when he was talking about God. But there is good reason to think that, when he called God Father, he did not mean what most of the people of his age meant by the word. For one thing, Jesus didn’t use the normal word in his language for Father when talking about God. The usual word for father in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, was ab, and it had all the associations with authority and power that a word like paterfamilias had in Latin. But Jesus didn’t call God ab, he called him abba.
How do we know that? Of course, it is hard to be sure what word for father Jesus used because we don’t have his words in his original language. The Gospels were written in Greek and so most everything that Jesus said was translated into Greek. And most of the time, when Jesus says Father in the gospels, it is translated with the usual Greek word for father. But once, in the Gospel of Mark (when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane) the word just isn’t translated. Jesus’ original Aramaic word, Abba, suddenly and unexpectedly appears in his prayer. There are very few Aramaic words that appear in the New Testament, so it is very significant that this word appears at this very moment when Jesus is at his most vulnerable and honest, praying to God.
There is another indication. Twice in his letters, the apostle Paul tells us about a prayer that was prayed by the early church, and the prayer went like this: “Abba, Father.” What he is telling us is that even after Christianity spread into areas where the only language was Greek – where nobody could even understand a word of Aramaic, the church continued to address God as Abba even though nobody knew what the word meant and so they appended the Greek word for Fatherso people would at least understand. Why would they do that, why would they continue to use an obscure Aramaic word unless it was something that had been passed down to them from Jesus himself. These are the things that tell me that Jesus was in the habit of calling God abba. I also believe that he was the first one ever to dare to use that title for God.
So, what is the significance of Jesus using that word. As I said, abba was not the usual word for father. It was the familiarword that you would use in your family when you were speaking to your father. You may have had people tell you that it was a word that only a small child would use for his or her father – the equivalent to the English “Daddy,” or “Papa” – but that is not quite right. Abba was not exclusively used by infants. Unlike “daddy,” it was commonly used by children of all ages (including adults) to speak to their fathers.
Sometimes (thinking that abba meant daddy) people have suggested that Jesus used the word abba in order to imply that our relationship with God is one of childlike dependence and intimacy. Although there is an intimacy to his use of the word, it is actually not meant to imply an infantile dependence.
So what did Jesus mean by the word? What I see is this: Jesus went out of his way to avoid using the common and general word for a father in his society when he was talking about God. I believe that he did that precisely because that word was closely associated with the patriarchal system of absolute authority and power vested in male figures. Jesus was convinced that God had no support for such systems. It was why, for example, he urged his followers to “call no one your father on earth.” (Matthew 23:9) So, by refusing to use the usual word for father that people usually used when talking about God, Jesus was making a strong statement that God had no part in such a system of dominance, authority and power.
That is the first thing that Jesus means by using this word abba, it was a way of saying who God was not. But there is also a positive meaning in Jesus’ choice to use this word. It was the word, as I said, that was commonly used by families within the household to refer to the father of the family. And I think that, as a household word, it may have been chosen to direct our attention towards a different role that a father had in that society.
Though it is true that ancient Jews, like most ancient Mediterranean people, tended to think of fathers primarily as those authority figures who had absolute power even over the lives of every person in their household, there was another side to the role of a father in Jewish tradition. Not only did he have authority over the household, he also bore the burden of the wellbeing of the entire household.
Families were very large and very complicated in Ancient Israel. A typical family was not made up of a simple nuclear family of mother, father, and children that we are familiar with. A family would often include many generations and many branches of an extended family all living under one roof. In addition, servants and any livestock were also considered to be members of the family. And the father of the family, the householder, was the one person who had care for all of those people.
It was the job of the householder to ensure that every person under his roof had what they needed to survive and thrive. Can you imagine how difficult a job that was? It wasn’t just a matter of equally sharing out the resources of the household because, of course, there are always those who have special needs and requirements if they are going to be their best. Being a father, therefore, was a heavy burden of care and hard decisions. And there was a strong tradition in Ancient Israel of speak of God as one who took that kind of care of all his people – the householder of a entire nation. As it says in the Psalm, “As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lordhas compassion for those who fear him.”
So, when Jesus chose to use the name Abba, the name used exclusively inside the household for God, I suspect that he was making a point of portraying God as that kind of householder – one who takes tender care of the needs of every person in his household. This is exactly how Jesus portrayed God at every opportunity – a God who provides for the needs of his people, who takes care of them and looks out in particular for those who are in special need: the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged. This is how he taught his disciples to trust in God as their Father: “Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
So, while Jesus was very comfortable addressing God as Father, he seems to have gone out of his way to present an understanding of God as Father that was at odds with the patriarchal assumptions of the society around this. I’ve got to admit that I have some trouble with how some people promote the idea of God as Father – especially if they are using it as a way to impose male dominance in society. It is refreshing to know that, even in his day, Jesus resisted that idea.
#TodaysTweetableTruth Jesus called God Abba – a rejection of patriarchy and control, an embrace of the image of the caring householder.
As to the challenges of being a father today – of caring and giving support to the people under your care and charge, I find encouragement from Jesus’ use of the image. Fathers you aren’t alone, you have someone who understands your struggles to take care of the people under your charge. Fatherless, you aren’t fatherless – there is one who is looking after you. Those abused or kept down by systems of patriarchy or sexism, you are not neglected either. Whether or not you are comfortable thinking of God as father or not, there is a householder who truly cares about what you need.
If you were like me, you were appalled and distressed and maybe depressed when you heard about the terrible events that unfolded in Orlando, Florida one week ago. The largest mass shooting in American History not carried out by the military. And one of the worst things about it is that it seems as if the crime was specifically targeted at a sexual minority group which had specifically gathered in one of the few places where they felt safe in society – destroying any sense of that safety.
I’m wondering, what can Jesus’ teaching about God as “Abba” say to us about such a terrible tragedy? Let me suggest this: if our God were merely a father – a kind of heavenly paterfamilias – who was all about authority and power, all about right and wrong, then I would be particularly discouraged today because that would mean that our only response to such a tragedy would be judgment and punishment. Some, I know, would be inclined to judge the victims in their minority status. I cannot do that. I cannot see (especially right now) how Christian judgement of sexual minorities who do not harm or rape anybody has made the world a better place. Judgement in that case only seems to make things worse. Some would focus on judging the criminal assassin and the communities that he has been associated with. That is little better, perhaps, but it is not good enough and as far as I can see and judgement alone will not make anything better.
But if God is “Abba,” how can that change our response? If God is Abba, if God is the householder who is burdened with the wellbeing of everyone within his earthly household, then God’s first question when looking at each one of us is not, “What have you done wrong that I may punish you?” It is, “What do you need. What are the special challenges you are dealing with that keep you from thriving?” That is a very different question and provides a very different orientation to us as we seek to make a difference in our world, especially with groups that have been targeted because of who they are and what makes them different. If God is Abba, this is something that gives me hope for a better world.
