When my ten-month-old daughter began to form sounds into words. Among the first of these was “Eeee” when referring to her sister, and “ba-ba” while waving to someone who is leaving. For me, she ironically chose “Abba” (her version of ‘dada” at this point) – which ironically, is the same term Jesus used when speaking to His Father: “Abba,” which is loosely translated as ‘Daddy.’
While Adam and Eve originally walked and talked intimately with God, this was not the case for the Israelite people. During his encounter with the burning bush (Exodus 3), Moses asks God what His name is – God had previously been identified as being ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.’ The intimacy Adam and Eve originally experienced was long gone, yet Moses yearned to again be close to God – because that is where we belong. God’s answer to Moses “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14) becomes the name (YHWH) that the Israelite and Jewish people refuse to even mention – it is that sacred to them. When Jesus later addresses God as ‘Abba,’ it is a scandal to the Jewish leaders of His time; but it is for us a great gift. God is no longer far from us: we can again know Him intimately, in the deepest part of who we are. In fact, God WANTS us to know Him in this way – it is for this reason that He takes on a name and identity at all. And knowing God has consequences for us:
“Once you have come to know God, you must put Him in first place in your life. And with that a new life begins. You should be able to recognize Christians by the fact that they love even their enemies.” -YouCat 34
Some people get hung up on the idea of assigning to God one gender or the other, when the scriptures use both maternal and paternal images for God – and the idea of God as parent is EXTREMELY important, because for each of us, our parents are our source and origin. God, too, is the source and origin of all things. The fact that Jesus chose to address God as “Our Father” is not a slight towards women – but rather reflects some of the expectations Christians have of fatherhood. A true father is not simply one who impregnates a woman, but is rather one who cares for, nurtures, protects, and sacrifices for his family. God does all this – and more – for us, and calling God ‘Father’ reflects a closeness we are capable of having with our one perfect Father. (It is also worth noting that we refer to the Church as our Mother, and as the Bride of Christ… but that’s a further conversation for another time.)
What’s important to understand here is this: by letting Himself be known to us as ‘Father,’ God wants us to understand a few things. He is our source and origin – and the world in which we live is not the product of blind chance, but was willed by the Father. Just as a good father is concerned with those whom he has co-created, our Heavenly Father continues to care for us:
“God guides everything along paths that only he knows, leading it to its perfection. At no point in time does something that he has created fall out of his hands.” -YouCat 49
This is our history. In spite of the many times we’ve fallen short of the love which God shows us, He never gives up. Jesus’ parable of the lost son gives us a glimpse of what the Father’s love is like. Just like the father of the prodigal son never lost hope that his son would return – and rejoiced greatly in that return – so too does God the Father love us with a limitless love. He has loved us into existence, has loved us when we’ve rejected Him, which is what leads to his definitive act of love – Jesus to us:
“God does not just look on as man gradually destroys himself and the world around him through the chain reaction of sin. He sends us Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer, who snatches us from the power of sin.” -YouCat 70
He is our Father, one to whom we can (thanks to Jesus!) again be close to and know with an intimacy and tenderness we catch reflections of in the love of our parents. And so our hearts (and my daughter) cry out to the one we are coming to love “Abba!”
“For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba, Father!” -Romans 8:15
