Parish of the Precious Blood
Homily for the
Twelfth Sunday
of the Year
Cycle C
Reverend Kyle L.
Doustou
June 19, 2016
Do
you remember what your first word was? With rare exceptions, the answer is no.
But lucky for us, there are people in our lives who do…and for many of them,
especially our parents, their child’s first word is a moment of great joy. It’s
probably the most concrete sign for parents that their child is healthy and
growing up…but let’s be honest, the real reason mom and dad so look forward to
that first word is because they are hoping it’s going to be “Mama” or “Dada.” What greater gift can a precious little child give to his or
her parents than to use their burgeoning power of speech to express their
childlike love for mom and dad by uttering their names first? It’s beautiful. Now
every so often you get a rebel child – like myself – who destroys his parents
dreams by choosing a different word. For me, it was a simple, but clear “No!”
that I first spoke in this life…but the vast majority of little tykes will honor
one of their parents. We start off this life, even before we’re able to take
our first steps or formulate coherent thoughts, by expressing our fundamental
and instinctual understanding that this life is all about relationship.
What’s
both absolutely crazy and utterly amazing, is that the Eternal Word of God, the
Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the very One through Whom all things were
made, would not be deprived of this experience. Because He took on flesh and
became like us, indeed became one of us,
He would have gone through the same thing. One day, out of the blue, after
months of goo’s and ga’s and other little baby noises, the
little Child Jesus would have come to formulate His first human word. Maybe it
occurred in the stillness of the night where no one could hear it. Maybe it
occurred while He and Mary and Joseph were shopping at the market. Maybe it occurred
when He was playing with a toy that Joseph made Him or while Mary was changing
Him. However it happened, whenever it happened, no matter around whom it
happened, I would bet my life that the first word the Christ Child uttered was Abba - Father.
Today,
in our country, we are celebrating Father’s Day…a day for us to thank our dads for
the gift of life, for the care they’ve given us, and for the love they've shared
with us. No doubt we’ll throw some steaks on the grill, let dad play some
horseshoes, and shower gifts of cheap tools and bad ties on him today, but I
think that the best thing we can do for our fathers on this Father's Day is to meditate a little bit
on the meaning of fatherhood and to grow in our love for the way that our dads have lived theirs out. And I can think of no better way to do this than to reflect on
the meaning and significance of the fact that Jesus calls upon God, and dares
us to call upon Him, as Abba - Father.
It
has become a rather popularized practice in modern Christianity to speak of the
Aramaic word Abba as meaning “daddy”
or “papa.” Thus when we hear in the Gospels that Jesus uses this word in
respect to God, we can’t help but think of it as a mushy gushy sentimental
expression. We like it because it helps us to think of God the Father as some
great big eternal Teddy Bear, and it brings us comfort to think that this is
the image of God that Jesus is showing us. Unfortunately, while there might be some truth to this, the greater
significance of Jesus calling upon God as Abba
has less to do with making us feel good and more to do with revealing the very
nature of the Godhead. Throughout the ancient world, and indeed in every
non-Christian theistic religion in our own day, to conceive of God – the one
than which nothing greater can ever be thought – as “father” is completely
ridiculous. He is almighty; He is holy; He is eternal; He is creator; He is
all-powerful and all-knowing; He is all of this and so much more…but father? Fatherhood is an earthly
experience…it’s too common and insignificant and doesn’t seem to adequately
express the ultimate transcendence of the Creator of the Universe. Maybe we can get away with saying that
God is like a father, just as He is like a rock, or a mighty ocean, or other
similes. But to say that He is
Father, well that’s tantamount to blasphemy. After all, you can only have a
father if you have a son or a daughter, and so to call God “Father” is to call
oneself the “Son of God.” But this is exactly what Jesus did. And it’s what
landed Him on the Cross. The significance of Jesus of Nazareth calling God Abba - Father is not to entice us towards sentimentalism, but rather to
give us the greatest and the most revolutionary revelation of Who God is. We
can attribute many things to God, we can conceive of His power and might and so
on, but Jesus reveals to us that over and above all else, God is Father. And because He is Father, and because His Fatherhood is
the most definitive expression of His Essence, it must be the case that He has
eternally – without beginning or end – been Father.
But to be Father means that God’s own
Self is defined by relationship…relationship with a Son. God the Father and His
Son, with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. This is what Jesus reveals to us
when He calls God Abba. And the eternal
Abba sent His Bar (in Aramaic), His Ben
(in Hebrew), His Son to us, that by
becoming one with Him, we too can call God our Father.
Fathers
are great. They possess within themselves the power and the ability to generate
new life. They carry on the family name. They provide food and shelter and
protection. They pick us up when we fall down and they even knock us down a few
pegs when we need it. They offer us wisdom and advice. They empower us and
encourage us to grow up and to do great things. And the best of them show us
how to love and to be loved in a way that speaks right to our hearts. Our
earthly fathers, as human and imperfect as they are, each of them plays a role
is helping to witness to us the greatest mystery that the human heart can
contemplate in this life: that God loves us, not as some far off Supreme Being,
but as Father. He has high standards for us, He wants the best for us, and He
calls us to greatness. He can be tough with us sometimes, but His love is
all-pervasive and ever-so-intimate because we
belong to Him as His children.
In
our Gospel today, taken from St. Luke, Jesus asks His disciples Who they say that
He is. Peter replies that He is the “Christ of God.” In the Gospel of St.
Matthew, Peter provides an additional word in His response: “You are the
Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Today we call upon Christ as the Eternal Son of the Father, and we ask Him to
make us more and more like Himself so that we can be in ever-more perfect union
with the One that He, and we, call upon as Abba,
as Father.