Abba Sings

If you have not read this inspiring slant on vocation, check it out.

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Aside from reading books about parenting (Anne Lamott's Operating Instructions being at the top of that list), I've been reading through Eugene Peterson's Tell it Slant. Thinking I'd read Peterson to balance all the baby/parenting stories and wisdom of the last seven days, I ran smack dab into the middle of this little nugget.

Peterson describes an experience he had while waiting to catch a flight in Germany heading to Israel. "A little boy near us, maybe four or five years old, jumped up and ran across the large room shouting , 'Abba! Abba! Abba! . . . ' and was swept up into the receiving arms of his father."

Peterson notes that this experience with 'Abba' was different than any other experience. "It was the first time I had ever heard 'Abba' in living speech. I had read the word in the Bible. I knew that in Jesus' mother tongue, Aramaic, it was the affectionate word for father, which would be common in family settings."

After listing the various biblical texts (Matt. 5-7; Rom. 8:15-16; Gal. 4:6) he realized that he'd neutered and domesticated the word. "I had encountered 'father' often enough in an academic setting around a table strewn with lexicons and exegetical studies. But I had never heard the word used in the living context of a son happily and trustingly greeting his father. I had never heard the word sing. I felt like I was back on that Galilean hillside in the company of Jesus as he prayed with his followers, in the garden with Jesus as he prayed his passion, worshiping with the Roman and Galatian Christians as they found themselves included in Jesus' prayer every time they prayed, Abba 'Our Father in heaven. . . . '" (Tell it Slant, 169-171).

Note: 1) There is a great deal of scholarly debate that I intentionally left out regarding "Abba" and its meaning in both First Century Aramaic and the confines of the New Testament writings. That's beyond the point of this post. Wright, Jeremias, Carter et al have done a superb job in dealing with this word (Abba) 2) For those of you who've had fractured relationships with your earthly father, I do not intend to feed you the evangelical bumper sticker line that "everything is okay now" because you have a "heavenly father" who looks after you. That's too simplistic for most of the pastoral counseling I've been a part of. I suggest you investigate the Psalms along with Donald Miller's To Own a Dragon.