If you drew a ten-mile circle around
this very church, my mom – with her sister, Mag and all their siblings – and my
dad – with all his many siblings – were born and spent their entire childhoods
inside that ten-mile circle. Fr. Zywan
always thinks that I once lived here, too, but I never did – it only seemed
like I did.
You see, just before my mom and dad
married, my dad moved away from Pittsburgh to work for IBM in New York. In both their families, they were one of the
few that moved away. Hence, a Roos
family ritual was to come to Pittsburgh every summer for a week or two, and
then come back again to Pittsburgh every Thanksgiving. And when we came back, we invariably stayed
at 1534 Montgomery Road, the house Dan and Dee now live in, but then the manse
of Uncle Ivan and Aunt Margie. I’m not
sure I remember the numbers of all the houses my family lived in, but I will
always remember 1534 Montgomery Road, for it was a home away from home.
The Birsic kids – who ages conveniently
lined up with us Roos kids – were more than cousins, they were like brothers
and sisters. And Uncle Ivan and Aunt
Margie did not treat us as just any ordinary guests; we were kids like their
very own. The loved us just as they
loved their own. We especially knew we
were family when we got a stern look from Uncle Ivan or were on the wrong end
of Aunt Margie’s “crooked finger” – when they scolded or corrected us just as
they scolded their own. They were not
just uncle and aunt, they were like another loving, caring mom and dad. It truly was home away from home.
Many kids, for one reason or another,
never have the experience of being loved by their parents. We were blessed, in a way, to experience the
intimacy of this parental love not only with mom and dad, but also with Aunt
Margie and Uncle Ivan.
This intimacy is also an integral part
of our faith and the reason we are gathered here today. Let me explain.
The Jewish people were quite the odd
ducks in their world. While every
Mediterranean culture believed in a vast collection of gods and goddesses, the
Jews were steadfastly monotheistic – one God who was not only their God, but
the only God for all people. Every other
culture saw their gods as abusing or otherwise taking advantage of mere
humans. They could only hope, at best,
to encourage the gods to leave them alone by offering propitiating
sacrifices. In dramatic contrast, the
Jews held that God desired to have an intimate relationship with them, to care
for them, to protect them, and most of all, to give them the means to live
freely and in community by entrusting them with his law. No other people could even conceive of such a
thing.
During his life on earth, Jesus experienced
an unusually intimate relationship with God – even for a Jewish man. He almost never refers to God using the
typical Hebrew words for God like Elohim (God) or El Shaddai (God Almighty) or Adonai
(Lord). His typical reference to God was
the Aramaic word Abba, or Father. But
not just some distant and impersonal father, for he almost always refers to my
Father, your Father, even famously, as he taught us to pray, our Father, for Jesus
states that those who follow his father’s will are his true brothers and his true
sisters.
Jesus understood that as God’s creation,
every human being is, from the moment of conception, a child of God. Yet, this relationship is not simply that which
a creature has with its creator. Rather,
with faith in Jesus, we live this relationship as a loved child with a loving
parent. And because this parent is the
infinite and eternal God, our relationship is with an all-loving, all-provident
parent.
God has loved us into being. God gains nothing by creating us – God needs
nothing, including you and me – yet God created us not for anything He would
gain, but simply that we might have life.
God loves us without any condition, for while we were still sinners,
Christ died for us. God, as we hear in
today’s passage from John, loves us eternally, for Jesus has prepared a place
for us in God’s house of many dwellings.
It is in this relationship with a
loving-parent-God that we find hope today.
Not just hope for our beloved Mag, but hope for each and every one of
us. It is in this relationship with a
loving-parent-God that we find joy even in this time of death, that we find
peace even in this time of mourning, and that we find strength to love others
as God loves us.
We gather together today to pray with the
sure and certain hope that God will swiftly and lovingly welcome Mag to that
place prepared for her from the beginning of time as she so often and so lovingly
welcomed my family to join with hers at 1534 Montgomery Road.
