Our loving-parent-God

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.