Jesus as the Presence of Abba
Cooke's discussion of Jesus as the presence of Abba relies on Jesus' humanity because, it is His humanity primarily that we are able to identify with and that we ourselves, ultimately, rely upon in order to connect to Jesus' divinity. By bringing into the discourse the element of "Abba" it helps us to differentiate between the two natures of Christ -- Christ as man and Christ as God. And while we need both, for such is the nature of our own sinful predicament that we can only be saved by the Son of God made Man offering His own life to save ours -- we have a tendency to resist or be mystified by the divine nature. The human nature on the other hand calls to us and we recognize it. We recognize the divine nature as well but tend to be frightened by it: we are like those who asked Christ to leave them after He sent the demons into the pigs which then rushed into the waters and drowned. When Christ presents himself as the presence of "Abba" it is in order to help us to see that the mystery of our salvation is bound up in the mystery...
By introducing this alternate way of thinking of Him into the conversation, we are able to come nearer Him with less trepidation and to see in His sacraments the beautiful call to our soul that is inherent in them.
As Cooke (1994) says, "Another way of describing the role of Jesus in instituting Christian sacraments is to say that he is himself the fundamental sacrament of God's saving presence in human history" (p. 59). Essentially, this is exactly what Jesus does by linking himself to Abba: he defines his own humanity, which connects Him to us in a way that we would otherwise be reluctant to admit. He is like one of us and He unites Himself to us through this manner.
The church is a sacrament because Jesus is both human and divine -- and that is the point of the mystery of our Redemption and His Sacrifice: it could not have been achieved any other way. God could have simply forgiven mankind without sacrifice, but that would have negated the entire narrative, the entire construct of God's creation -- the meaning of love,…
