“Abba Father”: Yeshua’s Agonising Intimacy

“Abba! Father! Everything is possible for You, so remove this cup from me! Yet, not as I wish, but as You wish”.
Mark 14:36

As we draw into the Passover season this year, the words of Yeshua to the Father during his anxiety leading up to the time of his death came to my mind; “Abba Father”.

The word “abba” is Aramaic for the more intimate phrase of father; “papa” or “dad”. The only time we see the Lord speak these words are when he was agonising over what was to soon come, his crucifixion, in such agony that he even wanted such a trial to pass from him.

This intimate expression from the Son, reveals several things. For one, the intimacy between him and his real, literal, Father in Heaven. But another thing it also shows is the level of emotional trauma he was in at this point. Often anxiety can be worse or as bad as an actual event we are not looking forward to as we focus on what’s ahead and get carried along by our imaginations, and we see this psychological place Yeshua finds himself in here.

When in extreme trauma, many people will seek comfort in what is most important to them, or in those closest to them, sometimes almost entering a child-like state, seeking one’s parents to coddle them from danger, and take them home as if to swaddle their baby in a blanket to a quiet place.

For example, there have been known accounts of soldiers in war, in their last moments before they die, to cry out for their mothers or those closest to them:

“The surgeon says that 12 people have died on his operating table. ‘We struggled for their lives, but death won. When soldiers are dying, they all say the same thing: they call for their mother or their fellow soldiers‘“. – Euromaidan Press, Surgeon from the ATO zone: Before death, all soldiers call for their mothers

We see by Yeshua’s calling out in his time of distress as he prayed with the word “Abba”, almost could be said be as if he entered a stress induced child-like state of longing for what was closest to him, the only thing that could truly make him feel safe, his all powerful Father Yah, whom he said “could do anything”. “Daddy” he cried out to God as a small boy, whilst he was consumed with the thoughts of what was to come soon.

I find such a small detail, not only psychologically realistic in the sense of this being a real historical account, but, more importantly, that it gives us just a small but detailed component of the suffering he went through on our behalf that might be easily looked over when reading this passage over and over through the years of our continual remembrance of him.

This is something to meditate upon during this Passover season, the season of the Passion of our Lord and Saviour, who agonised, sweat, cried, was tortured, and then died for our sins.