(Lk 15.11-32) St. Botolph’s Parish, Prodigal Son, 31 January 2010“My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. (Luke 15.24)
‘God is dead’, said the mad German philosopher. ‘God is dead: and we have killed him’. This isn’t Richard Dawkins, sipping his tea in the smug suburbs of North Oxford. It isn’t an Oxbridge don at a dinner party: ‘Look how sophisticated I am, I don’t believe in God!’ ‘God is dead’ isn’t saying ‘There is no God’. It isn’t real atheism; it’s a cry of relief. It’s a cry of joy: ‘the wicked witch is dead’. The monster is dead. That bloodthirsty tyrant, who lets a newborn baby die in agony of meningitis, then casts it into everlasting fire because the child wasn’t baptised. The murderer, who tortures his only son to death on the Cross, to satisfy his ‘justice’ – his insatiable lust for blood. The cosmic policeman, who keeps tabs on your every move, your every thought, ticking off each time you see a movie, or have a drink, or smile at a pretty girl. The abuser – who whips you; turns a blind eye on your tears; then locks you away, forever, in a cold, clammy cellar underneath the earth. ‘God is dead’ – the tyrant who threatens: ‘Do as I command, or I’ll send you to hell’.
Who could believe in a God like that? Who would not hate a God like that? The one that we hate, we kill inside our minds. We kill him, before he kills us. I suspect: inside every atheist, there’s a cry of protest: ‘I refuse to believe in the abuser in the sky. I reject him. I’d rather wander through an endless nothingness, than believe in a vengeful tyrant you call God’.
But what makes you so sure that this tyrant is God?
Do you remember the first time you saw that tyrant’s face? That cold, stern look, without a trace of sympathy in the eyes. An abused child goes through his life, thinking that look is the face of God. A child, whipped, beaten, maybe worse; locked in a cellar, crying and banging its tiny fist on the door. A little child, so dreadfully afraid of Mommy or Daddy, it doesn’t tell them anything; it doesn’t dare say ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I love you’. It runs away from home, desperately seeking something to love it. Maybe a warm body. A cheap bottle of wine. A pill. Powder. A needle in the vein. A gang. Anything to stop the pain of knowing: you can never come home again. If the first person you trusted to love and protect you, abuses you, shuts you out – you fear: God will likewise. You broke his commandments? He can’t wait to punish you. You left his house? He’ll never take you take until you come grovelling, right up to his front door. A thousand years of Christians have tortured themselves with the image of a tyrant who keeps score. ‘Maybe my sins are too many, too terrible to forgive’, they tell themselves. ‘Maybe I was born guilty of the “Original Sin” of Adam. Maybe I was predestined from birth to spend eternity in hell. If Christ died on the Cross to ‘satisfy’ some tyrant’s anger, maybe I deserve hell for the unspeakable crime of being born’. The stern look of the tyrant – of every abuser – is only the mask of these heretical lies. The mask of the first abuser: the vengeful spirit we call … Satan. He is the one who keeps tabs. His is the cold look that the abused child mistakes for the face of God.
Our God is nothing like that. Nothing at all.
A man had two sons. One day, his younger son said: ‘You’re dead to me. Give me the money I’ll inherit when you die’. His father gives, freely. He runs away. Desperately, he seeks something to fill the gap of his lost home. A warm body. A cheap bottle. A gang of thieves. When a famine starts in the land, he nearly starves. He grovels in the pigsty, eating the husks he finds around the faeces and the mud. No one gives him a thing. He thinks, ‘I can never go home again, not with my sins, not with what I’ve done. But I’ll do anything. I’ll grovel on my hands and knees. I’ll knock with my bloody fist on my father’s door’. But he doesn’t even reach his father’s door. At a distance – still at a distance – his father recognizes him. He rushes out to him, hugs and kisses him. The father asks him nothing, accuses him of nothing. His tears flow more freely than his son’s. ‘Dress him in the finest clothes. Prepare the best feast for him. My son was dead and is alive; he was lost and is found’.
His older brother hears them in the fields. ‘Punish him’ is all the cold-faced Puritan says. ‘He broke your law: punish him. He left our house: shut him out. Make him grovel for all his sins’. But even his Satanic rage doesn’t anger the father. ‘My son, all I have is yours. It’s only right to celebrate when my child comes home. Whatever you do, whatever you can ever do, you are always my children and I am always your Father’.
Brothers and Sisters in Christ: the whole meaning of Lent is here. God punishes no one. He whips and beats no one. He casts no one into hell. He shuts no one out of his love – yes, no one, even in hell. There is only one sin that is unforgivable: to ascribe the works of God to Satan, or the works of Satan to God – to say ‘he casts out devils by the prince of devils’. To give the abusive tyrant the name of our loving God. No one in hell is beyond his love: but, if we choose to make God over in the image of our hate, the fire of his love will never go away. If we run from him, he waits until we’re ready to come home. If we medicate ourselves with warm bodies, cheap wine, pills, razors, or criminal gangs, he waits and waits, until we’re ready to get well. Whether you fast strictly or ignore the fast, God won’t punish you. Whether you come to our beautiful services or not, God will never turn you away. If you stray far from home and feed on the rubbish thrown to the pigs – you’ll always find an open door. Our God doesn’t keep score. He welcomes the last as the first; he embraces the worst of sinners as though he were the holiest of saints. This Lent, the God who waits, waits for you.
Is God dead? No: but while we’re still dead, God brings us to life. While we are still lost, God wanders to the ends of the earth to find us. While we’re still at a distance, God rushes out to us and holds us in his unending embrace.