St. Paul’s United Church Good Friday, April 22, 2011

Homecoming – Rev. David Mundy

Luke 15:1-2, 11-24 Matthew 27:32-46

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Many of you will know the name of the world’s most famous atheist. Christopher Hitchens is an extremely bright and eloquent and caustic critic of those who believe in God, whatever God might look like.

Christopher Hitchens has a lesser known brother, whose name is Peter. While he isn’t as famous, Peter is also a very clever man, an award-winning journalist and author. He was also an atheist for most of his adult life, but he has returned to faith and Christianity in particular. Peter has actually debated his brother Christopher and it sounds as they are worthy opponents, but they have decided that this adversarial approach might be entertaining but not good for their filial relationship.

Peter Hitchens has written a book called The Rage Against God, which has the subtitle “how atheism led me to faith.” It is a thoughtful book and quite personal. In it Hitchens tells the story of travelling to Dallas, Texas to cover and actually witness the execution of a convicted murderer in a prison. This grim event unsettled him and before he flew back home he visited the art gallery in Dallas where he came upon a painting by the artist Thomas Hart Benton called The Prodigal Son, a story from the gospel of Luke which he came to realize applied to him. We heard the story of this wayward son this morning and many of us know it well but the painting is not what we might expect. It is what Hitchens calls a sour and pessimistic version of the Prodigal Son, reset in the bleak days of the 1930's. We didn’t read to the end of the parable this morning but most of us know that the father throws a “welcome home” party with the best of everything, despite the objection of the other son. In the painting the house where the “welcome home” party might have taken place has fallen into ruin. The “fatted calf” is reduced to a skeleton in the yard.

. Instead of being welcomed home by a loving father the young man comes home to desolation. I will let Peter Hitchens describe the painting because he does it so well:

He has come home too late. Nobody has seen him from afar off and run joyfully to meet him. There will be no forgiveness, no best robe, no ring, no music and dancing. He is gaping, with his hand to his mouth, at the ruin of the family homestead, ruin caused by his own greed and wastefulness. He looks as if it just dawning on him that he is stupid and cruel and without hope . . . who can he blame but himself?

Who knows whether the artist is offering us a “what if?” scenario, or actually mocking this parable of Jesus.

It had never occurred to me until reading this perspective by Peter Hitchens that the parable of the returning son might have something to do with this most solemn day in the Christian calendar and that reading the story might be appropriate for this day. For Hitchens the painting represents what his own life and the world would be like without his renewed faith and without Christ.

This day, Black Friday, Holy Friday, Long Friday, is a bleak day and it’s hard to imagine how it ever came to be called Good Friday, isn’t it? Some scholars say that it was originally God’s Friday or that in old English Good meant holy.

Whatever the case, this is the day we “read it and weep” – we read the story of the crucifixion of Jesus with all its suffering and sadness and injustice. We hear Jesus cry out the unthinkable “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In a way, when we come to a Good Friday service we are witnesses at an execution, at least symbolically, and it is little wonder that people are often reluctant to attend this service. The crucifixion of Jesus was so terrible for the earliest Christians that they didn’t use the cross as a symbol for Christianity until the fourth century and Jesus on the cross is not depicted in the art of our faith until around the tenth century.

Crucifixion was the worst form of execution in the Roman empire, and it was often called the “slave’s punishment” because it was primarily used for rebellious slaves. And usually they were crucified along public highways or on hilltops to remind everyone passing by what happened to those who strayed too far outside the law. It was usually a slow, painful death and onlookers were encouraged to mock those who were on the crosses to add to their misery.

When we read of the crucifixion on this day we realize that there is a happy ending to the story, but on Good Friday we are also invited to stay in the moment as long as we can, to ask the “what if?” question.

What if Jesus had simply died and been buried and remembered only by a handful of people who loved him? What if there was no resurrection, no healing homecoming, no promise of eternity? In a way the crucifixion is like that grim painting by Thomas Hart Benton, which offers the bleakest possible interpretation of a story of homecoming and reconciliation.

Good Friday is perhaps the most significant day in the year to ask what our world and what our lives would be like without the powerful story of redemptive love in Christ. In a time when so many seem to rage against God it has become strangely popular in our culture to speak negatively and contemptuously about anything to do with Christianity, including those who are Christians.

Some of you know that I write a personal blog which invites comments. In response to one blog entry a reader wondered why it is that people seem so angry toward Christianity these days and mentioned that virtually every story online which has a religious theme seems to draw anger and even hatred from commenters.

One of our daughters, who is in her mid-twenties, offered her own anecdote recently. She works as a waitress in a popular restaurant chain to help put herself through college, and on Sunday afternoons, they often get a crowd of churchgoers who arrive after worship. She is fascinated and a little unsettled because the other wait staff are so negative about these Christian clients: “here come the church people,” they groan. They don`t like them, they say, because they are ruder than other patrons and they are lousy tippers. Except that our daughter says that it simply isn’t true. A few of the church folk are rude and some aren’t very generous but she doesn’t notice that they are any different from other clients. This is hardly persecution, but it is a mind set that we probably wouldn’t have experienced twenty or thirty years ago.

Other people aren’t nearly so negative, but they have decided that there is no room in their lives for God, even when they have been raised in a Christian environment. Instead of being “The Greatest Story Ever Told” it is the story people choose to ignore.

In the midst of all this we are called to be faithful to Christ, to gather at the foot of the cross as we do today and to affirm our love for the crucified One. We may find that identifying ourselves as Christians will become more costly in the years ahead, in the way that it is for many other Christians around the world, but this may actually awaken us to the importance of our faith.

In order to do this we need to be sure in our own minds and in our hearts that the message of our faith is not about rejection and judgement and guilt. It is rather the welcome home, the act of sacrificial love which sets us free. And this is a message we can’t live without as the community of Christ.

There is another painting called The Return of the Prodigal Son, which may be the most famous depiction of this parable. It is by the 17^th century painter Rembrandt Van Rijn and it was among the last works created by this remarkable artist. Unlike many artists Rembrandt was famous in his own lifetime, and wealthy, but he ended up squandering his money and he eventually lost his family and his reputation. It’s interesting, though, that this is also one of his greatest works, as though in his own poverty and humiliation he was able to identify with the young man who returns with nothing to offer and yet experiences the acceptance of his parent. There is a tenderness in the unexpected welcome home depicted here, which is powerful, and we are welcomed home today.

Henri Nouwen, one of the best-known Christian writers of the twentieth century, was fascinated by this painting and the parable itself. He saw it not only as a clear statement about our acceptance in Christ but as a reminder of God’s willingness to live with us:

I am touching here the mystery that Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through his cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God. Jesus, who told the story to those who criticized him for associating with sinners, himself lived the long and painful journey that he describes.

Today we accept the sombre reality of the cross with all the pain and suffering it represents. We can also see in it God’s choice to come out to meet us and welcome us home. Please trust that we are embraced, whatever our weaknesses and failures may be. And in spite of the sadness of this day we can already hear the music of our Easter party calling us into joy, and we thank God for new life in Christ and for homecoming.