Text: Luke 15:11-32 (the Parable of the Prodigal Son) * video of the complete service
Why do we participate in church? This is a question we ask periodically at Mill Woods United, and I appreciate it.
When I surprised myself by joining Kingston Road United Church in Toronto 20 years ago, it had nothing to do with church doctrine. I considered the bits and pieces of church teachings I had absorbed as a child to be nonsense; and so, like many other people, I gave up church after I left home and integrated into a culture that no longer had one dominant religion.
The church I rejoined in 2001 was different than the one I had left 25 years earlier. For starters, the minister at Kingston Road, Rivkah Unland, was an American woman with a Hebrew name who was of Irish and Norwegian heritage, all of which surprised and intrigued me. The church was also more marginal and more focused on social issues than the one I had left. But these factors were secondary to the main reason behind my decision to rejoin the church, which was a troubled marriage and my hope to join a community that could help me weather its storms. As for teachings about God, Jesus, and doctrines like life after death, I had no interest.
Happily, Kingston Road United gave me much more than a community to rely upon during a turbulent marriage. On the first Good Friday service I attended there in 2002, I was moved by the choir anthems and stunned to remember — or perhaps to learn for the first time — that Jesus died on the cross. After the service, I said to the minister it was almost enough to break an old atheist’s heart.
I read “Care of the Soul” by Thomas Moore, which she had suggested. I went on the first of six canoe trips to Algonquin Park that summer, which was organized by the United Church’s Five Oaks Centre. In 2003, I attended the first of many men’s spirituality circles at Five Oaks, of which Rivkah’s husband Peter was the main organizer.
I sang in the choir, which rekindled my love of music; I preached for the first time in July 2004 on the 25th anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua, which had been so important to me in the 1980s; and I audited three evening courses at the United Church’s Emmanuel College at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2004 and the winter and fall of 2005
By the end of these three courses, I decided that a career in ministry was not for me. However, my heart changed when my father died in June 2007 and I delivered a eulogy, which was a rare moment in which I felt heard. And so, by September 2007, I was enrolled full time at Emmanuel College.
At the end of that first semester, I wrote an essay titled “Resurrection: why wait for death? Do it now!” In it, I articulated an approach to The Good News that I have tried to follow ever since.
I began the essay by discussing today’s Gospel reading – the Parable of the Prodigal Son. There is much that can be said about this parable – on grace, on mercy, on resentment. But in that essay and in this, the third sermon I have written about the Prodigal over the nine Lent’s I have been the minister here, I focus on its use of death and new life as metaphors for being lost and found.
Twice, the Father, who is often seen as a stand-in for God, says his youngest son was dead and has come back to life. He was lost and now he’s found.
As a divinity student who struggled to see if I could become a preacher, I looked for passages like this that viewed spiritual life through the lens of metaphor. These were passages I often found relatable, unlike many other parts of Scripture that were often read literally. As my studies continued, I decided that much of the Bible was bunk and that the sections I found useful were best viewed as dreams, parables, or metaphors.
This week, I revisited a 2012 article from the magazine “Spirituality and Health” by Thomas Moore that I had referenced in my first sermon on the Prodigal Son in 2016. In this article, “Transmogrifying the Gospels,” Moore, whose focus is on poor translations of the Bible, says: “The Gospels have been presented time after time as simple-minded, anachronistic stories that have little relevance to twenty-first century life. As long as this goes on, people will shun them, looking for something more intelligent in their place.
He continues: “But Gospel spirituality is of special importance today, as we struggle to create a world community of cultures. The Gospels teach an end to xenophobia, paranoia, and narcissism.”
When a church leader says that death and resurrection rest on a literal and historical reading of Matthew, Luke, and John, which, unlike Mark, include physical appearances of Jesus after his death, they have little interest to me. For one, this violates a central understanding of mine that there is only one reality – the natural one.
But when death and resurrection are seen as Jesus describes them in the parable of the Prodigal son, they make sense to me. They describe a path of pain, dissolution, and grief followed by a joyous acceptance of reality and a move closer to the source of Love we call God.
This is a path I find in the gospels, in the real letters of Paul, and in life; and I try to preach it and follow it.
In 2011, I agreed to be ordained by the United Church of Canada with a passionate commitment to the Good News of death and rebirth, and with continued skepticism of 1700 years of imperialist conspiracy theories spread by most churches.
And now, my time in paid ministry is coming to an end. Despite this ending, I will continue to search for moments of grief and death this side of the grave and for moments of new life that can come to any person and community before death. As for biological death, I trust it will complete our return us to an egoless life within the heart of Love.
I view many other church teachings as conspiracy theories. For a truly egregious example, I mention Pat Robertson, the 92-year-old founder of the Christian TV program “The 700 Club.” On February 28, the retired fundamentalist returned to his TV program to claim that Vladimir Putin was compelled by God to invade Ukraine to fulfill end times prophecies.
You may be like me and find such statements to be raving lunacies. But they are hardly unique in the long centuries since Emperor Constantine slandered Jesus after a battle in the year 312 and in which he became Emperor of the Roman Empire.
Despite my return to church in 2001, I try to not be a conspiracy theorist; and so I continue to seek death and resurrection as they are portrayed in Luke’s Parable of the Prodigal Son and in Paul when he writes “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20)
A few years ago in a United Church minister’s discussion thread on Facebook, I was challenged by a minister who disagreed when I said that in Galatians Paul uses the words crucifixion and new life as metaphors. I replied that I would agree with him unless by metaphor one meant a word or phrase that referred to something other than its literal sense thus invoking an implicit similarity between the thing described and what is denoted by the word or phrase — in which case Paul’s statement is definitely metaphorical!
Does church have a useful place in our lives? For one, it helped me at the end of a troubled first marriage. For many of us, it provides a place to sing and reflect; or for fellowship and fun; or to organize with others for social justice; or to engage with the neighbourhood in charitable programs like The Bread Run. It is also a place where I try to confront the deep and difficult mysteries of life, particularly in a troubled world like ours, which is filled with both wonders and terrors; and a place to realize that despite everything, all is well, and all will be well.
In this life, we may often find ourselves so lost we might consider ourselves dead. But just as often as this happens, we are also given the Grace to be found and to be reborn in the Spirit.
And for this latter reality, I can only say Hallelujah.
May it be so. Amen.
Notes and sermons from Edmonton 