[Message given at an outdoor worship service in the summer of 2015 in downtown Toronto, Canada]
This has been a terrible week on this continent. A 21 year old man visited a Bible Study at a historically important Black church in Charleston, South Carolina.
After listening to the people talk and pray, he pulled out a gun, and in a racially motivated rage, murdered 9 church members, starting with the pastor of the church.
Absolutely shocking. That a person could hate so much. He wanted to start a race war, he said when he was captured shortly after the massacre.
Brandon Green is associate pastor of River City Community Church in Chicago. He wrote this in an article on Christianitytoday.com
“Not unlike our church, the people of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston meet every Wednesday for Bible study. And like us, everyone is welcome to attend.
This Wednesday night a man sat among those desiring to study the word and draw closer to God and one another. He sat for an hour, filled with hate, before he began to open fire, killing nine people. A witness heard him saying that he had come to kill black people”.
Pastor Brandon Green continues: “As a black man, I’m left wondering, Where can we go, is there no safe place?
“There was a time when folks would run to the church screaming “Sanctuary! Sanctuary!” as if entering the church was like entering an embassy of the kingdom of heaven. The church gave those in harm’s way relief from this world’s unjust laws and hate.
“But it was in this embassy of heaven that our brothers and sisters were met with unbridled hate. The pervasiveness of this evil reminds me that this battle is not one waged against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities, an evil not of this world.
“It is clear that the enemy offers us no spiritual diplomatic immunity, that there is no a threshold so sacred that he won’t transgress to inflict pain. His hope is that his hate would cultivate hate in and through us.
The enemy's hope is that we would render ourselves unfit to carry the mantle of ambassadors of the kingdom. His hope is that we will stop worshiping.
“Someone once told me that to worship is to engage in spiritual warfare. We worship not to gloss over the tragedy, not to acquiesce in our pursuit of justice, not to set aside anger and anguish, but the contrary.
“We worship to raise our cry for justice, to proclaim our holy anger, to lament the loss of our brothers and sisters. We worship to say with fervent hearts that there is no hate in this world that is stronger than the love of God.
“We worship with the belief that God’s love will have us see true justice. For in his love is a place for our anger. In his love there is space for our tears. In his love there is space for our doubt and fears. In his love black lives matter. Our tears and anguish, our fatigue and frustration will be our offering, holy and acceptable onto God”.
How do we deal with this? As a middle-aged white man in Toronto, Canada, I’m on one level many steps away from the racial divide in the U.S. But we know that there is racism in Toronto.
Ask any non-white person here and they will express being on the receiving end of the polite variety of Canadian racism. Ask any white person and half of us will say we don’t think there’s a problem with racism.
I once spoke with a funeral director, a black man, in a car on the way to a gravesite. He said he had lived in the US for some time, and he’d lived in Canada for extended periods.
He said he actually preferred American racism because at least it was upfront and honest. You knew where you stood. Here in Canada, he said, it’s pretty much cloaked in our polite society.
But make no mistake, racism exists in Toronto. That was an eye opener for me.
But as Pastor Brandon Green said, and I believe, “there is no hate in this world that is stronger than the love of God… In his love there is space for our tears. In his love there is space for our doubt and fears”.
The love of God. The love of God. The love of God is where we need to go to find solace for the terrible events of our day. The love of God, our Heavenly Father, is what will give us perspective, will lift us, will encourage our hearts in these dark days.
Now, it’s Father’s Day, and we’ve already spent some time honouring our fathers and reflecting on fatherhood.
I want to spend some time looking into the Scripture that was just read, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, to see what we can see about the nature of God the Father.
I want to do that because there is a wonderful reality to ponder: that God wants, He chooses to have a relationship like that of a Father with us, with you and me.
The difference perhaps is that God’s fatherhood is perfect, not lacking on any level. Unlike our own fathers, perhaps unlike ourselves as dads. So that’s why we’re going to spend time seeing what this passage has to say about God as our Father in heaven.
As we begin to look at the story of the Prodigal Son, we are really looking through a window at much of the human story. [PAUSE]
And what I notice first in the story is the son asking for his inheritance, which is, sadly, very much like the son saying: “I wish you were dead, dad. Give me my money”.
As I see the son and watch the father’s response, one thing that’s clear is that the father, and thus God, is really not at all what you would call a controlling person.
The response of God to us wanting to do our own thing, even in complete defiance of Him, is to not refuse us.
It is not to contain us, to control us, to condemn us, to reject us.
The son in the story for all intents and purposes rejects the father. Like I said, asking for your inheritance before it is due is no different than wishing your parents dead.
There are those who say that the idea of God NOT being controlling and rather allowing free will is irresponsible, that it’s even a flaw that proves that God is not perfect.
That if free will is the cause of humans doing terrible things...think Hitler, think 9/11, think of the massacre that occurred in that church this past week...
There are those who think that the “free-will defense” of God proves a flaw in God.
But let me ask you, because the story we’re looking at is a tiny example of God’s relationship with all of humanity, is the father’s willingness to let his son go, with the inheritance, wrong?
Should the father have said ‘no’ and reacted by throwing his son into a cell for disrespecting him, in order to contain him?
Some may say that would be the right thing to do. But this father said ‘yes’ to his son, and allowed his son to NOT sit in a cell just resenting his father and learning nothing about the world or himself.
This father said ‘yes’ to his son, and he allowed the son to experience what life is like.
He allowed the son to, as the story progresses, personally grasp what it’s like to be out of relationship, out of earshot, of the father, and then to do his own thing. Interesting.
So in the story, the son enjoys life...for a while. The narrative wraps up the son’s experience away from the father in just a few words, but we know there was more to the story.
It wraps up the son’s journey thus far in a way that captures the real gist of it. It says that after he got his inheritance he: “set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living”.
A few words covering a multitude of mistakes, of sins. None of which are unique to him. The sins, the temptations in our life are no different from what others experience.
The shame we experience is secret. The sins we do are all of the same kind.
And then, although the prodigal son is just existing in the tiny bubble of a world that he’s created himself, he’s of course not immune to the real world outside of his bubble. Stuff happens.
And the Scripture says that after he blew all his money, that was a severe famine in the land. We don’t know famine here in Canada, but we see it on TV and if we have any empathy at all we can imagine it.
The little hunger pains we experience after not eating for a few hours…imagine those lasting days. And days. And days.
So with the combination of internal factors – he blew his financial resources without thinking about the future, and this external factor – the famine, the passage says he began to be in need.
Then...then we’re given a picture of the son’s best thinking in the moment, now that he’s blown his inheritance. Not only had he wasted all his money,
but his best thinking, when he began to be in real dire straits, was to hire himself out to a farmer in that country.
Now, he had been a son, a son of privilege, a son who belonged, a son who was loved by his father. A son with status, connected to a place and a people. He likely never had to think about working to survive. But now he’s a hired hand, an employee to a stranger. He gets to feed pigs.
In our culture, that’s not such a big deal.
In the Jewish culture that Jesus was in, and to the audience who was listening, this was the lowest kind of degradation of a person. Pigs are unclean animals in that culture. Unholy. Despicable.
To be the one who feeds the pigs, that’s scraping the bottom of the barrel. That’s as low she goes.
And as he’s feeding these animals their food, he’s so starved that pig food is starting to look attractive.
But he’s so far down the ladder that he’s not even allowed to eat pig food. No one gives him anything.
This is a picture of a man coming to the end of himself. It’s a picture of a person exhausting their own best counsel. It’s a picture of regret and degradation; It’s a picture of a person who has reaped what he has sown.
It’s a picture of a person who is at a place a total desperation and deprivation. And it’s only after he’s been in the situation for a while that he starts to think differently.
The story says: 17 “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! 18 I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’ 20 So he got up and went to his father”.
So the son, grasping that he has utterly blown it, finally having regained a bit of good judgment, he begins to map out his strategy...how he’s going to apologize.
He hopes...he hopes that maybe, just maybe, his dad will let him work for him. ‘I don’t merit being a son anymore. I get that I’ve burned that bridge. But can I just be someone who works for you?’
He knew his dad’s character and that, unlike the stranger he worked for in the foreign country, his father was a just employer. A kind boss.
So the son got up and went home to his father, still reciting his speech in his head. I can imagine how he felt, now that he was thinking clearly.
Now that he realized just how far he had sunk, how distant he had made himself from the father. How alienated and estranged and utterly silly he would have felt.
And while he’s feeling this way, as he’s approaching home, while he’s still just a speck in the distance, his father sees him.
You know the way you can recognize someone by their gate? By the way they walk, even if they’re in a crowd or far away?
The father knew the son’s walk. The father knew the son even from a long way off. And what does he do?
On the first sighting of his son, at the first sign that the son is coming home, what does he do?
Does he burn with anger? No. Does he stand in judgment? No. Does he [cross arms] withhold himself from the son? No.
Does he point at his son and berate his every wrong doing. ‘You did this, and you did that, and…how could you?!?’
Does he demand an explanation? Does he demand some lengthy speech to make sure that the son really knows what he did wrong and that he really pays for what he did wrong? Absolutely none of it.
Rather on the first sign of his son’s return, the father is FILLED WITH COMPASSION.
The word compassion actually means “to suffer with another”. The father feels this, this compassion for his son.
You see, not only did he recognize his son’s gate from afar off, but he saw the limp in his son’s walk. He saw the effects of the contortion of his walk, from his son’s starvation.
We carry in our bodies our histories. We carry with us our wounds, our fears born from experience, we carry with us tension. We carry with us the burdens of life.
The prodigal son’s father recognized his son, and he also recognized his son’s wounds.
And he is filled, filled, filled with compassion. None of this (pointing the finger).
Only this (arms wide open).
The son, no doubt really surprised by his father’s unexpected reaction...the father’s thrown his arms around the son and is smothering him with kisses.
The son is still kinda stuck in the words he had planned to say, and he starts to recite his speech to his father: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’
What does the father do? What does the father say? He’s clearly not listening to his son in that moment. He’s on a different planet.
He is overwhelmed with joy. He’s not thinking about proper decorum, he’s not thinking about his own dignity or what anyone else thinks.
He tells his servants: “Bring the best robe and a ring and sandals on his feet.. Bring the best calf, to prepare a feast and a celebration”. The father can’t contain his joy at the return of his son.
I can imagine the servants standing around for a bit, looking perplexed, wondering what the commotion is all about.
And the father explains: 24 For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”
There is no human experience worse than the death of someone you love.
So they began to celebrate. Zoom. Off the servants go. They get it now. They see the reason for the father’s great joy.
Now there’s more to the story, particularly about the older son, that we don’t have time to look at today, but I encourage you to read and reflect on the attitude of the older son, compared to that of the younger son.
To say the very least, the older brother in the story cautions us about being caught up in self-righteousness. Getting caught up in feeling that we have to work to earn God’s favour, in being trapped and joyless in a sense of duty and obligation toward God.
There’s a far better way to relate to God. And I think it begins by grasping at a heart level the joy of the father in the story of the prodigal son.
It’s by affirming, saying yes deep in our spirits to the fatherhood of God, the deep compassion of God toward all people.
It’s by appreciating the way in which He grants us freedom, the freedom to choose right from wrong, good from bad, generosity toward others vs selfishness.
He gives us that freedom, and sometimes, as the old hymn says, we’re ‘prone to wander’ from under His care.
But then – and this is remarkable to me – he doesn’t turn His back on us. He has compassion upon us, He suffers with us the pain and consequences of our wayward actions.
He doesn’t seek to control us, but He does want us to choose to love Him, to choose to follow Him, to choose to live according to His way, the principals we find in the Word of God and in the mouth of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World.
He wants us to choose to love Him, and when we don’t, either in the ways we behave or in our outright rejection of Him, He still has compassion on us.
He knows your name. he recognizes your gate from afar. He sees and responds to the wounds we bear. He sees us from afar and He wants us to return.
That’s the ultimate reason why He gives us freedom to wander…so that we can have the freedom to choose Him.
Like it or not, God wants your uncoerced, unforced, unfeigned love.
He wants you to choose to freely love Him. He wants you to choose to be with Him – now, and then in a way that’s vitally connected to ‘now’, for all eternity.
You know, even as Jesus told this story, He knew that it would be Him that would be the way back to the Father.
He knew, even as He narrated the journey of the Prodigal Son, that He would be the One to restore us to God, to reconcile us to the Father by laying down His life for us.
He would be the Lamb slain, the ransom paid, the sacrifice given, willingly, in the ultimate act of love, as the supreme evidence of the love of the Father.
You likely have heard the Scripture: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life".
It was Jesus who spoke those words, even as he anticipated his own suffering, suffering with a purpose.
Suffering that would result in the Christ Himself being the bridge between God the Father and his creation, humanity, that had been estranged from him.
And really, that is why we celebrate. That is why followers of Christ world-wide spend time gathering together every Sunday, to remember the love of the Father.
To remember the sacrifice of the Son. And to remember the gift of the Holy Spirit, given by the Father and the Son in order to lead you and me to faith in Jesus Christ and his sacrifice for us.
God’s Father-heart is a giving heart. It is a gracious heart. It is a merciful heart. It is a heart that is long-suffering.
It is a heart that endures rejection, scorn, unbelief, hatred even. It is a heart that risks being misunderstood and maligned in order to bring healing to the nations.
It is a heart that bleeds over injustice. The murders in Charleston, South Carolina were committed by a young man, not much more than a boy really, who was full of hatred.
We don't know much about his family, although some are already blaming the family for raising such a person. I don’t know about that.
But we are each a part of the human family.
To that human family, broken though it is by sin, God gives grace. The grace to believe in His Son Jesus Christ, and grace to follow His example, to live our lives in the grace of God, even as the face of unimaginable evil visiting us.
A beautiful thing we’ve witnessed this week, not many days after the slaughters in Charleston, was the voices of the family members of those who were murdered. They sound like Jesus.
I found this on the web: Felecia Sanders survived the attack on her Bible study group by pretending to be dead, but lost her son Tywanza.
On Friday, she came face to face with the alleged shooter, as she had the night of the slaughter.
“We welcomed you Wednesday night in our Bible study with open arms,” Sanders told Dylann Storm Roof, who appeared via video conference for a bond hearing.
“You have killed some of the most beautiful people that I know. Every fiber in my body hurts … and I’ll never be the same.” “Tywanza was my hero.”
And then Sanders did something remarkable:
She forgave the young man who has been charged with nine counts of murder for the bloody attack at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“As we said in Bible Study, we enjoyed you, but may God have mercy on you,” she said.
Sanders was one of several family members of victims to be given a chance to address the court during Roof’s bond hearing. Others also forgave him.
They advised him to repent for his sins, and asked for God’s mercy on his soul. One even told Roof to repent and confess, and “you’ll be OK.”
Still other family members offered words of mercy during the brief court appearance.
"I acknowledge that I am very angry," said Bethane Middleton Brown, who said her slain sister, Middleton Doctor, would have urged love.
"She taught me that we are the family that love built," Middleton Brown said. "We have no room for hating, so we have to forgive."
The normal human response to such a massacre is, understandably, one of outrage and moral fury. The scream for vengeance, the call for retribution.
Which of course is what the murderer was aiming for: he said he wanted to start a race war. That is, of course, the intent of the evil one, Satan.
But the Scripture says in Ephesians 6 that “...Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Ephesians 6:12
The response of the follower of Jesus Christ is to extend forgiveness, even as we have been extended forgiveness by God. “Love you enemies”, Jesus said.
And so He continues to call us to follow Him, as a people of grace and forgiveness, mercy and love.
May each of us here today, whether or not we belong to the church that gathers here, choose to embrace the Father-heart of God.
May we say "yes" to the love expressed in the willing sacrifice of Jesus, his life given to bring us home.
May we live and proclaim, as truly grateful, truly joyful people, the beauty and mystery of the love of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
