Idols and Fools

Propers: Laetare, A.D. 2019 C

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for you know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

Everything we think we know of God is wrong.

Or rather—whatever we think of God, God is always more, God is always greater, God is always simpler than we can imagine.

We can say what God is not. God is not limited; God is not ignorant; God is not cruel. But whenever we say what God is, we have to understand that we are speaking analogously, which is to say, poetically.  When we say that God is love, we do not mean that He loves in that way that we do. Rather, God is Love itself, true Love, infinite Love, and all the loves we know here below are but pale reflections of the Love that is God. Thank heaven.

Similarly, if we say that God exists, we cannot mean that He exists in the way that we do. He is not one being among many, like cats or quarks or galaxies. Rather, God is Being itself, Being with a capital B, and we all exist only insofar as we participate in the existence of God. He exists necessarily—God can’t not exist—whereas we exist only because existence is granted unto us as a gift.

So whenever we speak of God we must remember that we are speaking in human terms. Yes, God is all-good and all-powerful and all-knowing. Yes, He is Father, Creator, Savior, Lord, but only because that’s as close as our minds can get. He is in fact better than good, more powerful than power, more a Father than any father we have ever known. God is not what we imagine, nor is hell and nor is heaven. He is always greater, always better, always God.

This is why the Old Testament has such strict rules against false idols. People wanted to picture God. They wanted to make statues of Him. They wanted Him to look like a strong bull or a noble king or a fantastic creature of myth. But these images are so limited. They stultify the imagination. They stifle rather than kindle true wonder. The real God cannot be pictured, cannot be carved, cannot be cast. The real God, the One God, is beyond the artifice of man. We cannot fit the Creator of this and all possible worlds within our heads.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is a story unique to Luke’s Gospel, yet is easily amongst the most beloved of all Jesus’ teachings. Emerson called it the best story in the entire Bible and in the entire world. It is, in effect, the tale of three fools: one a fool for pleasure, another a fool for righteousness, and the third a fool for love. Yet only one of these fools possesses a foolishness wiser than all human wisdom. The story goes like this:

A man has two sons. The younger, brash and impatient, demands his half of the father’s inheritance—a shocking insult. He is, in effect, wishing his father dead. Even more shocking, the father grants to his son this request: he sells half his property and off goes the younger son with all his cash in hand. He spends it as many of us probably would have in our younger and more debauched days: on wine and women and song and excess, no thought for tomorrow, no god beyond the belly. Laissez les bons temps rouler—let the good times roll!

Of course, living like a frat boy isn’t a viable philosophy in the long term, and soon enough his funds run out. He’s reduced to becoming a lowly hired hand, a hog-slopper, just in order to survive. He’s so hungry he would gladly eat the food of the pigs, if he thought he could get away with it. Amidst his humiliation and regret, he thinks back to his father’s household, in which even servants have plenty to eat. His father is indeed a wise man and kind, if in this case scandalously overindulgent.

So the young man returns, hat in hand, to beg his father to take him back, no longer as a son, no longer as the heir who’s already squandered his inheritance, but as a lowly servant, a household slave. Anything is better than this foreign squalor. Yet before he can make it back, just as he appears on the horizon, his father rushes out to meet him, embraces him, kisses him, lavishes him with gifts and kills the fatted calf for a feast—“for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and now is found!”

And there is joy overflowing in superabundance, an old man’s love for his beloved son.

But the story doesn’t end here. Rather, the plot thickens. The elder brother—the good and loyal and honest and true brother, the brother who stood by his father through thick and thin—is understandably outraged at such ridiculous, foolish grace. What has the younger brother done to merit such celebration? Shouldn’t he be punished? Shouldn’t he be shunned? Why rejoice over a worthless layabout who blew half the family fortune, when the elder son has toiled lo these many years in humble service, in blood, sweat, and tears? And so the elder sibling will not come in.

Once again, a son has left the household. Once again, the father comes out to him, something far beneath his dignity. And he begs his elder son to come to the celebration, to join the festivities, to rejoice once again with the reunited family. “No!” cries the elder brother, as though indignantly stamping his foot. “This isn’t right! This isn’t fair!”

“Fair?” retorts the father. “Who said anything about fair? You are always with me, my son, and all that I have is yours, but we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brothers of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

This is what God is like, says Jesus. This is the truth of the Lord.

Ah, how we imagine God rewarding the righteous and rejecting the wicked, as though we ourselves were the former and not at all like the latter. How we imagine Him keeping score, so that at the last we’ll be proved better than the rest, better than our neighbors, better than our enemies. For indeed, who are we in this parable?

Are we the worthless spendthrift brat who wishes his father dead? The snotty older child who imagines himself more righteous than the rest? Or are we the wonderfully foolish father, too wise and too old to give a tinker’s dam for the sins of the past, willing to sacrifice dignity and domain to be a fool for love?

I know I’ve been both of the former, and would do well to be more like the latter. For indeed, this is what God is like: always greater, always better, than we imagine; more loving, more giving, more gracious, more self-sacrificing, more wonderful and terrible and awesome in His might, more Love than we could ever know or be or understand in this brief little life here below.

One glimpse of such awful glory and we are humbled, slain, blown away and brought to life. God is not what we imagine, nor is hell and nor is heaven. He is always more. There is no end to such Love. There is no limit to such mercy. God will not relent while even one of His children is lost and astray. He will come out to us and bring us to life.

There is but one Image of God that is sufficient, one true likeness of the Father here on earth. And it isn’t a painting or a sculpture or an idol in the temple. It isn’t a bull or a beast or a statue made of bronze. The one true Image of God—the visible Image of the invisible Father—is Jesus Christ our Lord. He is God made flesh, God on earth, Emmanuel, God-With-Us. If we want to know what God is, what God is like, we always look to Christ.

And because Christ is God, and we are one in Christ, so now in the mystery of faith we see God fully, truly revealed in humanity: in the Church, yes, the Body of Christ, but also in the face of our neighbor, in the needs of the poor, in the orphan and the widow, the enslaved and the oppressed. If you want to know who and what God is, the philosophers can only take us so far. To know God, the true God, we must go and we must love and we must give and forgive, so that we too are fools for Christ, fools with a foolishness greater than human wisdom.

And every time we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, visit the prisoner, stand with the suffering, support the neighbor, forgive the repentant, rebuke the sinner in love, and speak truth to power, we proclaim along with the Father: “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we must celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.”

And so will Christ welcome every wayward child home.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.