A Whole Caricature of God: Life, Death, and Life

 Over the years, this rocking chair has heard a lot of stories read to children curled up between its arms, in the lap of the reader. The stories have included Bible stories and stories about Bible stories. Lots of images of God have been shared and heard in this chair.

This morning I invite you to ponder the images you carry of God: think about the stories you heard as a child – read to you by grandparents, told by Sunday School teachers, acted out by staff at camp; recount the images you have gathered and meditated on over the years.

How do you picture God, how do you experience God, how do you describe God?

 

As has been our experience over Lent, Luke’s gospel continues to be placed in front of us with words and stories to upset our understandings and interpretations. The text today confronts human understandings of God and draws attention to the consequences of human understanding.  There are many ways that a parable reads us. The prodigal son parable is an excellent example.  We often read the parable and put ourselves in the story as one of the sons. Turning the process around, letting the parable read us, the story says much about human understanding of God and people living out their understanding of God --- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

 

Luke's text paints four caricatures of God:

 

Caricature #1-

God becomes human.

God goes to dinner.

God welcomes sinners.

God eats with sinners.

God tells a story in parable form.

 

Caricature #2 –

God ignores rudeness.

God gives what is asked for.

God divides all God had between them.

God waits.

…

God has compassion.

God expresses unconditional love.

God runs.

God embraces.

God celebrates.

 

Caricature #3 -

God exuberantly revels in joy.

God indiscriminately and lavishly spends resources.

God works.

God is hungry.

God suffers in the mud.

God has an idea.

God comes back, returns.

 

Caricature #4 -

God farms – grows stuff.

God works hard and ceaselessly.

God receives no recognition.

God’s demeanour is stern.

God is annoyed, even angry.

God shows disgust for wastefulness and debauchery.

God adheres to law and rigid righteousness.

God passes judgement.

God refuses to go to the wayward.

 

A caricature is a description of someone or something presented through an exaggeration of characteristics in order to create a comic or grotesque effect.  Were any of the caricature descriptions of God jarring?  The caricatures look at God as depicted by the characters in the text: the first was Jesus (God eating with sinners), the second was the father in the parable, the third the youngest son, and finally the oldest son.

 

The Bible represents a collection of thousands of years of history, story, interpretation, experience, and relationship with God. And since the scripture canon closed, there has been another 2000 years of theology, interpretation, story, and experience. God has been described in many and various ways.  It is important to acknowledge this history because how we caricaturize God affects how we go about living as people of faith and promise.  The prodigal son parable illustrates this so well. Our understanding of God determines which character in the story becomes God, and which characters are human (and how their behaviour is God-like or not).

 

Today we are given an opportunity: we can stick with our own understanding of God, perhaps the one taught to us by our religious affiliations, or we can let the parable read us.   We can seek a deeper relationship and encounter with the holy by reflecting on God on the boundary (our growing edge) -that would be pondering God in a form we do not want to consider, the God that makes us uncomfortable, the God we are afraid to face, the God that would lead to too many questions.

 

This parable allows for the fullness of reflection - to contemplate the omniscience of God – almighty, all powerful, all-seeing, all-knowing… and what does that really mean in a world full of the good, with a double dose of the bad, and the ugly.

 

If I err in my search for God, it is a turning away from caricature #4, a God who could be angry, annoyed, disgusted, enforcing the law, rigid in righteousness, passing judgement, refusing to go out and find the lost.

Within Christian history and tradition this plays out in a God who would require purgatory, works righteousness, rituals proving one’s faith, re-baptism, a narrow gate to get to heaven and vast pools of fire to burn sinners, and the God and devil at constant war over every soul.

 

Perhaps just as uncomfortable is caricature #3 of a God who enjoys life -including activities humans have put on the sin list- giving lavishly and extravagantly without judgement, reserve, or reason, with no regard to an idea of ‘deserving’ or ‘undeserving.’

And there is the image of God sitting in the mud – suffering, vulnerable, in the midst of the places and with people humans and human societies shun.  God in the faces of the poor, the prisoner.

And who would have thought of God in the pig pen – a situation-where God sits on purpose to give humans the possibility and opportunity to participate in the kindom by feeding and serving the least. A God willing to take the situation to extremes, to risk death (as we know comes on Good Friday), to die to warm the human heart to the expanse and cost of God’s kindom.  

 

The prodigal son parable asks us to examine what is going on in our heads and hearts when it comes to understanding God. It is important because our understanding of God affects how we go about living life. If we see God in only one way, or a narrow caricature, there is an imbalance within us and then in the work we undertake in the world. Full picture, a full meal deal -  a fuller living only happens in an expansion of understanding.  If we get stuck on God as angry and vengeful, we too become angry and vengeful. If we are scared of God and God’s judgement: we act scared, withdrawing to hide, and focusing on self preservation we fail to suffer with others or to indiscriminately and lavishly share. If we fail to reflect on God who gets annoyed, we run the risk of doing whatever we please, accumulating wealth for ourselves, and in high living forget the intricacies of relationship. When we understand God only as soft, then that greater than ourselves is no longer great and is bereft of power.

Humans in their everyday life, live out their understanding of God…  and God help us…

Without purposeful reflection to balance our understandings, and continuing to face and grow a deeper understanding of God, we find ourselves in “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

God help us to deeper understanding to find ourselves and live – not the good, the bad, the ugly- but rather the abundance in; life and death and life.   

 

During this fourth week of Lent, you are encouraged to find a sensible chair – to settle in for reflection. Reflect on the prodigal son parable and the expansive God found therein, take extra time with the caricature lines with which you disagree, wrestle with your understanding and experience of God. Seek a deeper relationship so that you can live a balanced and holy understanding of God in the world; a wholeness of life and death and life.