Thursday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
By the time I was six, my family had stopped going to church. I remember that my sister wanted to go, at least on major holidays. I think my brother was already an atheist by then. My mother had been raised Catholic; my father was raised Methodist. And then they stopped going.
For reasons I cannot explain, I prayed and read the Bible that my grandmother had bought for me. I didn’t know what I was doing. I just had a yearning.
In eighth grade, I (by way of my best friend) found myself in the youth program of Willow Creek Community Church. If you are not familiar with it, it is a hugely successful megachurch in South Barrington (IL) that welcomes some 20,000 or so worshippers every week. You may have read about its former senior pastor, Bill Hybels, who resigned after credible accusations of repeated sexual abuse surfaced.
Anyway, it was in this context that I learned about God and Jesus (the folks at Willow Creek didn’t talk about the Holy Spirit—I think she was just too feminine and unwieldy for their theology). The rhetorical strategy of Willow Creek (that is by now the wisdom in all so-called seekers churches) is that you bring folks into the church by saying everyone is welcome! You can come as you are—in leggings, or sweatpants, a golf shirt, whatever. Everything is super chill. Oh, and you can pick up a frothy latte if you like on your way into the huge sanctuary. And once you’ve settled into your comfy seat you will hear a message (they don’t give sermons) on how God loves you.
Like me, my parents experienced this rhetorical approach as a relief (yes, they actually went to Willow Creek for a while). It was a break from the understanding they had of church—that it was judgmental, that they could never be good enough for God, that church was for righteous people among whom they did not count themselves.
But then in small group meetings (the small groups were the key to the church structure) one learned that it’s not that simple. God loves you . . . maybe. But, depending on who you are and the nature of your sins God might also hate you. God might actually be chomping at the bit to see you burn in hell forever. Moreover, there are a lot of other people that you know, maybe even love, who God also can’t wait to see burning in hell for all eternity.
This duplicity within American Christianity is something Douglas Frank writes eloquently about in his book A Gentler God: Breaking Free of the Almighty in the Company of the Human Jesus (2010). And I wish I could say that the Catholic Church was immune to this duplicity but, alas, it is not. Scott Hahn (a fundamentalist convert to Christianity and popular Catholic author) has it going too. If you struggle with this duplicity—thinking that God loves you and God despises you, I hope you will read Frank’s book!
So, without knowing it I imbibed this theology. More accurately, I internalized it. The last thing I could count myself as was righteous! Obviously, then, God was just counting the days until He could enjoy my eternal punishment.
As I read Matthew’s gospel today, I see myself.
I could not see. I could maybe hear but not understand. I didn’t know who Jesus was. I didn’t know what it meant that he died on the cross. I was too horrible to be worth his saving.
And then I learned otherwise. By way of my husband, who has always cried at the reading of the story of the Prodigal Son, I learned that I am the Prodigal Daughter. We are all the Prodigal Son and Prodigal Daughter.
What is so hard for us to see and understand? That we don’t earn our way into God’s love. It’s been there from the beginning. Our challenge is to embrace it, to live into it. And to love one another. Amen and amen.