The message of God’s grace
isn’t just foolishness,
like the message of the cross.
It’s offensive to those of us
who consider ourselves righteous –
righteous in any sphere.
Jesus spends much of Chapter 14 of Luke
talking about table fellowship.
Chapter 15, where we start today,
has Jesus showing full acceptance and love
of tax collectors and sinners
as he eats with them.
The righteous –
the Pharisees and scribes,
who are an oppressed minority
and need to keep themselves alive
and keep their people holy to God –
have objections to this.
After telling the righteous people,
those whom God has never lost,
stories about God rejoicing over a found coin
and rejoicing in heaven over a found sheep,
Jesus tells them this story we have today.
This is a story about God’s impossible love
and God’s offensive grace.
A man loves his two sons.
One takes his inheritance
before his father’s death.
That son goes and spend his inheritance
and has to feed pigs
to try and make some money.
He’s unclean now
and thinks about how he’d like to eat
some of their animal feed.
He’s made choices,
and he’s doing what it takes to survive.
Frederick Brennan was born in 1994.
Elle Reeve tells his story in her book,
Black Pill:
How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life,
Poison Society,
and Capture American Politics
Brennan was born with brittle bone disease.
As he matured and grew,
it became clear that he’s on the autism spectrum.
The United States is not friendly
to people whose bodies and brains
work differently than the majority.
We don’t provide infrastructure
for those people to have the fullest lives possible,
from physical infrastructure
to paid human support.
So Brennan turned to the internet.
He made friends,
or at least people he could interact with
who didn’t cause his social anxiety
to explode.
He found communities
where he felt accepted.
As he found places,
places that eased his sense of isolation,
he picked up some gnarly
sexism and misogyny.
He grew concerned with what he saw as censorship
in some of those communities
where he was thriving.
So at the age of 19
he founded 8chan
which later became 8kun.
This is where Q drops
and QAnon faithful
received their messages
and found one another.
It’s a free country, he thought,
as long as it’s legal in the US,
it could stay on the image boards.
With the hope and naivete of a 19 year old
Brennan’s guiding principle was that
in an uncensored,
unmoderated marketplace of ideas
open debate
would raise the best ideas to the top.
What he found in time
is that most people don’t want to see
Antisemitism, racism, and unbridled misogyny and sexism
so they leave.
That leaves the trolls
who are just trying to be more extreme
than the last guy.
And then they start to believe it.
The jokes aren’t jokes anymore.
The posts keep getting more and more extreme.
These young men,
were doing what they thought they needed to do
to survive.
Like the son who goes off
and spends his inheritance
only to wind up feeding pigs
and wanting to eat their slop
because he’s so hungry.
That their version of reality
is not the one we live in
doesn’t excuse them.
How much did you not know you didn’t know
at 16 or 19 or 21?
What started on the chans moved to the app Telegram
and culminated in Unite the Right in Charlottesville.
I’m sure you all remember that
and we now know that it was a precursor
to the failed insurrection on January 6.
The story that Jesus tells the righteous,
is about a father who loves his two sons.
When the younger returns,
God the Father rejoices at his return.
The son apologizes, he admits he was wrong,
and asks to just be kept alive,
treated like a hired hand
having forsaken his title
as family.
Jesus tells us that the father
doesn’t make him eat bread and water
but throws a feast!
He doesn’t make him wear threadbare hand me downs
but gives him the finest robe.
There’s music and dancing,
and that’s where the older brother,
the one whose done things the right way,
gets mad.
It’s not that his brother is back
that he’s bothered.
He hears the music and dancing
and asks someone
to tell him what’s going on.
Like with the younger brother,
the father who loves his sons
goes out to offer comfort.
The one who is going to get
the rest of the property
is mad that he’s been doing
what he’s supposed to.
As we look at the world around us,
and see how one 19 year old’s website
has added rocket fuel to get where we are
we may have a tendency
to be the older brother.
Fredrick Brennan
has converted to Christianity
because one of the core tenants
is that God doesn’t give up on us.
He’s not using grace
as some kind of
get out of jail free card.
He’s renounced 8kun
and continues to use his skills
to kill it with fire.
He knows he made mistakes,
doing what he thought he needed to do to survive
and knows he’ll spend the rest of his life
living with the consequences.
His name will always be associated
with QAnon.
He knows he was wrong.
He’s changed his life
and is working to make amends
in whatever ways he can.
God has celebrated and rejoiced
because this brother of ours was dead
and has come to life;
he was lost and has been found.
The message of God’s grace
isn’t just foolishness.
It’s offensive to those of us
who consider ourselves righteous –
righteous in any sphere.
O Holy Christ,
Your burdens are light
But your blessings are heavy
Almost too weighty to bear
There’s a hook in this meal
To receive is to follow
And you won’t always say where
What fool would dare follow you?