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Lost Sons - God’s long search for humanity

Reviewed by Luke Penkett.

Lost Sons began life as a series of Holy Week addresses given in Durham Cathedral in 2009. There and then, Michael, Dean of Durham, reflected on the universal experience of loss, in particular sons who had lost their fathers through deaths of various kinds. Here and now, these five talks are rewritten and much expanded and enjoy the company of four further chapters. Thus we have Abel, Canaan, Ishmael, Isaac, Esau, Joseph, Moses, Adam, and Jesus.

After the introductory chapter in which Sadgrove explains why he has taken fathers and sons rather than mothers and daughters, we have a chapter on Adam and his murdered son, Abel. The writer connects this story with those of Isis/Osiris and Beowulf, the Easter event, and the trauma of loss in our own times.

This is followed by a chapter on the cursed son, Canaan, whose manner of death finds resonances in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians. The next story, that of the abandoned son, Ishmael, has particular importance for Muslims and is perhaps one of the darkest narratives of the Old Testament, yet finds an echo, of course, in the Crucifixion (in addition to the Laius/Oedipus tragedy).

Following the unique story of Abraham and Isaac, we have chapters on the supplanted son, Esau, and the betrayed son, Joseph. Then a chapter on Moses, the hidden son, whose hiddenness is reflected in the life of Christ.

The two closing chapters focus on the two sons of God, Adam, the archetype of the lost son, and Christ, the lost and found son.

This is a fascinating and absorbing work, made all the more poignant by Sadgrove’s perception of Christ as the summation of all these losses – exiled, murdered, accursed, abandoned, bound, supplanted, betrayed, hidden – and embracing in Himself all who are lost and all who experience loss.