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REFLECTION: A New Vision for our future, and reconciling our past
Habakkuk 1:1-4, & 2:1-3
Luke 15: 11-24
The prophet, Habakkuk, provides us with a structure for sharing a vision. He started with a lament.
Habakkuk was lamenting about the state of the people and the nations. He lamented that justice never seemed to prevail—there was still violence, famine, and destruction in society. He saw that things weren’t where they could be. There were better possibilities for being together in community.
In the United Church today, we have also been lamenting that things aren’t where they could be. We also see injustices—racism, heterosexism, discrimination, and other structural inequities. We see that not all are welcomed in a place that they might call home. And, we see these both in church and society.
After Habakkuk lamented, he prayed. Then, at his watch post, he waited for God’s response. He waited with confidence, with anticipation and with a steadfast faith that God would provide a vision of justice.
And sure enough God called Habakkuk to write the vision and to make it plain, so plain that a runner could read it.
Habakkuk story, while compelling, is less familiar to us as his story isn’t often told. However, we do have a much more familiar figure that we follow, one whom God also called to write a vision and to make it plain, Jesus Christ.Jesus came to reconcile and make new. This phrase is embedded within the New Creed of our United Church and has formed the ongoing theme for President Kenji Marui’s time of leadership with London Conference.
Throughout the scriptures, Jesus is often found sitting sharing parables, stories that had life lessons in them for the crowds and disciples gathered. In our gospel passage this morning we have the reconciliation of the prodigal son and the prodigal father. The word prodigal can be confusing, because it does not mean wayward as the story suggests, but it actually means extravagant and lavish – excessively so. The son lived a prodigal life in the far off country, and his father hosted a prodigal celebration upon his return.
Mark Allan Powell wrote a book called What Do They Hear? Bridging the Gap between Pulpit and Pew that examines why it is that a preacher thinks they say one thing and the congregation hears something totally different. He speaks of social location as being one of the factors. One’s place in society influences the way we think, perceive and judge. There are inherent and ingrained assumptions that inform our opinion and unless we can identify such biases within ourselves and in others, the path to reconciliation can prove steep.
Powell did an exercise with a class where he told the story of the prodigal son and then asked the class to get into partners and retell the story to one another. When he called the class back to order, he asked them the following:
What were some of the things that were missing or changed from text when their partner retold the gospel story? ____
Why did the young man end up starving in a pig pen?______
Powell noticed something when he did this exercise with his class. Everyone mentioned the wayward immoral living in the big city (100%). Hardly anyone mentioned the famine (6%). Did that make a difference? Maybe not. Unless it does.
He did this same exercise with a group of students in Russia, when he had occasion to be there on sabbatical. Only a third mentioned the young man squandering his inheritance and a whopping 84% mentioned the famine in the retelling of the story.
There’s a historical and sociological reason for this difference in remembering the famine. During World War II, German forces besieged the city of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) cutting off food and supplies, instituting what became a 900-day famine. In that time, ¼ of the population died from starvation and exposure. 670, 000 people. You don’t forget such things so easily. For those students in Russia, the famine in the prodigal son’s far off land is worth mentioning.
So in the telling of what happens, we have these events:
- young man receives inheritance
- he squanders it in a far off land
- famine comes
- he is left in dire straits
Depending on our social location, we emphasize different aspects of the story. In Powell’s particular study, American listeners focus on point 2, ignoring point 3: rich young man goes off, squanders his riches, is left in a desperate situation, returns home, is forgiven.
Russian listeners focus on point 3, skipping over point 2: rich young man goes off, famine devastates the land, he is in a desperate situation, returns home, is restored.
Their social location affects the way they hear, remember and interpret the story. In Russia, the great sin was leaving home and trusting in one’s self-reliance. In America, the great sin was of squandering property in dissolute living.
Asotos is a Greek word that can mean “wasteful” in the literal sense, as in the opposite of saving up. It can also mean “unhealthy” in the figurative sense, immoral and wicked.
We’ve tended to interpret asotos in the second manner: the son squandered his property in riotous, reckless, loose, wild living, in a life of dissipation, of debauchery. As translated in 8 different English translations of the Bible.
If we instead interpret asotos as the son squandered his property in wasteful, expensive, luxurious living, there is no indictment of immorality, just foolishness and poor planning. As translated in Syriac and Arabic versions of the Bible. In one viewpoint, the wicked and evil and immoral son got what he deserved, because his downfall was inevitable. In the other, the dumb kid just ran into hard times – he might have been able to get by on his own if it wasn’t for the famine.
The difference being the son is either wicked and evil, in need of reform and repentance – the pivotal moment being when he comes to himself and decides to return home as a slave. Or the son is just stupid, not prepared for a rainy day or for a famine, thinking that he could make it on his own, in need of reunion and in being found – the pivotal moment being in the embrace of his father and the celebration that ensued.
So which is it? Evil prodigal son, or stupid prodigal son? Both interpretations are valid. Are we willing to have our minds open enough to hear what the other viewpoint may be? Willing to accept the value and truth that shapes another person’s faith and belief?
Here is where reconciliation must live: in the willingness to connect and bridge gaps, to re-examine and let go of assumptions and hearsay. It’s a hard place to live, many of us don’t like to stay here very long. If we can’t resolve or reconcile quickly, it’s too frustrating, painful, hurtful, and discouraging.
And if it’s a daunting task to reconcile multiple meanings and interpretations from trying to preach a sermon, how much more intimidating is it to try and reconcile people? When it comes to estranged families, discontented congregation members, rogue atheist ministers, the social dynamics are more complicated and stakes are far greater. When it comes to the reconciliation between nations, entire societies; be they aboriginal or settler, it seems impossible. But that doesn't mean we don't try. Or keep trying.
And when we think we might be getting somewhere, something else happens. Like when the older brother bursts into the happy reunion scene between prodigal father and prodigal son, leveling accusations of squandering inheritance on prostitutes. We don’t know that was the case, do we? How does the older brother know this, or is he just making assumptions and accusations in his jealous rage?
How much credence do we give his claims? Does this influence how we interpret asotos? The younger son must be wicked, immoral, and dissolute because of his brother’s say so. Or, the older son must be petty, annoyed, and put off by his brother’s return. Finding the truth, reconciling the stories, resolving differences is messy, fraught with emotion, and easily sidetracked. But we claim to be a people of faith, we claim to be a church of Jesus Christ, and so we name ourselves as pilgrims committed to a long journey of repentance, restoration, to live into what Jesus would do: to reconcile and make new.
One further thing, as a postscript, Mark Alan Powell asked a group of ministers and students in Tanzania, eastern Africa, the question: why did the young man end up starving in a pig pen? The overwhelming answer was: because no one fed him. It was society’s responsibility to care for their people, to receive and support immigrants and visitors, to warn them about famines, to help them. It’s not kind to consider someone stupid or foolish just because they didn’t know the rules about how to live in a new country, to punish them for not being ready for something they didn’t know about.
Just one more thing to consider, especially as churches and community groups work with Syrian newcomers and refugees. We all have to reconcile past life experience with a changing future, as individuals, as clans and groups, as nations. For us in the United Church, we believe that God has called us to be something more as a community; we are called to hold each other as sacred, beloved. We have humbly responded to God’s call by writing a new vision to move us forward.
While the words might be ours, we pray that the vision is not our own; it is God’s vision. We are continually discerning God’s new vision for us, and we in prayer can capture a glimpse of that vision for justice, peace, and fullness of life for all. Like Habakkuk, God’s vision is continually revealed to us through God’s self-disclosure.
Individually, God’s vision as revealed in each of us is different (we are the many circles, with many visions), and yet the visions work together to make one sacred hoop! These visions are not competing with each other; they are (hopefully) working together for the common good. And because God is so far beyond our comprehension; God is mystery and unknown, when we catch a glimpse of God’s vision, we each catch different facets of it—and so when we work together, we begin to see the big picture—the one sacred hoop.
As we try to make new, it is God’s love that calls us to work for peace and fulfillment, for wholeness and shalom. God’s love that sends us to far off lands for new life and new ventures, God’s love that sustains us in times of drought and famine, God’s love that lifts us out of the pig pens of life, God’s love that welcomes us to wherever home may be.