KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 5 June
Metanoia: “He came to himself”
The parable of the prodigal or lost son (or sons) was read in Chapel at the two last Chapel services. The parable is the third of three parables Jesus tells to counter the ugly spectre of self-righteousness, a quality by no means restricted to religion. The Pharisees and the Scribes murmur against Jesus for associating with “tax-collectors and sinners.” The three parables are all about repentance, about its power and truth, its significance and its necessity. The word in Greek is metanoia which offers a deeper and more profound understanding of repentance.
Metanoia is about our minds, literally a thinking after; in short, reflection upon our “thoughts, words and deeds”. In a way, it is very much about Chapel within the educational project of the School. The three parables are the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son or sons, the prodigal son and the elder son. “There is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repents,” Jesus says, “than over ninety and nine that need no repentance.” The phrase is ironic in that everyone in this view needs to repent, to reflect and to return to the principles from which we have wandered away. The further point is that the return of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons signals the redemption and wholeness of the whole community; hence joy.
What stands in the way of metanoia is ourselves, our ignorance of ourselves. This is why the third parable is so important. It shows us the dynamic of metanoia, reflection in action, as it were. And it counters the kind of gnostic moralism which appears in the various forms of self-righteousness in our own world and day, dividing the world into them and us; in short, demonizing others. ‘Others are bad and I’m good’ is the unmistakable assumption and by definition. Some have called this way of thinking neo-Marxist: extending Marx’s division between the proletariat (good) and the bourgeoisie (bad) to the ideologies of identity politics, for instance. An unhealthy dualism, to say the least.
