by CCW | 1 June 2023 16:00
There is a certain intensity and a frisson of excitement about the last weeks of the School year. In Chapel this week we have had the penultimate services for the Junior School and the Grade Tens and the last Chapels for the Grade 11s and the Grade 12s. On Monday and Tuesday, we read the last part of the parable of the Prodigal Son and on Thursday and Friday, the story of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Both are powerful stories that speak to an understanding of ourselves as individuals and as members of the human community but in intriguing and challenging ways.
The second half of Luke’s parable might equally be called the parable of the lost sons. It is not just the return of the younger son to the father but also the exchange between the elder son and the father. It is not just the one who goes into a far country who is lost and dead to the love of the father, it seems. We can be close at hand and yet be far removed from that same love. What remains remarkable in the parable is the father’s love which runs out to greet the returning younger son and also goes out to the elder son who is angry and hurt about the special treatment the younger son has received. Such is the destructive power of envy. The elder son can’t even acknowledge his brother as brother; he complains about “this son of yours”. It is his own brother!
This is sibling rivalry – a major theme in Genesis, for instance, that is about separation and animosity through resentment and the desire for exclusive attention. I often think about this in relation to graduation and prize day. Will you resent the accomplishments and awards of others or will you rejoice and be glad in what others have achieved? The first is destructive and harmful both to ourselves and to one another and to the community of which we are a part. Why? Because it is a refusal to see the good in others which is equally the good for us; a refusal of the good which unites us. “It was fitting,” the father says to the elder son, “to make merry and be glad for this your brother was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.” There is joy not only for the younger son in returning to the truth of his being in the father’s love which he had rejected; there is the joy of the whole community. This, too, is an important feature of the three related parables that Luke tells in chapter 15: the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost sons. It is not just rejoicing over the finding of the one lost sheep, the one lost coin, and the lost son; there is the rejoicing of the whole community which is not complete without them. We are part of something greater than ourselves. Will we be able to rejoice in that and find the good for ourselves?
Rembrandt’s famous painting[1] captures something of the dynamic of the parable. It depicts the younger son kneeling before the father but it also shows the face of the elder son looking on “askance and strangely”. It is called “the return of the son”. The theologian and spiritual writer Henri Nouwen’s wonderful meditation on the parable and the painting adds a subtitle, “a story of homecoming”. Not a homecoming, not the homecoming but homecoming more universally. It holds out the hope of the reconciliation of both sons because of the truly prodigal, meaning generous and abundant, love of the father. The hands of the father are at once paternal and maternal in their embrace as Nouwen notes. The idea of homecoming is particularly poignant for a number of our students and their families owing to the wildfires which have displaced them from their homes. We hold them in our prayers and thoughts.
This story complements the last senior school chapels. The Pentecost story is about the unity of the human community which is not found in ourselves but in God. The story in Acts highlights the sending of the Holy Spirit in the wonderful images of “a sound from heaven as of a mighty rushing wind” and tongues “like as of fire resting upon the disciples” and, even more, in the phenomenon of the gift of tongues; every one hearing each other “speak in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.” The story is a reprise and recapitulation of the story of the Tower of Babel. It recalls the true unity of the human community in and through the differences of language and culture. The story of the Tower of Babel is largely misunderstood as being about the source of different cultures and languages as a kind of punishment by God. Not so. The diversity of language and culture belongs to God’s creative activity as clearly indicated in the chapter in Genesis before the Tower of Babel story.
That story is about the human presumption to usurp the place of God and the attempt to impose one language upon all people; in short, one way of thinking and speaking, the impulse of every form of totalitarianism. This is order without freedom and dignity and makes the false assumption that words alone define reality, as if language is prior to thought rather than the other way around. Such is the problem of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which makes us the prisoners of our cultures and languages. But order without freedom and dignity is but tyranny and division. Pentecost is the redemption of the human community and of our individuality as found in God. It is, as one thinker puts it, “the alpha and omega of all our solemnities.” All our diversity proceeds from unity. Something common and for all is found in and through the forms of our cultures and languages. I often think about that at King’s-Edgehill and in Chapel in our wrestling together with the great ethical questions about human dignity and responsibility that have been before us. There is something fitting about the last senior Chapels in highlighting the meaning of our thinking and praying together.
I would be remiss in not calling attention to the astounding service of the Chapel Prefects under the exemplary leadership of Sean Hurley, Head Chapel Prefect. They have simply taken a hold of their tasks and responsibilities in a quiet spirit of service and commitment. They have made ‘the morning miracle’ happen each and every morning of Chapel. I am humbled by their dedication and delighted by their camaraderie and spirit. At the risk of exciting invidious envy, they are the ‘coolest group’ and entirely without any special identifying hoodies!
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, Head of English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
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