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Fourth Sunday in Lent 14/03/2010

Lk:15:1-3,11-32

The story of the Prodigal Son reminds me of the story of the father who lives in Brisbane and who calls his son in Perth a few days before Easter and says “I hate to ruin your day but I have to tell you that your mother and I are divorcing; forty-five years of misery is enough”
“Dad what are you talking about?” the son screams.
“We can’t stand the sight of each other any longer” the father says.  “We are sick of each other and I’m sick of talking about this, so you call your sister in Melbourne and tell her.” Franticly, the son calls his sister, who explodes on the phone. “Like hell they’re getting divorced” she shouts, “I’ll take care of this!”

She calls Brisbane immediately, and screams at her father “You are NOT getting divorced.  Don’t do a single thing until I get there. I’m calling my brother back, and we’ll both be there tomorrow.   Until then, don’t do a thing, DO YOU HEAR ME?”
and hangs up.

The old man hangs up his phone and turns to his wife.  “Sorted! They’re coming for Easter – and they are paying their own way!

Well that’s one way of getting the kids to come home.

Today’s gospel has at its heart the experience of returning home.  The wayward son who after a life of squandering his inheritance and being forced to work and live with pigs, wakes up to himself and returns home.

Many of us can relate to the experience coming home after some time away or of simply coming home after a big day at work where things did not go to plan – where  everywhere you turned was another problem.  The experience of coming home where you can leave it all behind and relax – to get a chance to put your feet up and catch your breath – a place where you can be yourself – accepted for who you are, but coming home doesn’t have to be a physical coming home.

We can come home to ourselves whenever we take time to get out of our busy minds and return to a simple state of being present to the now – accepting and embracing it with all its imperfection.  Resting in awareness as some call it.  Being present to God – to the ground of our Being, to Stillness and allow these rejuvenating qualities refresh and revitalize us.

Returning home could also mean returning to the oneness, which we share with all of life – a place to unwind.  We all need it in order to continue. Thomas Berry, the great ecologist and geologian who died eighteen months ago, spoke of our need to return home to our big self – that self which is the complete environment in which we find ourselves – the eco-systems of which we as a human species are just one species among many – to awaken to the eco-systems of which we are merely one element in the vast web which makes up the universe – to move from our anthrocentric worldviews, which are destroying our planet and all creatures, including ourselves upon it.
Gretta Vosper in her wonderful book “With or Without God” shares the tragic story of the Rapanui people of Easter Island – a Polynesian Island in the South Eastern Pacific Ocean, with its lonely stone figures, the moai, staring out to vast expansive ocean-monuments to  flawed beliefs.

Quoting historian Ronald Wright’s 2004 lecture, “A Short History of Progress”, Gretta relates the story of the Rapanui.  They were migrants from the Marquesas Islands a group of volcanic islands from the South Pacific.  They had settled on the island in the fifth century CE, having arrived there in enormous catamarans.  Farming the land with seeds they had brought with them, eating large rats that they had also brought, and enjoying the rich seafood stocks available helped the population grow to around ten thousand.  As the civilization developed, clans and ranks were established, and groups began the practice of honouring their ancestors, the moai, with stone statues.  Over time, competition between clans to create the biggest and best of these statues grew.

“A key element of their religious practice involved moving the massive carved stones from where they were hewn to stand lined up along the shoreline.  In order to get them there, the Rapanui used wood. Lots of wood.  Eventually, the little sixty-four-acre island could not produce wood quickly enough to replace what was being used in the process of hauling these enormous statues into place.  Wright chills us with the thought that even as the last tree was being cut down the person cutting it would have known that it was indeed, the very last one.  No more wood would be available to haul the stones.  No wood could be used to repair boats.  No fibre from the trees would be available for weaving clothing or making rope.  But the tree was cut down anyway.”

“For a generation or so, there was enough old lumber to haul the great stones and still keep a few canoes seaworthy for deep water.  But the day came when the last good boat was gone.  The people then knew there would be little seafood and – worse – no way of escape.  The word for wood, rakau, became the dearest in their language.  Wars broke out over ancient planks and worm-eaten bits of jetsam.  They ate all their dogs and nearly all the nesting birds, and the unbearable stillness of the place deepened with animal silences.  There was nothing left now but the moai, the stone giants who had devoured the land.”

Eventually the Rapanui were reduced to a small remnant surviving and competing for the limited resources before their final destruction. The Rapanui believed that no matter what they did to their island paradise their Gods would look after them if they looked after and honoured them.  Imagine how betrayed they felt in those final days.

In many ways for centuries we have lived with similar beliefs that no matter what we do, pollute and desecrate our planet that an elsewhere God will somehow look after us.  This elsewhere God won’t let us destroy ourselves.  Elements in the denial surrounding the climate change issue are a case in point.

If Ronald Wright’s understandings of what happened to the Rapunui people of Easter Island is correct then it serves as a chilling parable to rouse our need to awaken from any complacent misconceptions we may be immersed in, that may lead to the destruction of our planet.  For example as a society we once believed that smoking cigarettes was not a health risk and may even assist one to be more relaxed. We now know, (not from any assistance from tobacco companies) that smoking is a severe health risk.  Hopefully we may one day realize that filling our atmosphere with CO2 emissions is creating an even more severe health risk for the entire planet – and not only to believe this, but do something to prevent it happening.

As the young man in today’s gospel realized that what he was doing was leading to his destruction, recognizing his destructive separateness, he returned home – to his homeland – to his father and his family.

May we awaken both individually and collectively to our mistaken misconception and belief that we are separate, divorced from our environment.  May we return home to our bigger selves, our collective, connected self, where all is one.