UNTIE HIM, LET HIM GO FREE

UNTIE HIM, LET HIM GO FREE (John 11:44)

One day in the mid-1950s I was herding cattle and my task was to drive them into a particular fenced field. I ran ahead and open the gate and ran back to nudge them through it. Would they go? Not a bit! They walked past the open gate. I ran round them and pushed them back. Would they cooperate this time? No! I got frustrated and mad with them. Then my father noticed what was happening and we did the task together. Later we went on a family outing to the local town to see ‘the pictures.’ The French have a word for it; dénouement, untying the knots.

We have these moments of sudden transformation when frustration is turned into peace in an instant.. We are in a fix and someone says or does something and the difficulty melts away. There is an odd story in Luke’s gospel normally labelled ‘The Dishonest Steward.’ He was in a fix: dismissal loomed. His way out was to forego his cut on his master’s debts: he renounced the interest, he could legitimately claim, in order to win friends. His employer approved his astuteness and maybe reinstated him.

Or perhaps he really was crooked and his action of reducing the debts was defrauding his master? Whatever the case the master was impressed that he did something. He did not just sit on his hands. And, rather like the father in the Prodigal Son story, he may have welcomed him back. Whatever the interpretation, it was a sudden change of scene and the master “praised his servant.” Mercy, forgiveness and large heartedness have a way of cutting through human deviousness and frustration.

For four centuries the world has pushed forward with an agenda marked by ambition and rivalry. And at the heart of this mad rush the Church raises a small voice calling for mercy and compassion for the poor. What she asks goes against the current. Restraint and reconciliation are words belligerents in war and commerce do not wish to hear. At least, not at first!

But when they do listen they give a breathing space. A ‘peace agreement’ does not bring immediate peace but it lays a foundation that was not there before. Such foundations were laid in Zimbabwe (1980), South Africa (1994), Ireland (1998), Climate Change (2015) and now Colombia (2016). These agreements were dénouements but they only laid the ground for future building.

Now comes the difficult bit. We have cleared the ground. We have laid some foundations. Can we now move on to build something new, something “unheard of since the world began.” (John 9:32)      

September 18, 2016    Sunday 25 C

Amos 8:4-7     1Tim 2:1-8      Luke 16:1-13