In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the parable that our Saviour is telling us today, there is a big contrast between the attitude of the father and the attitude of the elder brother. As we know, the loving father was waiting and praying for the return of his erring son. The fruit of the patient father’s love is that when the son made his return in penitence, hoping only for compassion and mercy from his father, the son was received back into his place in the family. His relationship with his father was restored. He resumed his place in his family although he had no more inheritance.
This is a very important lesson for us because in our hymns we are always equating God, our heavenly Father, with that father in this parable who is waiting for the return of his erring child. We are the erring child. The loving, heavenly Father is always waiting for us to come back. He is waiting for us to wake up. He is waiting for us to come back to His loving arms, to life. That is why He gave His Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, in the Incarnation, in order to open that door finally for us, to break down all barriers so that we could make the journey home much more easily.
After 2,000 years of communal, corporate experience of the Only-begotten Son, our Saviour, we still have difficulty accepting that God loves us like that. We still have the same tendency to wander, to look elsewhere, to do something else because we have a hard time accepting that God could and does love us like this. Sometimes we get into a mentality or disposition of soul and heart which is so dark that we think that God cannot forgive us. We fall into the condition of beating ourselves up, and such a condition is very poisonous ; in fact it is deadly poisonous. The fact is that, if we turn to Him, take His hand, and let Him, God is quite capable of forgiving, no matter how horrible the things are that we have done. The only way that God cannot forgive you or me or anyone is if we refuse to let Him. He does not force this forgiveness and this love on us. He waits for us, like this loving father. This loving father did not go chasing after his son everywhere. He waited. His heart was always with his son, and he waited. There are many people, in fact, who have children who have difficulties in life, and they find themselves to be in precisely that same position with their children, even today. It is important that we remember this lesson of love, which teaches us about the love of our heavenly Father for us, and His readiness to accept us when we turn about. We cannot be like that elder brother, because if the elder brother takes over in our lives, we are going to be lost also. The elder brother did not recognise the love of his father for what it was, and he condemned his brother, disowned his brother when his father did not. We can notice that when the elder brother is criticising the father, he says to the father : “‘this son of yours’”. He does not say: “my brother”. The elder son had already thrown away his brother.
We have to be very careful also about ourselves. Let us remember two simple examples of the depth of God’s readiness and willingness to forgive. There is the example of the Apostle Paul who had blood on his hands : he was responsible for the deaths of many. He stood by at the death of the Archdeacon and First-martyr Stephen. God forgave him, turned him about, and made the Apostle a powerful witness for His love. There is also the example of Saint Mary of Egypt. Before her repentance, she delighted in bringing people down with her. She said so. It is written in her Life that it is so. She delighted in dragging people down. Then, through the prayers of the Theotokos, she encountered the Lord, and she turned about. She is now our prime example of repentance (not that we all have to go and live as she did in the Jordanian desert for forty years). However, we do need to repent, to turn about from death to life, from darkness to light, from self-love to the love of God as she did.
If ever we are tempted to think that we are unforgivable, it is good to remember those two persons in particular. There is nothing that the Lord is unwilling or unready to forgive. We have to be ready to let Him work this forgiveness in us. We have to accept it.
We live in a society that is completely out of balance. It is completely inside out and upside down. It is topsy-turvy. Let us keep in mind those words of the Apostle Paul in today’s Epistle reading about the right attitude towards our bodies, and how we should be behaving towards our bodies. He says : “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit?” Our bodies need to be treated like the temple of the Holy Spirit. We need to look after them with the right attitude – not as our own possession, but as God’s gift to us. Indeed it is His gift to us. If we mistreat our bodies, it is a sign that our hearts somehow are not in order, and something needs to be straightened out. I know this from my own personal experience quite well. How we behave towards ourselves and our bodies is a symptom of how we truly are inside. If we are mistreating our bodies, it is a strong sign that somehow there is something out of kilter in our hearts. There is something in our hearts that makes us against ourselves. We are condemning ourselves ; we are angry at ourselves for something or other. It is important for us to find out what it is, and put it straight with the Lord, and put everything into its proper perspective.
On the other hand, we live in a society that deifies human bodies, and expects impossible things of human bodies. The majority of us Canadians have a tendency to be on the large size. On the fashion programmes on Air Canada TV, we see anorexic people wearing clothes most Canadians could not fit into, because Canadians are too well fed. We do not see real people – such as most of us who tend to put on some extra weight.
Nevertheless, last week I had a very strong experience of the absolute extreme of North American distortion and forgetfulness of God. In Las Vegas there was the Assembly of the Diocese of the West to choose their nominations for their next bishop, and I had to represent the Metropolitan there. I could not recognise it as the same city that I saw in 1979 when I passed through. It is a “counterfeit” city whose main economy is based on what is fake – imitation this or imitation that. It is Disneyland for adults. However, it is not Disneyland either. Standing in the centre of that city, one cannot but see that the focus of most of the city’s commerce is geared to dragging people to the bottom. One cannot escape noticing what is the mainspring of that city. Gambling is the most addictive of all the addictions. It seems that one cannot go to any activity (such as a play) without going through a casino hotel. The major attractions there are geared to hooking people and dragging them down. When it comes to harlots (on which the young man in today’s Gospel wasted his inheritance), this so-called “profession” is completely legal in that city, and advertised. Sad to say, this is the most visible sign of what is distorted in our North American society. There is so much that is geared to dragging people down into a pit.
When we live in an environment like this, it essential that you and I remember and keep in mind what the Apostle is saying to us this morning. It is important that we go home and reread the Epistle to the Corinthians. We must graft these words into our hearts, and remember what is first in our life. First in our life as Christians is Jesus Christ. We love Him because He loves us, just as the Apostle said (see 1 John 4:19). Our relationship with Him is a relationship of love. In that relationship everything else works out in a life-giving way. We do not need to be enslaved to anything. We do not need to be addicted to anything because the love of Jesus Christ can set us free from all these things. The love of Jesus Christ can turn about our attitude towards ourselves. The love of Jesus Christ can clean up our hearts. The love of Jesus Christ can help us, and enable us in every way to have a healthy attitude towards ourselves, each other, creation, and everything. The love of Jesus Christ can help us to be joyful, peaceful, strong, stable, loving and healthy members of the society in which we live. We can be signs to other people that there is a better, healthier way than being afraid of weighing a kilogram or two extra, looking a little large, and not being absolutely gorgeous. However, being alive instead, alive and life-giving in Christ, spreading His joy and His life is what truly matters.
As we approach Great Lent, it is extremely important that we do not enter it attacking ourselves for our shortcomings. It is essential that we enter Great Lent simply saying to the Lord, and to all our brothers and sisters : “I am sorry. I did not live up to what I could do, and by your prayers, I will try to do better. I will try in Christ to be more authentically me as He created me to be”. Before we enter Great Lent, I also have to say that to you. I have to say to you that because of my short-sightedness, forgetfulness, fear, and other similar frailties, I have not been able to live up to what I am supposed to be as your bishop, and the bishop of the diocese. I ask for your forgiveness and for your prayers, and I will do the best I can, by your prayers, to listen better to the Lord especially during this Great Lent, and in the coming year. I will pray for you, too, so that we all together will be able to come to Pascha with joy and new life. Therefore, this year, may Pascha bear great fruit in the hearts, minds, and bodies of each one of us so that everything about us may more and more glorify our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with the unoriginate Father, and the all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.