In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
In the Gospel reading this morning, when the Lord is speaking to the Apostle Peter, He begins by asking (as a result of the tax-collecting requirement) what is the correct order of things. This apostle answers Him well. Ultimately, our Lord demonstrates just through the fishing how things are all in God’s hands.
Our Lord says that it is important for us to humble ourselves like little children. This, according to my understanding of it, truly is the essence of the way of a Christian. What is a child to his or her parents ? The child is the object of the parents’ love, obviously. To some extent it depends on the parents’ ability (and other factors) how this love is played out in the course of life. Sometimes it gets distorted. Nevertheless, it is the intention on the part of the parents (even though there may be weaknesses and emotional baggage) to love their child. The parents want the best for the child, who is the fruit of the parents’ love. Most parents that I have known will give anything of themselves for the welfare of their children. Sometimes they almost die from self-deprivation so that their children will be well. That is one of the characteristics of behaviour of prairie settlers. People arrived in Canada with nothing, and still at the end of their lives they found that they had very little. They had given their all for their children. They did this so that their children would have a better opportunity to have a stable and good life. They deprived themselves in order that their children do well.
I have met a number of poor families even in these days, who, when money is short between paycheques, will deprive themselves of food. They eat very little, in order that their children have enough to eat until they have enough money again next paycheque. I am not referring to people on welfare, either. There are plenty of legitimately poor people whose income is very small. Sometimes there are accidents that happen that require extra money for something or other. Sometimes there is a miscalculation, and the last few days before one gets paid the next time are rather tight. Parents will give everything of themselves for the sake of their children. This is how God made us. It is the working out of love.
This is also a reflection of how God is towards us. I have said many times in many places that if I had been the creator of the universe, I would have wiped it out a long time ago. It is so awful how people behave, and how ungrateful people are towards the Lord. We have a loving, merciful God who is patient beyond our imagination, precisely because He has this sort of love that parents have for their children.
From the child’s perspective, the child knows that the parents love him. The child looks to the parents for everything, and sometimes this can come to an irritating level. I remember in my own childhood a number of occasions on which I was saying to my parents : “Give me this ; give me that”. I was asked : “Who was your slave last year ?” It is the parents’ job to put things into perspective. A child can become unbalanced in his or her perspective when taking the parents’ love for granted. The parents’ love requires that they give to the child a certain correction. “Who was your slave last year” is a very mild correction. I remember feeling embarrassed when I was told that. Nevertheless, I remember it to this day.
The child looks to the parents for everything, and expects the parents to protect him or her in everything. This is precisely how the Lord wants us to be towards Him. I think that people who are on farms are still in the best position to experience this sense of child-like humility. No matter how much a farmer may be able to work on and with the land, everything depends on the weather. We can do everything correctly according to the book, but some flies are going to come or there is too much dryness, or there is too much water, or things are out of balance, and we can have a very bad harvest that year. Sometimes we can wonder whether we are going to eat properly at all during the winter (and even more so these days because the financial output of farmers is so great). Farmers have always turned towards the Lord, and said : “Help me, Lord, while I am planting. Help this crop to grow. Help me while I am harvesting. Help me while I am preparing for the next year”. Farmers have always had this basic relationship of trust with the Lord which has been life-giving.
This is actually one of the reasons that I have always enjoyed going to the country parishes. The believers in the country still have a more direct sense of this relationship between themselves and the Lord than those in urban parishes, it seems. They are dependent upon Him to provide what is right. I have seen, as a result of this, in one place or another, how a believing farmer in a difficult year (because of the climate) can be praying to the Lord, and asking the Lord for protection. The result is that even though the crop may not be great, it is often better than the crops of people who are merely tossing on chemicals and then going for coffee, expecting that science will do it all. People who are turning to the Lord have this way of allowing the Lord to bring about the best that is possible under the circumstances. It will not completely change the climate, but it might save you from a tornado. It might save you from excessive hail sometimes, for instance. These sorts of things the Lord can protect us from.
The Lord sends rain and sun on the righteous and on the unrighteous (see Matthew 5:45). Nevertheless, He measures each person according to who he or she is. If He is trying to give a lesson to the whole neighbourhood for one reason or another, He will still take into account the faithfulness of one person there. For example, in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah, the angels were going to visit Lot to see who was faithful there. They were prepared to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of its people. Nevertheless, these angels listened to Abraham because Abraham cared about his family. Lot, of course, cared about his family, and he cared about the people that he lived amongst even though they were awful, and they abused him and his family terribly. They even tried to abuse these angels (as we read in 1 Moses [Genesis] 19). Nevertheless, Abraham said, as it were : “You will not destroy the city if there are fifty faithful people here ?” The Lord said : “No, I will not destroy it for fifty”. They went on bargaining like that, and ended up limiting it just to ten righteous persons. (In fact, in Sodom and Gomorrah, there were not any good people left, except Lot’s family.) Only Lot and his family escaped. Everyone else was destroyed.
Human beings are slow learners. Overall, it seems that from the time of Sodom and Gomorrah, people have not learnt how to live properly. We always seem to fall right back into the same old junk (as our society is doing today). It will serve us right if our economies all collapse and everything falls down because we, as a society, have taken our eyes off the Lord. We have stopped trusting in the Lord. In fact, we have rejected God. In Canadian society that is simply how it is. As a society, we have rejected God.
We, who are faithful, have to remain faithful and save something of the good that remains. There are a great many good people. As a whole, the rot is very pernicious and takes a lot of people down. People are quick to take their eyes off the Lord, and to turn them on themselves and on really empty self-satisfaction (which is temporary), instead of looking to the Lord and to what is eternal. We ourselves need to remember that the Lord values the love of the child. He values that love in us. This is the part of us that we need to keep alive – this child in us, that still trusts that the Lord loves us, and still has confidence that the Lord will look after us. Everything is balance. I do not deserve anything. If I try to grab too much, the Lord will put me in my place.
Nevertheless, the Lord does love us. He does want to protect us. He does want to nurture us. He does want us to be well here in this life. He wants us to be productive persons in our life. He will give to each one – to you and to me – the resources we need to become the productive plant, the productive person that He created each of us uniquely to be. There never was a person like you or me in the world before, and there will not be after (no matter what reincarnation likes to say about things). We are unique creatures. God’s love is not in any way limited that He cannot keep on creating people who reflect Him, like you and me. This child in us is a direct connection between us and Him. Let us ask the Lord this morning in our worship to renew this child-like love in our hearts, and to freshen up this confidence in Him. It is this that is life-giving.
I know that in a small community like this in rural parts of Canada (especially in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where rural population is such a significant thing), people think very often that because the numbers get greatly diminished, it means that the end somehow is quite soon. However, this is not necessarily so. It is possible that certain communities decline. They cannot continue because of various factors. Sometimes the people have completely gone away. Sometimes a congregation is even closed down.
Let us consider Sifton, for instance. Sifton, almost gone, is now starting to wake up and come back to life. We never want to focus on what might be the end of anything because we simply do not know. I have seen this happen in a lot of rural communities in Saskatchewan and Alberta. People thought that because there were so few left, it was too difficult to carry on. Yet the Lord gave them the resources to continue. Somehow, out of nowhere, new people arrive and life continues and is renewed. The Lord wants His Orthodox Christian witness shining in all corners. The Lord wants this Orthodox life and His love shining in all corners because people in this really depressing environment in which we live, need hope.
We, who have the love of Jesus Christ, have inherited the right way to live the love of Jesus Christ. Our perseverance, our loving treatment of each other – just that alone can give people what they need to continue, themselves. Let us use these resources of God’s love, and glorify Him in our lives as we continue to live to His glory, and as we worship Him now : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages.