ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

A Fellowship of Forgiven Sinners

Sermon by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis for the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford, 24 February 2008

Luke 15:11-32

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Today is the second Sunday in the Triodion, the book we use during the period of the Great Fast leading up to Easter. It is known as the Sunday of the Prodigal Son, because on this particular day we read this parable, which Christ told to his disciples, from the Gospel of Luke. It is a very familiar parable, and it gives a characteristic view of the nature of the Father – the love of the Father for his children. But it is chosen especially today because of the theme of repentance, of return, of change. If we look at the texts for Vespers and Matins, we see that this parable is continually being applied to ourselves: we are understood as the younger son, the one who needs to return to the Father in repentance.

Only once in these texts is that parable applied not only to individuals, but to the whole story of mankind. This, too, is legitimate, because Adam and Eve, members of their Father’s house – of their Father’s family – left that home through disobedience. And the whole of history until the very end will be the story of mankind’s repentance. Everything that we do, everything that is of significance in our lives and in the lives of the human race, will be under that sign: the sign of repentance.

As usual with a parable, we are invited to find ourselves in the story, and it is no doubt easiest to find ourselves in that younger son. The son takes what is his, takes what is his birthright from the father, and turns away from the one who has given it to him. He squanders what he has been given ‘in riotous living’. In the texts of the service he ‘squanders the gifts of the grace of God through a life subject to the passions’. And having drifted to a far country where he feels lost, he finally comes to his senses and says, ‘I will go back to my father’.

We can find ourselves in that figure again and again and again. But we can also find ourselves in the older son. There is that aspect of jealousy, where he is jealous of the younger son’s relationship with the father. He is probably also secretly envious of that other son’s freedom to get away from the father and his commandments, to go and live his own life, No doubt this, too, occurs again and again in our own lives.
We have little problem trouble here with sharing the experience.

But what about the father himself? How do we relate to him? There is one feature of this parable that suggests that this is very important. Verses 24 and 32 of that chapter of Luke are virtually the same – and this is actually quite unusual. There is only the slightest difference. In verse 24 the father says, ‘This my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’  And in the last verse of the parable, the same father says, ‘This thy brother was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ In other words, that slight change – from ‘this, my son, to ‘this, thy brother’ – contains the whole story of our relationship with God and our relationship with other people.

What has happened here is that the Father quite clearly has transferred his relationship to his own son to the relationship of the brother to his brother. He has passed on that responsibility. And what was once the attitude of the father (or, in terms of the parable, the attitude of God towards us) is presented to us as the proper attitude of the older son.

The father does not let the extraordinary behaviour of the younger son change his love for him. In spite of the fact that the younger son has asked for his share of the inheritance – in effect saying, ‘I wish you were dead, and I will treat you as if you were dead’ – in spite of that, he is constantly waiting for his son’s repentance. We do not see somebody coming at a distance unless we are expecting and hoping to see them. He is ready to go out to meet him. He is ready at once to celebrate his return. And this reaction is proposed by the Father to the elder son. He says in effect, ‘you should be treating your brother as I am treating my child.’

This is right at the heart of the Gospel  For when Christ says, ‘Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, ‘ he offers us entrance into that Kingdom through repentance. But the gift of the Kingdom is a chance to follow in turn the commandment to forgive – to forgive as we have been forgiven – in a sense it is a chance to offer others that opportunity to enter into the Kingdom.

What we see here is not so much ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, ‘ as ‘Do unto others as has already been done to you by the Father.’ In other words, be ready to forgive, just as you have been forgiven. We do not normally take in – we do not realise – how much is forgiven us in our relationship with God. In Baptism, when we are brought into the Church, we are forgiven our sins. But the result of infant baptism is that we do not normally live that experience in our adult lives. And so we constantly have to re-appropriate this knowledge – that we have been forgiven – and also to re-appropriate the joy that goes with it. The Church is in its essence a fellowship of forgiven sinners, and we, as members of the Church, of the Body of Christ, seeking constantly to increase and to enlarge the borders of that Body, must be ready to offer forgiveness ourselves.

Let us seek to enter into the fullness of the joy given to us, which carries with it the responsibility of extending that originating forgiveness to others. That forgiveness needs to come out of our sense of gratitude, our sense of joy, our feeling of our own salvation, and be turned into part of our relationship with others.