ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE

Exarchate of Parishes of Russian
Tradition in Western Europe

The call to return

Sermon for Forgiveness Sunday preached by Bishop Basil of Amphipolis

Parish of the Annunciation, Oxford, Sunday 9 March 2008

Matthew 6: 14-21

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

Today we have reached Forgiveness Sunday, the last Sunday before the beginning of the Great Fast. It is a day on which, strange as it may seem, we commemorate the casting out of Adam from Paradise.

We need to ask ourselves: how is it possible to combine this forgiveness and this casting out? The answer lies deep in the first words of the Gospel which we have heard today: ‘If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.’

The second of these verses, of course, is simply a negative form of the first – but we have several extraordinary things here. First, there is this intimacy between God and ourselves. Both are involved in the same process, and to a certain extent, what God can do is limited by what we do. This tells us at once that we are in the realm of human freedom. that the all-powerful God does not constrain his people. The second extraordinary thing is that in a deep sense God’s forgiveness depends on us – us personally. It does not involve the person who has offended against us, who has ‘trespassed’ against us. In other words, it does not expect that the other will have asked forgiveness of us.

This is completely understandable, because if that were not the case, God’s forgiveness of us would be dependent, not on us, but on this other person – our relationship is directly with God. The implication is clear. We are expected to be ready to forgive before we are asked. And this reminds us immediately of the parable of the Prodigal Son where the Father, by running out to meet the son, shows that he has already forgiven him before they even meet.

This way of looking at things is actually confirmed by the hymns in the Vigil service last night. In the ikos of Matins, the hymn writer says: ‘I am fallen. In thy compassion have mercy on me.’ In other words the hymn writer assumes the prior compassion of God, that he will forgive our sins, that he is ready to forgive. And in the Aposticha in Vespers, Christ says ‘And when he [Adam] comes to me, I will not cast him out.’

In other words God is there ready to forgive. Finally, in Ode 7 of the Canon, the hymn writer addresses Christ and says, ‘Despise me not, O God my Saviour, but call me back.’  What is this call? It reminds us again of the Parable of the Prodigal Son, for the son, in this far country where he is wasting his living, ‘comes to himself’. In other words he realises that he is not where he should be, that his relationship with his father is not what it should be and needs to be re-established.

Alongside this call for return, the Vigil refers to another call – this time from the enemy.

In the Canon again, in Ode 8, Christ asks’ Why then hast thou taken the destroying enemy as thy counsellor?’ In other words, the sinner has listened to the enemy, just as Adam listened to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. In the parable of the Prodigal Son we have a similar moment, when he says, right at the beginning: ‘Give me the portion of the goods that fall to me.’ Where did this idea come from? That idea itself comes from the enemy. And thus, in the story of the Prodigal Son, we find that there are two impulses in human beings. Two spirits are at work: one is the enemy of mankind, and the other Christ and the Spirit of God.

These two spirits are in conflict. They are offering different counsel, and we are in between: we have to choose. These spirits will be in conflict until the end of the world. The one works to separate us from God, while the other always calls us back. Much of our spiritual life is, in fact, a struggle to discern the spirits – to be able to distinguish between these two voices, and to know which call we are hearing. One thing we do know is that the voice which urges us to forgive comes from God. It comes from Christ, from the Holy Spirit – and it is this voice that is calling us back to the Father, urging us to reconcile ourselves completely with him through forgiveness – our forgiveness of others and his forgiveness of us.

Once again God is asking us to be like him – just as he is always ready to forgive, we should always be ready to forgive. We are not to wait for others to ask for forgiveness in order to forgive, but to forgive them in our hearts now. And it is this perception that God is always ready to forgive the repentant sinner, that enables us on this day to commemorate our expulsion from Eden - the expulsion of our first parents – because  without this understanding of God this commemoration would be far too painful.

Amen.