Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory to Christ. In the
name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen. We've come to a very important
moment on this day in our preparation for Great
Lent. This parable of the prodigal son, which
is very tempting to speak on every single verse.
It's so profound. It's so immediately relevant.
But this is not a Bible study. It's a brief homily.
I hope it's going to be brief. This is the third
of three parables in chapter 15 of St. Luke.
All three are about God's love for us. How he
seeks us. How he seeks what is lost. The Lord
speaks of the shepherd and the lost sheep. The
Lord speaks of the housewife and the lost coin.
And what happiness they both had, what joy they
had. They called their friends to come and rejoice.
And the climax of chapter 15 is our parable today,
the father and the lost son. Lost sheep, lost
coin, and now a lost son. And the joy that the
father feels at his return. Suppose we could
call this the parable of the prodigal son and
the merciful father and the hard -hearted son.
All three pointing to the same thing. God is
not passively waiting for us. He didn't just
wind us up and see where it all goes. He seeks
us in love. And all three completely negate the
idea, listen carefully, that man sinned, which
he did, broke a rule, and now Jesus is going
to pay a fine, you know, to release mankind from
the sake of appeasing either an angry God or
appeasing something called divine justice or
something like that. We simply don't see God
in this legalistic way. You were bought with
a price. You are precious before God. Glorify
God in your body, says St. Paul in that epistle.
That epistle is like a commentary on this gospel.
It could be for some here that you see yourself
in this parable, perhaps. that you've come a
long way and here you are. Or maybe you have
a person in your life that you grieve about,
you pray about, you hope that he or she will
come to himself and to God. However it is you
relate personally, there's something more here.
It's universal, of course. Consider the words
of Father Alexander Schmemann from the book Great
Lent. It's the book that I have the catechumens
read. He says, often we overlook something essential
in our repentance with Christ. This something
is precisely the feeling of alienation from God.
The young man came to himself. He realized he
was in a far place. He was alienated from his
father, from the joy of communion with him, from
the real life as created and given by God. It
is indeed easy to confess. When we come to confession,
that I've not fasted on the prescribed days,
I miss my prayers, I became angry. It's quite
a different thing, he says, however, to realize
suddenly that I have defiled and lost my spiritual
body because I'm far from God, and that I'm far
away from my real home, my real life, and that
something precious and pure and beautiful has
been hopelessly broken. Any soul, says Elder
Emelianos of Mount Athos, can go to confession,
can read spiritual books, can pray much, can
shed copious tears, or just go to church every
week without the sense of sin and loss and restoration
and joy that this parable describes. The point
here that I'm making is not so that we should
feel bad about ourselves. No, the point here
is about repentance, learning how to do it, because
we vacillate between two sides. Either we have
sinned so badly, so wretchedly, that God will
never forgive us, we feel, or else we feel, I'm
okay. No sins. I'm pretty good. Either one, it's
not reality of the condition of our soul and
the love of God. Because in repentance, if we
forget that God is merciful and seeks us, we
won't get it. This is about restoring a relationship
that is broken, that is lost. And it's how extravagantly
our Lord has gone to restore us. Notice this.
The parable says the younger son asks for his
inheritance. If I went to my parents and I said,
Dad, I want my inheritance now. What is that
saying to him? It's saying to him, you don't
matter to me. You're dead to me. I just want
what's coming. So the younger son asks for his
inheritance. Well, number one. You don't ask
for an inheritance until the parent dies. So
how thoughtless that is. Number two, it's the
older son, the firstborn son, who would actually
inherit everything in that culture, all of it,
100 % from the father, and only then would he
distribute it to the other son or sons. I have
to imagine, Father Daniel maybe can correct me
as the biblical scholar he is, that those listening
to Jesus speak this parable would reject this
idea. They'd laugh at how God is not like that.
This man is a fool. This is overly generous.
But we're speaking of divine generosity here,
not human laws of inheritance. The great metropolitan
Anthony Bloom of London spoke about this parable.
He said the father, keeping watch for his son,
standing there, waiting for him, always waiting
and going out further and further to look for
him, suddenly saw a beggar, a man in rags, coming
in a faltering manner, tired, tired to exhaustion,
with a soul even more desperately tired than
his body. The father sees this man and recognizes
him immediately, heart speaking to heart, and
he rushed towards him, like that wonderful stanza
in the canon of St. Andrew, like the father rushing
out to meet the prodigal son. And he sees him,
and he embraces him in his arms, and the boy
falls to his feet and begins his confession.
Father. I have sinned against heaven and before
thee. I am no longer worthy to be called thy
son. But at that moment, the father interrupts
him and does not let him even say that. He does
not allow him to say, receive me as one of your
servants, your slaves. He could in no way become
a stranger. He took him in his arms, brought
him to the house, and the father says, bring
him the best robe. There's some debate here.
It probably says bring him the first robe, which
is the best robe, the best robe to clad him in
novelty and beauty. No, what he says is bring
his first robe, the one I discarded when he left,
the one he discarded, the one that he let fall
off his shoulders to the ground, but which I
have collected, which I have folded, I have kept
in a drawer, and I've taken out. every day to
hold against my heart, to kiss and to bury my
face in it. Metropolitan Anthony says, because
that is all I have left of my boy. It's that
robe which is the best that was brought and the
boy put it on. For us, I say this about the robe.
because it's the robe of baptism. It's the white
robe you receive. It's the robe of the Holy Spirit.
It's the robe of the life of the resurrection.
It's the robe of the kingdom of God. Again, Elder
Milianos, the great elder of Athos who died in
May 2019, reminds us that God stoops down to
his people. If you are desperate in your repentance,
or if you feel you don't have anything to repent,
think about God stooping down, because he says
man will not bow down to God. God, in his infinite
humility, bows down to him. On the night he was
betrayed, Christ set aside his garments and stooped
down to wash the feet of a man who would deny
him thrice. That's how God was with the people
of Israel. That's how he is with everyone. This
is the foolishness of the cross, of God's love.
It says in the parable, at the end, Now his older
son was in the field, and as he drew near to
the house, he heard music and dancing. So he
called to one of the servants and asked, What
these things meant? And he said to him, Your
brother has come. And because he has received
him safe and sound, your father killed the fatted
calf. But the brother was angry and would not
go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded
with him. Again, God's initiative. God's merciful
kindness is often a stumbling block to the self
-righteous. I know that. And this is the issue
that prompts Jesus in the first place to even
tell the story. He's responding to the complaints
by the Pharisees and the scribes that his association
with obvious sinners like prostitutes, tax collectors,
is defiling him. The story is not directed to
prodigals, but to the second son. He has an even
worse and more pervasive problem. Self -righteousness
has no limits, no bounds. It hides itself in
the morally corrupt person just as easily in
the morally upright. And this is one reason why
we hear this before Lent, because it's very easy
to be self -righteous during Lent. You will fail
with the fasting and the services, that's guaranteed.
But if you think that you're keeping track, you're
in some danger. This self -righteousness is an
equal opportunity evil. We might struggle with
it all the time. We're maybe no longer in the
emergency room of the church hospital, but we
are still outpatients. We still need the medical
care. My remission, my salvation. My transfiguration,
transformation, my growth is absolutely dependent
upon Christ and how I approach him in my spiritual
program and in confession. I like the way the
parable ends without an ending. We really don't
know how it ends. Neither son is really out of
the woods by any means. It's a lot like us. To
our Lord be glory, now and ever, to ages of ages.
Amen.