In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
What is our story as a human race? It is that we are lost but then we are found. Perhaps this explains the universal appeal of the hymn "Amazing Grace" for Christians. This is the purpose of our lives: to be found by a loving God who seeks us. Certainly, it is the purpose of the Advent of Christ. God sent His Son to seek us and to show us the way back to the Father.
This was a great theme with the Fathers of the Church. You'll recall that St. Athanasius wrote that the original portrait of humankind had been defaced but that it could not be restored because no one remained who could sit as a model. You'll recall that St. Irenaeus wrote that the freshly minted coin bearing the Emperor's Image had slowly worn down with usage, had become an indecipherable slug. With the Advent of Christ the coin was stamped anew. It would be Jesus, Irenaeus wrote, Who would live as one of us to show us how to live, recapitulating what Adam and Eve had failed to do. This is the backdrop for our Gospel lesson today.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son is actually the culmination of three stories concerning loss: the Parable of the one Lost Sheep, the Parable of the Lost Coin, and then finally the long parable of God's lost human creatures. We begin with the Father in intimacy and harmony, but then we stray. Like the one sheep which is lost, we cannot find their way back to the flock (i.e., the Kingdom of God), so the Good Shepherd must assist us.
Seeking God, seeking him from our state of perdition, is the story of the ages and found in all lands. The Apostle Thomas, hearing these parables many times as the Master preached them throughout the Levant, trekked to India preaching them up and down the Malabar Coast. Eventually, the story of the son who is lost to a loving father found its way into the Saddharmapundarika Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism.
This story would morph to suit the Buddhist context of conversion-through-reincarnation. A son leaves his wealthy father and is reduced to penury. He journeys from country to country in rags living on the brink of starvation. Fifty years pass, yet every day his remorse comes fresh to mind: his rashness, his hasty judgment, the price he has paid for his wrong choices. Indigence overtakes him, and he becomes an outcast, that most pathetic and shunned creature in India.
By chance he arrives to the land dwelt in by his father, who has become fabulously wealthy, far beyond his former affluence. The son dare not approach him. For with the passing of years and the rigid imposition of distance between the very wealthy and the untouchable castes, the son does not recognize him:
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He saw from a distance his father seated on a lion-couch, his feet on a jeweled footstool,
and with expensive strings of pearls adorning his body, revered and surrounded by priests, warriors, and citizens, attendants and young slaves waiting upon him right and left. (Saddharmapundarika Sutra, 4) |
The father, though, seeing his son afar off, knows him immediately. He has been longing for him, yet he says nothing. Meantime, the son is struck with awe and fear:
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He reflected, "This must be a king, or someone of royal rank, it is impossible for me to be
hired here. I had better go to some poor village in search of a job, where food and clothing are easier to get. If I stay here long, I may suffer oppression." Reflecting thus, he rushed away. (4) |
But the father sends his servants after the son to bring him back. So terrified is the son of arrest and imprisonment, he resists the servants and, in his weakened condition, faints dead away.
The father, seeing this distress, considers another way. He sends his servants dressed in rags to approach the son guiding him toward a job, even paying him in advance. When he arrives to the estate, he still does not recognize his father though, again, his father recognizes him.
After some weeks have passed,
| His father, beholding the son, was struck with compassion for him. One day he saw at a distance, through the window, his son's figure, haggard and drawn, lean and sorrowful, filthy with dirt and dust. He took off his strings of jewels, his soft attire, and put on a coarse, torn and dirty garment, smeared his body with dust, took a basket in his right hand, and with an appearance fear-inspiring said to the laborers, "Get on with your work, don't be lazy." By such means he got near to his son, to whom he afterwards said, "Ay, my man, you stay and work here, do not leave again. I will increase your wages, give whatever you need, bowls, rice, wheat-flour, salt, vinegar, and so on. Have no hesitation; besides there is an old servant whom you can get if you need him. Be at ease in your mind; I am, as it were, your father; do not be worried again. Why? I am old and advanced in years, but you are young and vigorous; all the time you have been working, you have never been deceitful, lazy, angry or grumbling. I have never seen you, like the other laborers, with such vices as these. From this time forth you will be as my own- begotten son." (4) |
As friendship between the wealthy father and the unsuspecting son increases, the son is entrusted with more and more:
| "Now I possess an abundance of gold, silver, and precious things, and my granaries and treasuries are full to overflowing. I want you to understand in detail the quantities of these things, and the amounts that should be received and given. This is my wish, and you must agree to it. Why? Because now we are of the same mind. Be increasingly careful so that there be no waste." The poor son accepted his instruction and commands, and became acquainted with all the goods. (4) |
We hear echoes of Jesus' parable: the rash son leaving his home; the son coming to ruin and eventual indigence; the son searching for wages and becoming an outcast; the father yearning for his son, watching for his approach; the father recognizing his son immediately from a distance.
We also hear echoes of other teachings from Jesus, no doubt, also preached by Thomas: the servant receiving mercy who then shows mercy to others (Mt 18:21-35); the Lord who must become a servant to others (Mt 20:25-28); the good steward (Lu 16:1-13); the good and faithful servant (Lu 25:14-30); even the Advent of Christ itself: for the Buddhist version tells of a King who becomes incarnate as a lowly subject in order to redeem him. We even hear the phrase "my own begotten son."
Reflecting Buddhist belief that the soul can be instructed (we would say redeemed) only in the course of multiple lifetimes, the son's conversion is depicted as being glacially slow. Insights come over long stretches of time and, then, only as the fruits of intense spiritual reflection, eshewing vices and loving goodness.
The Buddhist version concludes with a moral:
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The very rich elder is the Tathagata [the Enlightened One], and we are all as the Buddha's sons.
The Buddha has always declared that we are his sons. But because of the three sufferings, in the midst of births-and-deaths we have borne all kinds of torments, being deluded and ignorant and enjoying our attachment to things of no value. (4) |
We Orthodox Christians need not feel conflicted as we appreciate this story. For Buddhism does not propose itself to be a rival to Christianity. It is not a "god religion." Idolatry or placing other gods before us is not possible here. Yes, Buddhists countenance divine figures who assist them in the spiritual journey. We call these angels. Moreover, in its essence, Buddhism is profoundly Orthodox, exhorting the seeker to master his passions and to cast out carnal desires and pleasures, as we heard this morning in our Epistle lesson. A Buddhist would resonate with the writings of the St. John the Theologian: attachment to a poisonous world is a vicious form of addiction and self-abasement. Only in mastering our passions are we ever free of the animal squalor, which is fleshly life .... and all the ills it brings to us. Awaiting all of us, who are the sons and daughters of God, are the riches of our Father's marvelous Kingdom, where we shall be accounted sons and daughters.
The Buddhist version shares obvious similarities with our lesson today, but it is the differences which command our attention enabling us to read this very-well-known parable with fresh eyes! In the Buddhist version, the father is a wisdom figure representing an "awakened" human (called a Buddha). In the Christian original, the Father is God. Certainly, the Hebrew-Christian tradition teaches the high importance of devout love amongst each other and instruction concerning moral living. But it is our Christian tradition alone, which teaches of an intense relationship of love with God, going to the heart of our faith. God is no longer a distant figure to Whom few may draw near, but rather among us — an Intimate to all, our Friend. He loves us with an incommensurable love. The highest purpose of our lives is to return that same love. It is this unity, becoming One with the Father (Jn 17:21), which is the substance of our salvation. The personal encounter with God, to Whom "we cry out, 'Abba, Father!' (Rom 8:15)," stands above all else.
The Scriptures tell of a people who sat in darkness and in the region of death, who saw a great light (Ps 107, Isa 9:2). That was the true light which gives light to every man and woman (Jn 1:9). This light came to us in human form, as the Son of God, Who shows us the way to the Father. His commandments are a light unto our path (Prov 6), and the Son Himself brings us to the Father.
Today, let us read the parable of the prodigal son and the wise father as our own story. We need not wait fifty years before we begin our spiritual training, before we are prepared to be loved and to be redeemed. We need not pass through additional decades of intense, personal guidance and development before we are ready for life with God. Certainly, we are not reborn through many lifetimes.
God's sublime greatness and His transforming love are sufficient to redeem us here and now. This is love's story. It is a story told many times. Love can remake a broken man into a confident, noble creature. Love can transform a woman who has lost all hope into a composed, dignified wife and mother. Love can reform a child disfigured from abuse and depravity into a trusting, shining boy or girl. Love conquers all.
The one thing necessary is our encounter with God, Who is the Lord of Love, Who has laid His life down for His friends. He calls all of us to be His friends.
In our own brokenness, remorse, or shame, let us also come into the waiting arms of the Father. With contrite hearts, let us be done with all that is past, seeking absolution. Let us be right with God. The only impediment to Divine love and salvation is ourselves. As for the Father .... He tell us, all the past is already forgotten with the breaking of our hearts. Let us be clothed in a new robe. Let the ring of blessing be placed on our finger. And let us hear those longed for words:
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We were dead, but now we are alive.
We were lost, but now we are found. (Lu 15:15-32) |
Let us know the love of God's great heart.
For it is this heart
which redeems the world
here and now.
In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.