The Publican’s Prayer: A Path to True Repentance
As we begin the Lenten Triodion, the Church presents us with the Parable of the Publican and the Pharisee—a lesson in humility, persistence, and pure prayer. In this sermon, Fr. Geoff explores the significance of this parable, the role of prayer in our spiritual lives, and the journey of repentance that leads us to God. Watch to deepen your understanding of how true humility, rather than self-righteousness, justifies us before the Lord.
Transcript
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today, there's a lot of things going on if you look in the lectionary. It's the leaking of the meeting or the presentation of Christ in the temple. It's the beginning of the Triodion. It's the new martyrs and confessors of Russia, and it's the Publican and the Pharisee. So, where do we start? I thought I'd start. I've got four points today because there's so much here, and we'll work through them fairly quickly, hopefully: the publication to peruse, the place to pray, the persistence to pierce, and the purity to please. So, we see how we go.
The publication to peruse: the lectionary tells us, as I said, that it's the beginning of the Triodion today. Now, if you're new to the Orthodox Church, you're probably thinking, "What's the Triodion?" Tri, three, odion, thinking of English words, something odious, three times odious, as we go into Lent. What's that all about? Well, it's actually Greek for three, and then odion is odes. Three odes. And the Lenten Triodion is a service book of the Orthodox Church that provides the text for the divine services for the pre-Lent and weeks of preparation, Great Lent, and Holy Week. And this is the book. If you want to have a look at it or if you want to buy a copy, they'll be on sale afterwards at the bookshop, which Alex is going to run for us today. So, everything we need now between now and Pascha is in this service book. It's called the Lenten Triodion.
And where this word comes from, in the service of Matins, which we had before liturgy today and every Sunday, it contains a canon—not a big gun, but a carefully structured hymn appointed for Matins. And it indicates the canon indicates a norm, a measuring rod by which we understand our faith. It's an important part of the Matins service, and in the canon are nine odes, up to nine odes. This is where the odes come in. They're biblically based hymns, and during this period, which we're now beginning, they go from nine odes to three odes during the week, right the way up between now and Pascha. So, it's called the period of the three odes, or if you like, Triodion. And that's where we get this book called the Lenten Triodion. Okay, so that's what it means when you read that.
And what it involves, if you read this, if you look through it, you'll find there's a lot more services than we have normally, and this is to help us to grow spiritually during this period. And right at the beginning of this journey, the Church gives us this profound parable called the Publican and the Pharisee to help us understand what the purpose and the proper attitude of prayer is. And this is where I have three characteristics of Christian prayer: first of all, the place to pray; secondly, the persistence to pierce through to God; and the purity to please God.
Firstly, the place to pray: Jesus tells us that the Publican went up to the temple to pray. He could have prayed anywhere, and Jesus could have set his parable anywhere. I've been told all sorts of things over the years as to why people don't come to church. I've been told that people feel closer to God riding on a horse in the woods or in the privacy of their own home or on the beach or perhaps on the golf course. And this Publican could have done the same, except maybe the golf course. And our Lord could have set the parable in any of those environments, but he chose to set the parable in the temple. He went up to the temple to pray. It's a particular place set apart for the purpose of worship, and the Publican made a deliberate choice about where he was going to pray.
It's possible that this Publican went up to the temple in one of the special times of prayer, which could be the ninth hour when the evening sacrifice was being offered. And we read this in Acts 3:1: Peter and John went up together to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour, the time of the evening sacrifice. It was a favorite time of prayer, and one of the Psalms recited in that hour contains these verses: "Let my prayer be set before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." Jews observed this evening hour of prayer throughout the world, uniting their hearts and minds in communion with the evening sacrifice taking place in the temple. And those who became Christians carried the practice right over into the Christian Church, and we call that service now Vespers, which we have continued in an unbroken tradition today. It's interesting to note that Vespers, if you go to Vespers, you'll hear those same words: "Let my prayer be set before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice." So, you can see this carryover from the Jewish faith to the Christian faith.
The same thing applies for Matins as well. The third hour was the morning sacrifice, and that's become Orthros or Matins in our Church. Or the Publican could have gone at some other time of the day. It doesn't matter what time of the day he went; he went to the temple. That's what Jesus is saying here. It was offered within his prayer was offered within a religious context because the temple was an institution of religion, a place of worship. This building is not what we call a temple, but it is called, if you read the sign at the front there, this is the religious center. This is where we're meant to worship, and this is where we pray. We pray at home, of course. We can pray on the golf course or whatever, especially if you missed the hole and you can say, "Lord have mercy," or whatever, say the Jesus Prayer to keep you calm. But this is a prayer place. This is a place where we worship God and where we pray, and we're united with Christians all around the world who gather in their places of worship as well. So, the place to pray.
Now, the persistence to pierce the presence: persistence. The Publican's prayer was persistent. Jesus tells us that this Publican was standing afar off. He wouldn't even raise his eyes to heaven but beat his breast, saying, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." The phrase "beat his breast" in English, you might think that's it, he's beating his breast, but in the Greek, it literally means he kept on beating his breast and saying, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." So, he kept repeating himself over and over again. He was persistent. He wasn't afraid to repeat himself in his prayers. St. Luke uses this same verb, which means to continually do something, twice in this same chapter, Luke chapter 18. Immediately before this story of the parable and the prodigal son, the Publican and the Pharisee, St. Luke says that when a lady came to a judge's house, she cried out repeatedly, "Give me justice against my adversary." She kept crying out, and it drove the judge nuts until he gave her what she wanted. And then later, in Luke 18:35-43, we read of the blind man in Jericho. He kept crying out to Jesus as he walked along the road, "Son of David, have mercy on me." So, it wasn't just once. He kept on crying out, "Son of David, have mercy on me." They were all repeated, persistent prayers. The Publican's prayer, "Lord have mercy," was prayed many, many times. He wasn't content to pray it just once. His prayer was persistent. He would give God no rest until his prayer pierced into God's presence and God heard him.
Persistent prayer is repetitious prayer. This is a perfectly biblical style of prayer, despite the strange idea which I was brought up with in the Protestant Church that repetition in prayer is not good. And they quote usually Matthew 6:7: "And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions." Have you read that verse before? "Do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do." Ah, that's important, "as the heathen do," for they think that they will be heard for their many words. But St. John Chrysostom, when he commented on this verse in the Scriptures, he is ridiculing the hypocrites, calling their repetitions futile nonsense or babblings, just as when we ask God for inappropriate things. This is what St. John Chrysostom said: if we're asking for kingdoms, glory, getting the better of our enemies, plenty of goods and properties, and in general what does not concern us as Christians, that's what we shouldn't be offering persistent prayers for. And St. John Chrysostom, commenting on the Publican, says that we are not to restrain ourselves from saying, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." So, when we take that verse in the context of the Church Fathers and so on, we see that it's quite right the way we say, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner," over and over and over again because we're like the Publican trying to get God's attention and trying to find his forgiveness there. So, just like the Publican gave God no rest until his prayer pierced God's presence, neither should we.
And then the fourth point, the purity to please: the Publican's prayer was pure. It was a simple pleading for God's mercy, a prayer of humility and repentance. And this is the attitude we need to have as we go into Great Lent. Unlike the Pharisee in this parable, the Publican didn't judge anyone else because he realized that he himself was the problem. He was the sinner. In confession, when we come to confession, we should never judge other people. We might be coming because we're angry because somebody's upset us. Well, we don't come and tell the priest about the person who's upset us. We tell the priest about our anger or whatever. And that's what the Publican did here. The Publican didn't think of himself as better than others. Pure prayer is humble and repentant. It's not self-righteous. It's not puffed up and self-satisfied. Pure prayer does not seek its own fulfillment. When we pray with spiritual purity, we pray in contrast to those who pray to find some kind of spiritual lift or personal fulfillment. Sometimes you hear people saying, "I don't feel anything when I prayed. I didn't really feel it was worth praying." But that's not what we're after. We're not after the spiritual lift or fulfillment. We're not told whether the Publican felt spiritually fulfilled at the end of his prayer. In fact, it's quite likely that he wasn't. He might have been just as miserable after his prayer as he was before because he was no less a sinner for having admitted to being a sinner. So, he might still be struggling, but when he left the temple that day, he probably wasn't happy with himself. None of that has anything to do with the purity of prayer. It's not about feelings. Purity of prayer means that prayer is unselfish. It's not a prayer to make for the sake of some spiritual experience or devotional high. These things are not essential to prayer. In fact, they may serve in some cases as nothing better than distractions.
I think probably you might have noticed, those of you who come from the Protestant Church, there's a different target in the Protestant Church. The Protestant Church is aiming at the emotions, and you have this wonderful emotional feeling in the services. In the Orthodox Church, you don't get that kind of emotional reaction. Prayer is hard work. Some people have been in—I have—we have had people here who have just bawled their heads off right through the service so that God does touch them in a special way. But the Orthodox Church is aiming for the soul, not the emotions. So, there's a difference there.
And at the end, the Publican's prayer represented the gift of himself to God: "Here I am, Lord. I'm a sinner. Please forgive me." But according to Jesus, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. So, as we go into Great Lent, we have to go in with this attitude of humility. And we might be trying to do all the right things, eat the right things, don't eat the wrong things, come to all the services or whatever, but whatever happens, we must be humble and not judge others who can't keep up with the same pace that we're keeping up with. So, this is the prayer that Jesus teaches in the parable of the Publican and the Pharisee.
In the prologue of Ochrid, St. Nikolai has a reflection for each day of the year, and on October the 18th, his reflection was, in fact, a story: Can a sinner repent of his sins in 10 days? According to the immeasurable compassion of God, he can, and this is why we persevere and persist in our prayers. During the reign of Byzantine Emperor Maurice, emperor from 582 to 602, he was the last member of the Justinian Dynasty. There was a well-known bandit in the vicinity of Constantinople. He inspired fear and trembling both within the capital and without. And one day, the emperor himself sent the robber a cross as a sign of faith that he would do him no harm if he surrendered. The robber took the cross and surrendered. Arriving in Constantinople, he fell before the feet of the emperor and begged for forgiveness. The emperor kept his word, had mercy on him, and released him. Immediately after that, the robber became gravely ill and sensed that death was drawing near. He bitterly repented of all his sins and tearfully prayed to God that he forgive him as the emperor had forgiven him. He shed so many tears at prayer that his handkerchief was completely soaked. After 10 days of weeping and praying, the repentant man reposed. The same night he passed away, his physician saw a wonderful vision in a dream. When the robber had given up his soul, they gathered around him black, manlike demons with pieces of paper on which were written all his sins, and two radiant angels also appeared. The angels set a scale between them, and the joyful demons placed all those papers on the scales on one side, weighing down their side of the scale, but the other side was empty. The angels held counsel: "What should we place on it? Let us seek something good in his life." But they couldn't find anything good in his life. And then they remembered the handkerchief soaked with tears of repentance, and the angels brought the handkerchief, and they quickly placed it on their side of the scale, and it outweighed the demons' papers. Then the black demons fled, howling sorrowfully, and the angels took the soul of the repentant thief and carried it into Paradise, glorifying the man-loving God.
That's a great story to illustrate how we approach Lent this year. It's not, you know, doing everything right, passing all the tests that the Church puts in our way. It's being humble and repentant, and that is the way to heaven. May God help us to have this attitude of the Publican throughout this Lent. Now to God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit be ascribed all light, majesty, dominion, and praise, now and forever, and for the ages of ages. Amen.
