Orthodox readings for 29 December 2007

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Colossians, Chapter 1, verses 3-6

¹ After salutation he thanketh God for their faith

³We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you,

⁴Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints,

⁵For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;

⁶Which is come unto you, as it is in all the world; and bringeth forth fruit, as it doth also in you, since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth:

Read more:Colossians, Chapter 1

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1

1:3 We give thanks - There is a near resemblance between this epistle, and those to the Ephesians and Philippians.

1:5 Ye heard before - I wrote to you. In the word of truth, of the gospel - The true gospel preached to you.

1:6 It bringeth forth fruit in all the world - That is, in every place where it is preached. Ye knew the grace of God in truth - Truly experienced the gracious power of God.

Luke, Chapter 14, verses 1-11

² Christ healeth the dropsy on the Sabbath, ⁷ teacheth humility

¹And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.

²And, behold, there was a certain man before him which had the dropsy.

³And Jesus answering spake unto the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath day?

⁴And they held their peace. And he took him, and healed him, and let him go;

⁵And answered them, saying, Which of you shall have an ass or an ox fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the sabbath day?

⁶And they could not answer him again to these things.

⁷And he put forth a parable to those which were bidden, when he marked how they chose out the chief rooms; saying unto them,

⁸When thou art bidden of any man to a wedding, sit not down in the highest room; lest a more honourable man than thou be bidden of him;

⁹And he that bade thee and him come and say to thee, Give this man place; and thou begin with shame to take the lowest room.

¹⁰But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room; that when he that bade thee cometh, he may say unto thee, Friend, go up higher: then shalt thou have worship in the presence of them that sit at meat with thee.

¹¹For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

Read more:Luke, Chapter 14

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14:2 There was a certain man before him - It does not appear that he was come thither with any insidious design. Probably he came, hoping for a cure, or perhaps was one of the family.

14:3 And Jesus answering, spake - Answering the thoughts which he saw rising in their hearts.

14:7 He spake a parable - The ensuing discourse is so termed, because several parts are not to be understood literally.The general scope of it is, Not only at a marriage feast, but on every occasion, he that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that abaseth himself shall be exalted.

14:11 Mat 23:12.

NOTES

The Saviour's parable about the first and last places is sometimes interpreted quite literally: among Christians, one often even encounters a kind of rivalry for the last places, like the rivalry for the first places among pagans. Such an “interpretation” is very far from what Jesus means. He had no intention of...

The Saviour's parable about the first and last places is sometimes interpreted quite literally: among Christians, one often even encounters a kind of rivalry for the last places, like the rivalry for the first places among pagans. Such an “interpretation” is very far from what Jesus means. He had no intention of turning the pyramid of the earthly order we know upside down, so that its summit became its base. He simply wants us to step outside it, to stop being guided by the frame of reference it sets—a frame that seems absolute when viewed from the fallen world. Jesus says: do not compete for the first places; sit where there is room, and if you are asked, move forward—you will be none the worse for it. But if you remain in the place you were given, you will be none the worse for that either, since it has no significance for spiritual life.

What is at issue here is humility, without which there can be no healthy spiritual life. Humility, of course, does not consist in taking the last places or considering oneself the least of all: there is neither more nor less self-assertion in this than in wanting to consider oneself first. It is precisely a matter of changing one's frame of reference, which is usually determined by the centre of gravity of the structure within which it exists. Applied to a person, we may say that their inner, psychological frame of reference is determined by where the centre of gravity of their soul lies—and that centre, in biblical language, is the heart. For the heart, in turn, the centre of gravity is whatever it values most, or, in the language of the Gospel, its treasure. As long as a person's treasure is bound in one way or another to the external world—a fallen world at that—they will never escape the pursuit of places, whether first or last.

To put an end to this endless and meaningless pursuit, the treasure must be moved into the depths of the heart, where the “breath of life” given to humanity by God at creation lies hidden. There, in the depths of the heart, at the true centre of every human person, the pursuit of places ceases—because there everyone finds their own place, the very place God has appointed for them. Accepting this God-appointed place as one's own is humility—not the ostentatious kind, inseparable from the struggle for the last places, but genuine humility, in which every place becomes equally suitable.

It is striking that the Pharisees remain silent in response to Christ's question about whether it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath. Deep down, they actually believed it was not. Whether healing counts as work, as “doing one's own affairs,” which is forbidden on the Sabbath, is a serious question. The Pharisees thought that...

When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how...

When speaking of the Kingdom, Jesus never tires of reminding His listeners that they still have to enter it and that this will not happen by itself. For the sake of the Kingdom one must leave everything behind and be ready to take up the cross. These words of the Saviour were perfectly clear: His listeners still remembered how, a little over a century before the events of the Gospel, during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus in the then independent Judea, those who took part in an uprising against the government and demanded that the authorities strictly observe the norms of the Torah in the country were crucified. The rebels wanted one thing: the Kingdom, the kind they knew about, of course. And for its sake they gave up everything. Their ideas about it bore little resemblance to what Jesus speaks of, but He holds up their determination as an example to His listeners. They truly did leave everything behind.

Not like the characters in Jesus' parable who refuse to come to the feast, for reasons that might seem perfectly reasonable, but still refuse and lose what matters most. Their places are taken by those who have nothing in this world and no reason to decline. Is it a matter of priorities? Yes, of course, priorities too, but not priorities alone. It is no accident that Jesus speaks of a feast, of the first and the last, and of the places that many strive to occupy even at the risk of being driven from them.

The Kingdom is not a place, a structure or a hierarchy. The Kingdom is a state in which one can abide, but which one absolutely cannot, so to speak, fix in place, however much one may wish to do so. The desire to occupy better or worse places comes from this. For in the Kingdom there are, in fact, no good or bad places. There is only one criterion: is a person in his or her own place, in the very place God intended, or in one chosen personally because it seemed more suitable?

This also gives rise to the question: should one go to the feast or to the field just purchased? The wedding feast is a symbol of the Kingdom. If a person does not know which to choose, it means that he does not know what the Kingdom is. If he did know, it would never occur to him to compare the importance of the life he lives with anything he owns. Life is fullness, whereas a purchased field, possessions and even family are merely derivatives of that fullness. What matters here is not to confuse the part with the whole or the principal with the secondary. Only one thing can help us do this: the experience of the true life of the Kingdom, that very life which is salvation.

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