Orthodox readings for 17 November 2015

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

2 Thessalonians, Chapter 1, verses 10-12

¹ St. Paul certifieth them of the good opinion which he had of their faith, love, and patience, ¹¹ and therewithal useth diverse reasons for the comforting of them in persecution, whereof the chiefest is taken from the righteous judgment of God

¹⁰When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.

¹¹Wherefore also we pray always for you, that our God would count you worthy of this calling, and fulfil all the good pleasure of his goodness, and the work of faith with power:

¹²That the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and ye in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2, verses 1-2

¹ He willeth them to continue steadfast in the truth received

¹Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him,

²That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.

Read more:2 Thessalonians, Chapter 2

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1

1:10 To be glorified in his saints - For the wonderful glory of Christ shall shine in them.

1:11 All the good pleasure of his goodness - Which is no less than perfect holiness.

1:12 That the name - The love and power of our Lord may be glorified - Gloriously displayed in you.

2

2:1 Our gathering together to him - In the clouds.

2:2 Be not shaken in mind - In judgment. Or terrified - As those easily are who are immoderately fond of knowing future things. Neither by any pretended revelation from the Spirit, nor by pretence of any word spoken by me.

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End of the World

Luke, Chapter 11, verses 34-41

¹⁹ preacheth to the people, ³⁷ and reprehendeth the outward show of holiness in the Pharisees, scribes and lawyers

³⁴The light of the body is the eye: therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body also is full of light; but when thine eye is evil, thy body also is full of darkness.

³⁵Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness.

³⁶If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light.

³⁷And as he spake, a certain Pharisee besought him to dine with him: and he went in, and sat down to meat.

³⁸And when the Pharisee saw it, he marvelled that he had not first washed before dinner.

³⁹And the Lord said unto him, Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness.

⁴⁰Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?

⁴¹But rather give alms of such things as ye have; and, behold, all things are clean unto you.

Read more:Luke, Chapter 11

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11

11:34 But when thine eye is evil - When thou aimest at any thing else, thou wilt be full of folly, sin, and misery. On the contrary, Mat 6:22.

11:36 If thy whole body be full of light - If thou art filled with holy wisdom, having no part dark, giving way to no sin or folly, then that heavenly principle will, like the clear flame of a lamp in a room that was dark before, shed its light into all thy powers and faculties.

11:39 Now ye Pharisees - Probably many of them were present at the Pharisee's house. Mat 23:25.

11:41 Give what is in them - The vessels which ye clean, in alms, and all things are clean to you. As if he had said, By acts directly contrary to rapine and wickedness, show that your hearts are cleansed, and these outward washings are needless.

NOTES

In the Gospel we find no angry denunciations by Jesus directed at thieves, extortioners, prostitutes, unfaithful wives, occupying forces, or other sinners. The only class He denounces is the scribes and Pharisees. What had these people done wrong...

The Savior's words addressed to the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, who in those days were usually called "scribes," may seem too harsh, just as they seemed to some of His listeners. But the question was too serious, and...

The Savior's words addressed to the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah, who in those days were usually called "scribes," may seem too harsh, just as they seemed to some of His listeners. But the question was too serious, and things had to be called by their proper names. The accusations are serious: in essence, Jesus reproaches both the religious leadership of the Synagogue of that time (the Pharisees) and the outstanding teachers of the Torah for not observing themselves what they call others to observe. A strange accusation, it would seem: after all, in the Gospels it is precisely the Pharisees and teachers of the Torah who are shown as zealots for the Torah; they are the ones who constantly reproach Jesus for violating one or another of its prescriptions. But Jesus clearly identifies the problem: external religiosity devoid of spiritual content. This very religiosity became the main problem of synagogue spiritual life in the Gospel era. Many Pharisees adhered to such religiosity, and many teachers of the Torah taught it to the people.

There was, of course, an alternative, but only a few represented it. The New Testament books have preserved the names of some of them for us: Nicodemus, Gamaliel... But they did not determine the general atmosphere of synagogue life at that time. And so it turned out that calls to spiritual life were accompanied by instruction in a life that was not so much spiritual as religious. People were taught not how to acquire inner wholeness and inner light (the very "clear eye" of which Jesus speaks), but how to observe ritual prescriptions. Of course, these prescriptions also did not appear for no reason, and behind them stands a certain spiritual experience that gave rise to them; but by that time the experience had already been forgotten, while the prescriptions remained.

And now the people are offered a life of religiosity alone, without spiritual content; prescriptions without communion with God. Meanwhile, the teachers themselves feel like masters of the Torah: after all, they are the ones who comment on it and interpret it; people come to them for advice; it is their authority in the eyes of ordinary people that is unquestioned.

Not all of them, of course, were like this, but there were enough of them for a vast number of people to become locked inside a circle of formal religiosity with no possibility of leaving it. And every free word from God, any breath of God's Spirit in this environment, is perceived as something unnecessary and even dangerous: it undermines the monopoly of teachers and interpreters over the Torah, and therefore over spiritual life. It is no accident that Jesus tells those who build monuments to the ancient prophets that they are no better than their fathers, who killed those same prophets. They have no need of living spiritual life, just as their fathers had no need of it. And that means they have no need of the Kingdom either.

The Savior explains spiritual life to His listeners through the example of physical sight. If a person's eyes...

The Savior explains spiritual life to His listeners through the example of physical sight. If a person's eyes are healthy, He says, then his whole body is filled with light; otherwise, instead of light, the person is plunged into darkness. But here the point is still not only physical sight, which serves merely as an example for describing the realities of spiritual life.

In the Gospel age, the most widespread ideas about the Kingdom were either religious-political or mystical in character. In the first case, the Kingdom was viewed as a strictly political reality, as an ordinary earthly state, differing from all others above all in that the Messiah would become its ruler and its laws would fully correspond to the Torah. Of course, a special measure of God's presence in the Temple was also expected, as was the renewal of the covenant with the coming of the Messiah, but the matter was still an earthly state that would be created in the way all states of this world are created.

The direct opposite of such an idea of the Kingdom was the idea of it as a mystical Kingdom, existing somewhere in another dimension of being, the way into which the coming Messiah would open for His chosen ones. And if the Pharisees and the Zealots saw the Kingdom above all as an earthly state, then, for example, the Essenes considered it a mystical reality.

Jesus, however, as can be seen, looks at the matter in a completely different way. The fact that the Kingdom is "not of this world" does not at all mean that it exists in some other dimension of being. It is here, nearby; only not everyone is able to see it. To see it, one needs healthy, full spiritual sight, which the fallen person is originally deprived of. But if his sight is cleansed and corrected, the Kingdom will become for him as obvious and certain a reality as the untransformed world is for him in his present state. After all, the Savior brought the Kingdom into the world not so that it would remain something alien and foreign in nature to the world, but so that its power and breath would transform the world, renewing it and making it part of the Kingdom. So that at the end of time the whole of our world would become part of the Kingdom, except for that evil in it which is incompatible with the life of the Kingdom.

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