Main news for 29 November 2021

"He makes Himself God" was an accusation quite often thrown at the Savior during His earthly ministry. It was thrown by deeply religious people. What was it: malicious falsehood or misunderstanding? Most likely neither.

Here there is simply the difference between religion and Revelation. Between an external knowledge of God, as if from outside, and that fullness of communion with Him which is impossible without the fullness of His presence in the one who communes. Jesus speaks to His listeners all the time precisely about such fullness. He knows what He is talking about: He was born with this fullness. He did not need to seek it and rejoice if He managed to catch even for a moment a reflection of it, as ordinary people do. The fullness of the life of His heavenly Father abides in Him constantly. Of course, He understands that none of His listeners has access to it as He does.

But He also knows something else: there is a path leading to this fullness. A path beginning in a person's heart, leading to Him, and then, through the fullness of His life, to the fullness of communion with God revealed in the life of the Kingdom. And then everyone becomes a son of God. Not the Son with a capital letter, of course, as He Himself is, but a son. And here this is no longer religion, nor even mysticism; it is new being, new existence, new life.

In the fullness of God's life opened through the Messiah. Through the Son with a capital letter. But to a person who has made religion the goal and meaning of life, this seems blasphemy. How can a human being claim the fullness of communion with God? There is an abyss between God and man. It is insurmountable, never and under no circumstances. And if someone appears who asserts that one can be close to God as to a person, and even closer, he is either mad or a blasphemer.

Jesus, meanwhile, testifies that as Man He feels no distance between Himself and God. "I and the Father are one." There is a distinction: the Son is not the Father. But there is no distance. And the action is one. "My Father is working even now, and I am working." This absence of distance seems absolutely incredible to a religious person. A paradox: religion itself arose from the sense of this distance, arose in order to overcome it. And now One appears who has overcome it.

It would seem that one need only rejoice. But it turns out that what was intended as a means has already managed to become a goal in itself. And now the specialists who manage this means are indignant when they see that it is becoming unnecessary. They are ready to do everything to get rid of the One who has devalued it. But the Kingdom does not fit within any religious framework. One has to choose, and each chooses his own.