Today's reading returns us once again to the testimony Jesus gives about Himself. Apparently, the events in the evangelist's account took place on the day commemorating the dedication of the Temple (v. 22; the “feast of renewal” mentioned in the text could also be called the “feast of dedication,” in keeping with the meaning of the Greek word). For believing Jews, the day of the Temple's dedication was a day of God's triumph, and on that day the coming of the messianic Kingdom was awaited with particular feeling. It is no surprise that on such a day Jesus was expected to give a direct answer to the question of whether He was the Messiah (v. 24).

But Jesus' answer was quite unexpected by those who questioned Him. They apparently hoped He would tell them plainly when He would do what people expected of the Messiah in those days: raise a revolt, drive the Roman troops out of Judea by God's power, and restore an independent Jewish state there, establishing laws in full accordance with the Torah. Yet the Savior tells the people around Him something else. He says: you have already seen everything I do, and I have nothing more to tell you. This answer was entirely logical: Christ had no intention of doing any of the things His listeners expected. He could only reveal the Kingdom to them, as He had already done more than once (vv. 25-27). The Lord's chief gift, clearly, is not a restored Jewish state but the fullness of God's life, which He is ready to offer to everyone willing to receive it (v. 28).

Then comes the testimony about Himself that made devout religious people pick up stones (v. 31). Jesus says: I and the Father are one (v. 30). He reveals to His listeners the central mystery of His messiahship and His ministry: He shares one life with God. He is human, yet the fullness of God has entered the bounds of His human nature, and therefore so has the fullness of the Kingdom; He is ready to give both to everyone who thirsts for them. An ordinary human being, of course, cannot contain the fullness of God as Jesus Himself does. But thanks to Him—and through Him—this fullness, once wholly inaccessible to humanity, has in principle become accessible to everyone. It now depends only on each person whether he will partake of it.

This thought, it seems, was precisely what the people surrounding Jesus found utterly intolerable (vv. 32-33). And no wonder: to accept what He said, they would have to tell themselves and others honestly that the history of religion was over—the history of every religion, including the Judaism to which Christ's listeners belonged. The meaning of any religion lies either in the search for God, when pagan religiosity is concerned, or in maintaining a relationship with the God who reveals Himself to people, when a religion of Revelation is concerned. But the Savior offers something more: He offers the fullness of God's life in His Kingdom. There is nothing to seek here, because the essential thing has been revealed, and there is no need to make special efforts to maintain a relationship with God, a relationship that nothing threatens in His Kingdom. Here people live with God, simply and naturally, communing with Him and participating, according to their opportunities and abilities, in the life of the Kingdom. Here religion becomes unnecessary.

For a religious person, naturally, it is very difficult to accept this, because religion has formed the foundation, purpose, and meaning of his entire life. The Jews surrounding Jesus wanted the messianic Kingdom to be not so much God's kingdom as the kingdom of their religion. Now they had to choose between their own desires and God's revelation, and Jesus calls them to choose the Kingdom. But every person is free, and each makes his own choice.

Why climb over the fence when the door is open? Perhaps for fear of being turned away at the door—but then, even after “climbing over,” you will be asked to leave. Or perhaps out of mischief, as in childhood, when it was fun to climb through a window rather than obey tiresome rules of conduct. But mischief is out of place here: matters of the utmost seriousness are at stake.

Behind the denial of Christ there usually lurks a desire to manage without Him, as well as the self-confident notion that one’s own strength is sufficient for a righteous life. If we succumb to the temptation of self-sufficiency, we may fail to notice that what seemed to be “our own strength and resources” is in fact neither our own nor strength at all, but a delusion breathed upon us from a murky source.

Therefore, however harsh the words about the thieves and robbers who came before may seem—and they may also be applied to many who came later—they are just. Leaders and false prophets for whom people are merely a means of carrying out their own plans constantly send them to their deaths, and for now there is no end in sight.

But the good shepherd leads the flock not in order to shear and slaughter it, but to bring it to good pasture. Every comparison has its limits, including the comparison of people to a flock; yet let us not forget that each of us is unique to the Good Shepherd and that He knows each one by name.

As we can see, many of the Pharisees were still ready to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah. They correctly understood His hints about His messiahship, and now they wanted only one thing from Him: that He finally declare Himself openly to be the Messiah. But He does not do this, because He knows perfectly well what "being the Messiah" means for these people, and He was not going to become that kind of Messiah - His plans did not include raising a rebellion, beginning a holy war against the Romans, or becoming the ruler of an earthly state.

Instead, He again and again explains to those around Him what the Kingdom He brought into the world is. And He speaks of the main thing that forms the basis of the Kingdom's life by His own example: to live in the Kingdom means to give one's life to God in order then to receive it back from His hands. And the Savior's own path, His death and Resurrection, is a remarkable example of this.

According to the laws of our untransformed world, even the Messiah, bearing in Himself the fullness of God and the fullness of the Kingdom, can die - although, unlike us, death is not a natural inevitability for Him. And when He is killed, He dies like any human being. But His life belongs to the Father; He lives not by His own life, but by the Father's life, which was given to Him by the Father in all its fullness. And in the Kingdom, where there is no place for death, He receives it again from the Father in all its fullness - completely unexpectedly for His enemies, who thought that now, once He had died, everything was over.

And the path of every Christian, every inhabitant of the Kingdom, resembles the path of the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. Of course, God has not given any of us, as He gave Him, the capacity to contain the life of the Kingdom in all its fullness. But the Kingdom is open to us, and one can enter it only by giving up the life that God gave us at birth, so that there in the Kingdom He may return it to us transformed. This new life will no longer be part of our world - a world being transformed but not yet transformed - but part of the Kingdom; it will become the first step on the path of our transformation, the first step on the path to salvation.