Today's reading brings us back to the image of the coming Kingdom, emphasizing the difference between it and our world, which has not yet been transformed. It begins with a mention of events about which...
Today's reading brings us back to the image of the coming Kingdom, emphasizing the difference between it and our world, which has not yet been transformed. It begins with a mention of events we know about only from the Gospel, one connected with some kind of persecution (v. 1), and the other with what today we would call a technological disaster (v. 4).
Clearly, those who told Jesus about the persecution expected His comments. In this case it may have involved some kind of reprisals undertaken by the Roman authorities in response to another uprising, perhaps affecting those who had not been involved in it, as often happened in those days. But Jesus does not try to explain anything when the subject is a world lying in evil. For Him, as we see, evil has neither explanation nor justification. He offers no theological reasoning, no arguments of the kind representatives of various schools of moral theology so often resort to. He says something more terrible, something no theologian would have dared to say aloud: there is no justice in the world; virtue is not rewarded in it, vice is not punished, and a tower can collapse on anyone's head, whether he is righteous or a sinner (vv. 2, 4).
The only way to avoid this fate is conversion, or "repentance" (vv. 3, 5). On Jesus' lips, conversion was certainly inseparable from readiness to accept the Kingdom He had brought into the world. And to accept it not someday, when the one receiving it has "ripened," but here and now, when the Kingdom has overtaken the one who is turning. This is also the meaning of the parable of the fig tree that Jesus told to those who had asked Him the question (vv. 6-9): if someone remains alive in a world full of evil, it is only because God again and again gives him time and the opportunity for conversion.
But the situation is already at the boundary; all deadlines have long passed, and every time a person postpones conversion, he risks not living to the next attempt. There is no salvation in this world; it is only in the Kingdom, and one should not delay, putting off the moment of meeting it. Better now than later, when it may already be too late. That is why Jesus treats so sternly every attempt to push the Kingdom into second place and to postpone the meeting with it "until later." He demonstratively heals on the Sabbath (vv. 10-13), and not only because the synagogue, the assembly of the faithful, is the most fitting place for the Kingdom to be revealed, and the Sabbath, God's day, is the most fitting time. He also acts this way because in this case waiting is a matter of life and death. He says to the synagogue ruler, the "ruler of the synagogue": do you not water your livestock on the Sabbath? You know that otherwise the animal will die, and therefore you do not consider it a violation of the Sabbath if someone unties the animal and leads it to water; how, then, is a human being worse, especially one who belongs to God's people (vv. 15-16)?
Of course, Jesus could not have failed to know the traditional answer to the question He asked: if an animal is not given water, it is in danger of dying of thirst, and therefore watering an animal is not considered a violation of the Sabbath. But the woman Jesus healed would calmly have lived until the end of the Sabbath day, as she had already lived for many years, and from the point of view of a person faithful to religious tradition there was no need to hurry with her healing. But Jesus cannot and does not want to wait when it comes to bringing a person into the Kingdom. Unlike the synagogue ruler, He knows how time is contracting as it moves toward the end. And He hurries--hurries so that the Kingdom may be opened to everyone who seeks it and is ready to accept it.
13
13:1 The Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices - Some of the followers of Judas Gaulonites. They absolutely refused to own the Roman authority. Pilate surrounded and slew them, while they were worshipping in the temple, at a public feast.
13:3 Ye shall all likewise perish - All ye of Galilee and of Jerusalem shall perish in the very same manner. So the Greek word implies. And so they did. There was a remarkable resemblance between the fate of these Galileans and of the main body of the Jewish nation; the flower of which was slain at Jerusalem by the Roman sword, while they were assembled at one of their great festivals. And many thousands of them perished in the temple itself, and were literally buried under its ruins.
13:6 A man had a fig tree - Either we may understand God the Father by him that had the vineyard , and Christ by him that kept it: or Christ himself is he that hath it, and his ministers they that keep it. Psalmorum 80:9. etc
13:7 Three years - Christ was then in the third year of his ministry.But it may mean only several years; a certain number being put for an uncertain. Why doth it also cumber the ground? - That is, not only bear no fruit itself, but take up the ground of another tree that would.
13:11 She was bowed together, and utterly unable to lift up herself - The evil spirit which possessed her afflicted her in this manner.To many doubtless it appeared a natural distemper. Would not a modern physician have termed it a nervous case?
13:15 Thou hypocrite - For the real motive of his speaking was envy, not (as he pretended) pure zeal for the glory of God.
13:16 And ought not this woman? - Ought not any human creature, which is so far better than an ox or an ass? Much more, this daughter of Abraham - probably in a spiritual as well as natural sense, to be loosed?