Main news for 14 October 2024

It is especially Pharisees and scribes, those for whom any relation with God is turned to the fulfillment of the commandments and numerous rules and standards deducted from these commandments that caused the biggest indignation of Jesus. The Real God, the Living God becomes superfluous in such an approach of the law: it is sufficient that once He has giving His law, He can disappear and not show up again. And in this case, the one who abnegates to have a direct relationship with God becomes an unauthorized interpreter of God's commandments; he changes gradually God's laws into human’s precepts (see Mk 7:6-8) and thinks that their observation leads to salvation. All this is completely the opposite of God's plan concerning His relations with men – the fulfillment Jesus came in this world for. But the particular wrath of Jesus towards the lawyers is not due to the fact that they took the way of self-justification leading to death, rather that they made themselves spiritual authorities of Israel, proclaiming their way leading to justice and salvation, teaching others to imitate them and of therefore move away from God.

It will be a big mistake to think that legalism passed away with Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ time. Apostle Paul in his entire sermon fights against the offences of legalism, because this virus penetrated into the new Church very rapidly. And today, we meet in every confession, in every Christian community the same claims of the " key of knowledge”, the same substitution of real relationships with God in the tideway of living streams of Church's traditions - the mindless execution of rules and customs accumulated by one or another denomination during its short or long existence. Thus let us try not to violate these rules, by preserving concord in our Church, and looking at the same time for something better - which is meeting with Jesus Christ and filling in with Holy Spirit, what will make of us carriers of love towards God and towards people in our heart.

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.

When Christ says, "Woe to you...," one is tempted to say that these words are addressed, of course, to His immediate listeners. Yet always and at all times His words are addressed to us ourselves, and only to us. Of course, it is pleasant to think that the words about God's love for the world apply to us, while no one likes hearing rebuke. And nevertheless, inside each of us lives that very lawyer who is always trying to appropriate the "key of knowledge." In words we may recognize another person's right to a different view, to a different way of confessing God, to a style of thinking unlike our own, but somewhere inside there is always a quiet but distinct little voice speaking: "But I know that in reality they are all wrong. After all, only I know what is correct."

Let us leave the origin of this voice outside our reflection; one thing is clear: it belongs to the human person in general. Sometimes we like this voice so much that we give it the right to speak out loud. And this is much more terrible than any failure to fulfill the law. Because the whole essence of the New Testament, the whole essence of the Good News, is in the change from Law to Grace. The Lord offers us a completely different way to see the world and live in it: to love our brother to death, to the cross, to weep and rejoice together with him. Only in this way, and not through observing rites, fasts, and internal church rules, can we be with God, on one side with Him. And if we stand before God, are we not all wrong to the same degree? But fortunately, His love for us is determined neither by our righteousness nor by our understanding.