What is most important about the meal Jesus arranges for the people listening to Him? One could say the miracle, and that would be true. But what is a miracle? One could also say the manifestation of the Kingdom, and that too would be true. Yet the Kingdom is the breath of God, the power of God, and the love of God acting in a particular way. What way is that? The evangelist explains by mentioning that Jesus blessed the food.

One might think that such an ordinary feature of Jewish life as a blessing hardly needed special mention. Yet the evangelist mentions it, and most likely not by accident. What, after all, was this customary Jewish blessing of food? In essence, it was nothing other than an invitation to God to sanctify the table and join the meal, where He was always awaited as the dearest guest. Jesus apparently does the same: He invites His heavenly Father to join the meal He arranges for the people listening to Him. But God's presence always gives the gathering itself a new quality. God's people are a people-community; that is how God intended them to be. Every sacred gathering, including one in a home, reveals and actualizes this quality, making it a reality wherever and whenever those assembled call upon God to bless their fellowship. The place where those who call upon God gather then becomes sacred space; it is no longer merely the meeting place of the community but the place of God's presence.

And what if the meal is blessed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world in all its fullness? How great must the fullness of God's presence be in that case? Clearly, we must speak here not simply of sacred space as a place of God's presence and His meeting with the faithful, but of the Kingdom, which is precisely such sacred space in all its possible fullness. There God's presence is revealed as nowhere else, and the meeting becomes not merely an episode but the norm of life, for life in the Kingdom is life in God's presence, without which there is no Kingdom. When Jesus blesses the food, everyone nearby becomes, at least for a time, an inhabitant of the Kingdom.

Of course, such participation in itself guarantees nothing; it can be regarded as a kind of spiritual advance. But that advance can also become the first step on the path to the Kingdom, and therefore on the path to salvation.

If we recast the dialogue between Christ and the scribes in terms of modern life, what is being discussed becomes much clearer.

On the one hand, certain religious rules are put forward concerning the outward side of life and resting on the authority of particular people. The Greek πρεσβυτέρων is very accurately translated here as “elders”: it refers not only, and not so much, to people of ancient times as to those who are older and authoritative. In the New Testament Church the word immediately came to be used for clergy and leaders, regardless of age. We too now call people who are very much our contemporaries elders. On the other hand, the Savior says that such traditions (Latin traditionem, traditions) do not necessarily possess divine infallibility.

So: “Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For before Communion they do not read all the prayers prescribed in the prayer book.” He answered them: “And why do you transgress the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition? For God commanded: You shall not kill. But you say: if anyone works as a defender of the homeland, he may kill. Thus you have made the commandment of God void by your tradition.”

The scribes and the Lord use examples of completely different orders: a tiny detail of everyday ritual and one of the Ten Commandments. Christ’s conclusion sounds like a verdict: “In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” The point, strictly speaking, is not that ritual is secondary; after all, one cannot do without it. The Lord Himself says: “These you ought to have done, without neglecting the others” (Mt. 23:23). Yet there are weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith. By sinning against them, you cannot become truly human, even if you observe every smallest detail of ritual and custom.

For a person living many centuries after the catastrophe of captivity and the return from it, brought up in an entirely different culture, it is not always simple to understand this exultant joyful news that "God will have mercy on His people." At times it is just as difficult to accept such ideas about God, who now destroys cities and villages in anger, now forgives them and returns them from captivity. But one way or another, we all live in this world, where the mystery of suffering is replaced by the mystery of salvation. And that means this exultation, this joyful round dance in which "old men and young men together" and in which "sorrow is turned into joy," can become an expression of our faith as well, of our knowledge that God loves us no matter what.